assault

Re: The Avengers in the CU

A few interesting Thor subs would be folks like Catern (sp?)' date=' Black Paladin and Shamrock ...[/quote']

 

For villain teams, yes. For hero teams, you would need to do a fair bit of work.

 

A "White" version of Black Paladin might work as a hero, digging into all that Arthurian goodness.

 

I considered Cateran. She didn't quite feel right to me, but she's certainly an option.

 

Shamrock has the "controversial freedom fighter" thing too strongly for the Thor role, in my opinion.

 

Both Cateran and Shamrock might be better suited for the second wave of reformed villains, rather than the initial influx of big-H Heroes.

 

I might take another look at Black Paladin's character sheet. Both Kingdom of Champions and 4th Ed Golden Age Champions dig into the Arthurian themes to various degrees, so I was already thinking about this a bit.

 

A "White Paladin" would obviously have a ready made nemesis, and you could always stick in a Morgan Le Fay type for a more Loki-ish trickster nemesis.

 

Good call.

Re: The Avengers in the CU

I've found an appropriate Thor substitute: "Lei Kung the Thunderer", from the back of CKC. He's one of the examples of how characters can be tweaked to fit a particular campaign.

He doesn't have a specific origin, although presumably you are supposed to tweak Anubis to fit. His disads aren't particularly villainous, so they aren't really a problem.

He's tough enough for most purposes.

Of course, if you really want to you can build him up to cosmic levels. The same applies to any of the other substitute Avengers I mentioned.

So now it's: Lei Kung! Grond! Shrinker! Defender! Earth's greatest heroes - the Champions!

Or you could make them a villain team, simply by replacing Defender with a villainous power suit character. Everyone else are already villains!

Of course the real interest with the Avengers concept is the idea of franchising out local branches. You could probably do the same thing with the early 90's Justice League, of course. See Justice League Antarctica for further details.

Re: The Avengers in the CU

I don't insert characters directly into my campaigns without filing off the serial numbers, but with that said...

I'm kind of fond of the early Avengers lineups.

The founding team of "Thor and his buddies" is kind of neat. They're a real collection of most of Marvel's major solo characters at the time (apart from Spiderman).

The second lineup is cool too - aside from Captain America, they're all pretty much reformed villains!

Thinking about the original line up... the most obviously interesting member is the Hulk. The CU's closest equivalent is, of course, Grond!

Now there's someone you want to have on your team, isn't it?

Let's see: the rest of the team. Shrinker began her career as a heroine, so we could use her to fill the Antman/Wasp slot - we don't really need two of them. Defender could fill in for Iron Man.

But who can fill in for Thor?

Oh well, I'm sure someone will think of something.

There are plenty of flagsuits around, so it won't be a particular drama for one to join a little after the team is established.

Hmm... Grond! Shrinker! Defender! (Thor substitute!) The world's greatest superteam - the Champions!

Yeah. That works for me.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

Here's how it works: we already have diffences of opinion. If you sit around a table with a bunch of people that already agree with you, your existing opinions are going to be reinforced.

Here is an example:

Misguided or not, our presence in the Middle East has always been intended to protect our economic health and hopefully to be a broker or mediator for peace.

...

I believe the Israelis want peace. I believe the leaders of the Palestenians do not.

I'm not interested in an argument about this.

This, however conventional, is an opinion. It is entirely possible for a reasonable human being to disagree with it.

So, if you want to indulge in shades of grey, then, yes, indeed, "Evil" and "Good" are relative.

Count me down for "Evil", buddy.

But, if you follow the fantasy conventions of supernatural/spiritual evil, this stuff doesn't work.

The real answer is: "don't be a tosser".

There is Good. There is Evil. These are the normal conventions of fantasy.

If you want to play historical fiction, feel free. Then you can indulge your prejudices until the cows come home.

Just don't tell me about it.

I might have to start quoting Tacitus.

Re: I need a strong woman that flies.

Why don't you check out a few superhero comics?

What he said.

Failing that, Wonder Woman is good. Or, if you want a more limited example, Wonder Girl, aka Troia.

My current test group includes: Robin, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash.

Robin shouts: "Kid Flash!.."

Kid Flash and Wonder Girl shout:"We know... protect innocents!"

Robin shouts: "Wonder Girl!..."

Kid Flash and Wonder Girl shout: "We know... kick a**!"

Kid Flash and Wonder Girl shout: "Robin... do something useful, for once in your mangy life!"

OK, there's a story there, but, there ya go.

I'm testing scenarios.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

There are two aspects to my answer.

First, the idea that roleplaying encourages racism is on a par with the idea that roleplaying encourages devil-worship.

Second: Orcs in my universe are evil because they were made that way. They have no more choice than robots do. No free will. No capacity to choose between good and evil.

If anything, perhaps, that possibly disqualifies them from being evil, but it certainly disqualifies them from being good.

They are the tormented, insane, slaves of Evil, often with at least some streak of demonic ancestry.

Could a child fathered by an Orc be brought up Good? I don't know. Usually Orcs either murder those they rape, or drag them away to the Pits. Since those Orcs with the greatest element of demonic ancestry are the most likely to successfully reproduce, any such "Good" Orc is likely to be pretty deeply corrupt on a spiritual level.

Re: Troy: City of Luxury

Interesting.

A couple of points in the history had me going "???". In particular, it looks like someone got to the Turkish political system in a big way! Who could it have been?

You have quite an interesting idea going here - it's in an unusual place, and it seems to be very much something which exists because it is in a super-powered world. It's not your everyday land development project, in other words...

Hmm.

Re: Money And Super-Mercenaries

Not all mercenaries (or supermercenaries) are bad guys. Some would just prefer to make lots of money rather than performing (super)feats gratis. Two or three supers might be a much better and more reliable protective detail or troubleshooting team than scores of normal men with guns.

 

Heck, doesn't Luke Cage work for pay as a super? Don't the Avengers get sizable stipends?

Assault started as a Hero For Hire. His rates according to his clients' ability to pay.

He was eventually driven out of business by the insurance premiums. Superfights are _expensive_.

His business was structured more or less as a cross between a security and private investigation firm. In other words, he was halfway between being Sam Spade and a nightclub bouncer.

For more military super-merc enterprises, non-powered support staff can make a huge difference. Taken to an extreme, of course, you get outfits like VIPER and UNTIL, but much smaller teams are possible.

In fact, you could theoretically even play a campaign where one player runs a super, and the other players play his support. In many ways, the less powerful characters would be the more interesting ones: they are the ones doing the intelligence work, the tactical analysis, the training, the scientific work, piloting the stealth jets, providing combat backup and all that for the Big Boy. All he really has to do is break things and hit people.

Alternatively, you could have your normals supporting operations for a whole team of supers, so when all your hard work and planning ends up being put to the test by a bunch of spandex-clad knuckleheads, you all get to play one of the knuckleheads.

A team organised like this could well prove much more effective than one of a similar power level that relies on its own resources. After all, normals with the skills you are looking for are easier to hire than supers who just happen to be experts in a particular field.

You could even hire some minor mystics to give your non-magical heroes some degree of protection against magical attacks, and so on. At this point, of course, you are really actually talking about low-powered supers supporting higher powered supers, but the general principle is the same.

I won't bother thinking about the potential for abusing Usable by Others powers.

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

I think that there are three possible approaches to this kind of game: "four-colour", "black and white", and "shades of grey".

I'm going to ignore four-colour, because we all know what that is.

The other are the two that need to be distinguished.

"Shades of grey" is the realistic one. That's the one where your opponents are not necessarily fools or villains, even if you think they are.

"Black and white" is the one where they are. It's the world as seen by dogmatists.

If Assault was in a game like this, he would be killed trying to prevent the Authoritarians carrying out their sicko facist plan. That is, he would regard their plan as a "sicko facist plan" and would be prepared to die to stop it from being carried out. This would probably happen quite early on, while the "heroes" are still overthrowing the US government's enemies, and haven't yet turned against the US itself. That's because Assault has a political agenda of his own, and he can spot an enemy when he sees one.

He would die, of course, because he's just not powerful enough to fight cosmic powered characters. But he would try, because that is what is morally correct, from his point of view. He is a hero, in that he will die for a cause, if that is necessary. And he will kill for a cause, if need be. War is war.

Is he a villain? Well, yes, of course, he is. He would fight to defend at least some of the governments that the US and many other western governments regard as enemies.

Is he a fool? Well, that's a matter of opinion. But his position is entirely logically consistent and grounded on quite common philosophical presumptions.

In other words, his position is "reasonable" in a "shades of grey" universe, and "villainous" in a "black and white" universe. And in a "four colour" universe, he's a hero!

I probably need to come up with a cosmic level character conception that (a) I would be prepared to actually play; and ( isn't a Superman clone. Then I would have some slightly better tools for thinking about these kinds of issues. If you _can't_ really affect outcomes in these kind of crises, what you would like to do about them doesn't really matter.

Re: Title for the next HERO villains book

Champions of France!

---

OK, in the real world I disapprove of anti-French jingoism, but I made an exception in this case.

Re: PC Groups and Hunteds

Well, of course I use Hunteds and other Disadvantages as guidelines, but I also use them as key elements in my scenario design process.

In particular, if none of my PCs are hunted by Mechanon, Mechanon is only going to turn up very rarely, if at all. Hunteds are the recurring villains - the Lex Luthors, Jokers, Doctor Dooms and Magnetos of the campaign - everyone else are the one-shots.

In my games, of course. YMMV.

I like to preserve the numbers for a bunch of reasons, of which one of the most important is that I occasionally play solo games. It's nice to have a plot generator that will churn out a villain, a Master Plan, how the hero gets involved, and some plot complications, like what strange transformation Assault's Pal Ollie Jameson experiences this week, and whether or not Assault's Girlfriend Louise Long is going to be trying to work out his secret identity. Or something like that.

At the very least such things are fun.

And you can, incidentally, use them to produce some quite interesting Silver Age style "plots".

Anyway, I forgot a couple of points in my original 1500 word epic (I copied them into Word and used the word count function).

When a specific PC's Hunted turns up, the GM may decide that there are implications for the amount of "spotlight time" each PC has. While no PC should ever be overlooked, there is probably a bit of wriggle room for focussing more or less on a particular character in a particular session. A Hunter turning up may tend to focus attention on a particular character, increasing their spotlight time, or it may actually reduce it, if the character is taken out by the Hunter early in the session! It might be worth alternating the two, just to keep all the players happy. Just remember to remind them that sooner or later it will happen to _their_ characters too.

Another thing you should definitely consider is to establish relationships between the Hunters. That way, if, say, Lex Luthor and the Mob both show up in a Superman game, the gangsters might be using gear sold to them by Lexcorp. Similarly, if both the Mob and Intergang show up, they are likely to fight, since Intergang is trying to take over the underworld. If Intergang and Lex Luthor show, Intergang might be trying to lift some Lexcorp gear. If Lex, the Mob and Intergang all show, the Mob might be using Lexcorp technology to retaliate against Intergang's attempts to muscle in on their turf.

In this case, then, Lex (Lexcorp) and the Mob are somewhat friendly business partners (or rather, Lex actually runs the underworld just like he runs everything else in Metropolis), while Intergang are bitter enemies of the old Mobs who they are trying to either take over or eliminate. Similarly, Lex and Intergang aren't exactly the best of friends... And so on.

This helps clarify the situation when multiple Hunters show up. It also allows you to add layers of conspiracy to the game.

If you are lucky, too, it may help take the edge off some of the issues of particular Hunteds showing up too often.

Just to finish, here is a bit of an example of what I am considering for my Kirby/New Gods Homage game. I'm using the original source names here, since I haven't finished the "fliling off the serial numbers" process. They are grouped into two basic factions:

Faction One

Corrupt Businessman #1 ("Lex Luthor")

Organised Crime Faction #1 ("The old mobs")

Faction Two

Corrupt Businessman #2 ("Morgan Edge")

Organised Crime Faction #2 ("Intergang")

Criminal Genetic Engineering Program ("The Evil Factory")

Secret Mastermind ("Darkseid")

In addition to these factions, there may be individual supervillains, roughly grouped into Mad Scientists, Theme Villains, and Rampagers. Only the latter are "true" superbeings - the other two are "normals" with training and "stuff". Some of these may be affiliated with the factions, while others won't be, at least initially.

Of course, each of the "leaders" will have lackeys and other resources.

In other words, I will have a fairly strict framework which Hunteds will be required to fit into.

On the other hand, my solo game has a light scattering of Mad Scientists, Theme Villains, Rampagers and Alien Invaders, who appear more or less whenever I roll them up on my "plot generator" tables.

I really must finish writing them up, and post them. I think they're kind of amusing. I still need a few more entries on my Strange Transformation Table, aka "the Jimmy Olsen Table", though.

Re: Hudson City: The Urban Abyss

One thing I'd like to see, IF there is room, might be a 'sample neighborhood' (Obviously you can't cover them all) complete with a few NPCs (full character sheets nice, but hardly a must) and examples of some of the troubles it faces and where the PCs might fit in (Trickier, now that vigilantes is not the default, but still possible I think).

Hmm... Let's see... the Red Light District? Skid Row? The waterfront?

Anywhere with sleazy dives, drug dealers, "abandoned" buildings and dark alleys.

Kind of like Gotham City's "East End" as seen in Catwoman and sometimes in Batman. Lots of excuses for :bmk:

I've been doing a bit of campaign designing and the question of Hunteds has come up. The problem is as follows.

You have three PCs: A, B and C.

A is hunted by DEMON on 14-

B is hunted by VIPER on 8-

C is hunted by VIPER on 11-

Because these characters all hang around together, all three of them are effectively being hunted by DEMON on 14-, and VIPER on... whatever. This potentially occurred irrespective of any considerations of character conception, and, of course, different characters received different amounts of points for these hunteds.

OK, so, the players get together, and all agree to take the same hunteds: VIPER 14-, and DEMON 14-.

Now, what is supposed to happen when the GM has to roll for these Hunteds to appear? Does he/she roll once for each Hunted, or three times? Either way, both Hunteds are likely to show up pretty nearly all the time. But what if they were taken on 8-? There is a considerable difference in the frequency with which they will appear, in this case.

And then there is the problem about what it does to the GM's campaign... If a character is Hunted on a 14-, the Hunter is clearly a major factor in the game. In fact, the game comes very close to being an all-out war between the PCs and the Hunter. This makes a drastic difference to the campaign - like the difference between a heavily themed setting like the X-Men, or a looser one like the Fantastic Four or the Avengers.

And then there are issues of genre simulation... Imagine for a moment, that each scenario you run is a single issue of a monthly comic title. Your group has its set of recurring villains - but how often would you expect them to show up in a single year? You can pad it out, of course, by having a lot of Hunters using proxies, or by having only marginal roles in the adventure, or even being complete red herrings (more on this later), but still, it seems that getting the balance right can involve a bit of thought.

Obviously a GM can massage their campaigns to their hearts content - if they don't want a Hunter to show up, they won't but it does seem a little pointless in treating Hunteds as disadvantages if they don't actually show up at something like the frequency they were paid for. Worse, in some cases Hunteds are actually a genuine part of a PCs character conception, rather then just a tradeoff made to allow Combat Wombat to wield the True Power Comic. Some players may actually be offended if their characters' Hunters don't show up, particularly if they would prefer to fight them then the opponents that are actually showing up.

So it seems that Hunters need to be chosen carefully. First of all, the GM should, of course, vet, and preferably pre-design all and any hunteds the players take. It's not always possible to pre-design them, unfortunately, since players will always insist on playing off-the-wall character conception with strange disadvantages, but if you take a bit of time to talk through the kind of game you are wanting to run with your players you should be able to get pretty close.

The other effect of that, of course, is that you probably want your players to talk to each other about their characters as well. This applies to other aspects of their characters besides Hunteds, of course, and actually points in the direction of group character design sessions. I haven't used these before, but they might be worth trying. Unfortunately, a lot of players are quite likely to have characters they have already designed tucked away, but at least a group session might allow them to balance their characters against each other. Or it may simply weed out problematic players.

Unfortunately, of course, a lot of the time players want to actually play, and not just spend an evening designing characters! So you have to manage your time very carefully, to ensure that there is some actual play time, particularly if the next session is likely to be a fair while in the future.

Anyway, I suspect that I might come up with a list of suggested Hunteds for my next game, which will also have a fairly narrow theme and focus, at least to start with. It won't just be an open slather "design any old character and jump on in", which is pretty much what a lot of the games I have played in (and run) in the past have been like.

Duplication of hunteds is difficult, as I suggested way back above, but sometimes it's appropriate. Let's look at the early Fantastic Four: because they were a group, they all effectively shared each others' Hunteds, but some of their Hunteds were definitely more closely associated with some of them than others. (List of examples deleted for brevity.)

Of course, each time a player selects a Hunter for their character, they are, in effect, saying: "I vote that our group fights this enemy a certain amount of the time". If your characters are selecting the same Hunteds, you should take notice of it. But make sure you don't overuse them.

One thing I have been considering was lower frequency Hunteds. That is, instead of taking Hunteds that appear on 14-, 11- or 8-, being able to take ones that appear on 7- or 6-. Those probabilities, incidentally, are roughly equivalent to 1/6 and 1/12 respectively, if my maths was correct a few weeks ago. (Using the "12 issue year" I suggested before, that's "about twice a year" and "about once a year" respectively, of course.)

So, how do you cost them out? Well, the simple answer is: you don't! It's not convenient to buy them under the current system. A better way of buying them is to amalgamate them, and buy a bunch of them for the same point cost as a conventional Hunted. It works like this:

Buy your hunted as a conventional 8-, 11- or 14- Hunted. Then, roll on a subtable to find out which Hunter actually appears!

In effect, you have just split the probabilities of each Hunted's appearance by the number of slots on your subtable. This gives you the option of having a large number of Hunteds that only turn up every once in a blue moon, having a couple that show up fairly frequently, if less so than on 8-, or any combination you want. And the sum of the probabilities still adds up to the original 8- or whatever, so the character isn't getting less hassle than they were given points for.

Like any variant, the GM should be wary of this being abused. Personally, I would feel a little nervous if a character took "Every character in CKC (except for the Really Big Masterminds) 3-". It's _meant_ for buying fairly coherent Rogues' Galleries, so that Batman, for example, could buy The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler, Two-Face and Catwoman without them all showing up every week, day in, day out. So if anyone want to use a system like this, they should be hardnosed about it, and not let anything nasty get through. But that's just universal advice, isn't it?

OK, just a final thing: I mentioned Hunteds showing up as Red Herrings. Rumours are an old scam in RPGs. They allow the GM to leak selective and variably truthful information to the PCs. Having rumours turn up about PCs' Hunteds is a rather obvious way for them to "appear" in scenarios where you don't want them to make a physical appearance. The danger is, of course, that the players might get sidetracked by this, and start to hunt down the local VIPER nest, rather than attempting to thwart DEMON's plot to destroy the world. Clearly, you probably shouldn't allow DEMON to destroy the world, in this situation.

You have a couple of choices here - a few not-so-subtle hints (with brass bands and elephants) to point to the real culprits is an obvious starting point, but you can always go with the flow if it looks like your players either can't be brought back on track, or actually would rather not be.

So rumours, while a good idea in theory, can also be a bigger pain than they are worth. I guess you just have to train your players a bit, and learn to adapt to them as well.

Well, this ended up a bit longer than I anticipated. I was originally going to ask for other peoples' advice on how they handled Hunteds, and I ended up writing something like an essay on how to handle them! Oh well.

It's a bit unstructured, but everything here seems to refer to something real, so I'll just post it as is.

Everyone else should feel free to comment, or talk about their own experiences, techniques, daft ideas and mistakes. Or talk about other disads and similar stuff, too.

Re: GOO "The Authority" RPG

And then i can have my PCs beat them up, lousy #$#$ butchers in spandex pretending to be super heroes....

 

Oh yeah. Assault's cleaning his butt-kicking boots even as I type.

Mind you, he will need to organise a bit of a power-up for himself.

Re: He's a WHIMP !!! (My Gripe)

In any case that doesn't alter my central premise' date=' which is that 30 rPD or even less is enough to protect one from bodily harm by a 4d6 RKA EX attack. The early Superman could have had as little as 24 rPD and still been functionally invulnerable to small arms fire from rifles and pistols.[/quote']

 

The exact quote was: "nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin".

 

To me, "penetrate his skin" says: do Body.

 

That sets an UPPER limit on his rPD, since a "bursting shell" CAN penetrate his skin. Note: that's rPD, not PD in general. The problem is: is a 4d6 RKA from a 20 mm cannon a "bursting shell"? If not, what is? What about AP rounds? Can an anti-tank rifle hurt him?

 

As for the lower limit: we know that he is immune to bullets. If we assume that to include .50 cal HMG rounds, he won't take body from 2 1/2d6 RKAs. That means he has at least 15 rPD.

 

Is a mortar round a "bursting shell"?

 

Really, such a decision is arbitrary. But what it means is that if a 3d6 RKA can't hurt him, he must have at least 18 rPD. If a 4d6 RKA can't hurt him, he must have at least 24 rPD, and so on.

 

In actual fact, though, he isn't shown being attacked by anything heavier than small arms in his early appearances. That means that it would be justifiable to go with the 15 rPD figure, or, indeed, even less, since he doesn't get shot at by .50s either, but only by civilian weapons! (Of course "civilian weapons" includes Thompson SMGs, but there ya go!)

 

As for his other powers: the only tricky one is his ability to hurdle a 20 story buildings. The nasty thing with that is not "how tall is a 20 story building", but rather how wide one is! In any case, if he can jump 200m (1/8th of a mile) horizontally, he can jump 100m vertically, which should cover things adequately enough. He can't exactly "hurdle" such buildings, but who cares?

 

Of course, if you do want to be fussy, you could always buy him some Requires a Skill Roll Flight, to cover his amazing acrobatic abilities.

 

His ability to run faster than an express train is no drama. The world speed record for a steam locomotive was set in 1938 at 126 mph. This was during a brake test, not during regular running, but it's still a good figure for basing Superman's running speed on.

 

On the other hand, apparently some of the Grand Prix cars around in those days could make 200 mph, although normal cars couldn't.

 

As for his strength: well, he needs to be able to rip open a bank vault. Again, that is a 1930's bank vault, not a present day one. Unless you are using a "normal objects have vulnerabilities to superpowers" rule, you might want to give him a "rending and tearing" HKA slot in his multipower, to allow him to do the kind of body necessary to do this in a timely manner. He could potentially do with some tunnelling as well, or even instead.

 

In any case, his multipower is his real secret. He starts off with just a couple of innocuous slots like running and superleap, and then starts sticking in things like flight, heat vision and superbreath! Have you ever wondered why he seems to forget powers? It's because he has his MP switched to something else!

 

A true munchkin.

Re: Campaign idea: Kirby's Fourth World homage

Thanks to everyone for the ideas. Keep it up!

My current problem is power level. The source material covers a rather extreme range, from Highfather to Jimmy Olsen.

Broadly, characters seem to cluster into three groups:

Cosmic: Highfather, Orion, Lightray, Superman, Mr Miracle on a good day.

Superheroic: The Guardian, Big Barda, Mr Miracle on a bad day, minor New Gods.

Normals: Jimmy Olsen, the Newsboy Legion, "Terrible" Turpin.

You could blur the first two categories a little, by going for the lower end of cosmic power levels. You can build a workable Superman analogue on 700 points, and that would give a seriously dangerous Guardian. If you go for more points, the Guardian starts to suffer from serious bloat, while fewer points force excessively deep cuts into Superman's abilities.

But I'm inclined to go for fewer points. After all, the main thrust of the game will be the fight against Intergang and the Evil Factory, not hand to hand combat with Darkseid. So, really, it's a rather conventional campaign.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure that I really need to know about who is replacing the New Gods, at least to begin with. All I really need is details on the Good Guys, plus some info about the Intergang substitute (Viper?), and the gangs they are moving in on. And _their_ backers too, of course - a Lex Luther analogue would be useful there.

In most respects I could just lift bits from the standard CU, but I will want to make some changes. Eliminating magic is the most obvious, but I will be ignoring everything irrelevant to the campaign, effectively creating a stand-alone setting.

Now, a setting... something to replace Metropolis... I'll make a decision on this later.

Re: Killing Charachters/Villians in your games. Do you do it?

My $0.02:

PC deaths are "when dramatically appropriate only".

Villain deaths are fairly common, but usually "accidental". Only the most important (recurring) villains come back - most are one-shots.

My games are generally rather four-colour, and killer "heroes" are discouraged.

Of course, some villains aren't alive to begin with. Vampires, robots (like Mechanon) and so on are fair game.

Re: Integrating the CU into an existing campaign

... they'll wak eup one day and the china town district will be there. No one else will know what they're talking about when they say it wasn't there yesterday.

 

Or better yet, I may do this in reverse: One of the NPCs will ask them where Dragon's Gate went? ...

 

So I say: World changing and Time altering events are great for incorporating new stuff.

I like this, a lot. It's nicely comic-y.

DC has done some similar things with the Flash, but, unfortunately, mostly when they were retconning stories that shouldn't have been retconned, like the Flash of Two Worlds.

Re: He's a WHIMP !!! (My Gripe)

Did somebody just admit that Superman might not be buildable on starting hero points?? Oh' date=' the shock and amazement.[/quote']

 

Err, no. People were saying that you _can_ build Superman on starting points.

 

Easily on 350 points. Cheesily on 250 points. Really really cheesily on 200 points. (I might sit down and do the latter, just to prove it's possible.)

 

Low-point Superman: Armour - bulletproof. Multipower - running, jumping, strength tricks. Optionally, for higher point versions: Life support, Enhanced senses.

 

Subsequently, he expands his multipower, and adds lots more slots.

Re: He's a WHIMP !!! (My Gripe)

Thor and Superman? Yeah' date=' ho-hum. Although Thor's a good doctor.[/quote']

 

Clark Kent is a good investigative journalist.

 

This was established decades ago, when the Earth-2 Superman temporarily lost his powers and forgot he had ever had them. Because he wasn't holding himself back, he blossomed as a journalist, and wound up marrying Lois. And then got his powers back...

 

The present day Clark has written novels, too, IIRC.

 

Of course, compared to Lois, he's second rate.

I've been thinking of getting a game together for a while, but I haven't been able to think of a theme that I would be interested in for long enough. I think I may have finally come up with something suitable: a homage to Jack Kirby's Fourth World titles.

For those unaware of this fabulous work: Google it.

I think a game set in a world of Boom Tubes, Mother Boxes and Whiz Wagons has to have potential. It certainly can have epic scale villains - is there _any_ villain more epic scale than Darkseid?

It neatly straddles the border between Silver and Bronze Age, basically being "Silver Age on acid".

So, my question is: what would be involved in filing off the serial numbers and producing a homage to it?

There would definitely have to be some limits in character creation - I can't see magic origins being viable, since they clash with the Weird Science that makes the setting so, uh, funky. On the other hand, most of the other Golden and Silver Age origins should be OK.

Most of the other house rules would probably be the conventional tweaks for establishing Four-Colour physics - no Stun lottery, normal things have vulnerabilities to superpowers, etc.

The setting could be modern day - perhaps the human genome was secretly decoded in the 1970s, and covert genetic programs have been creating

"things" ever since.

There could be a bit of a gang war going on, as established gangs clash with mysterious new rivals.

And, of course, there are hints of sinister cultists pulling strings in the shadows...

So, the real question is: who can replace Darkseid and the New Gods?

Re: Looking for NEW words of transformation: (SHAZAM, Thunder! Thunder!...)

IIRC Alan Moore's Miracleman used the word "Cotima" (anagram of "atomic") to assume his superhuman form.

It was "Kimota" - "atomic" spelt backwards, kind of.

Back in the 50s, there was the Australian Captain Atom, who preceded his US namesake by ten years or so. His transformation word was "Exenor!"

He's also a serious contender for "Character with the Worst Normal Identity Name" - Bikini Atoll. No, really. In his secret identity he was named "Bikini".

Of course, that _was_ before the invention of the two-piece swimsuit...

Re: He's a WHIMP !!! (My Gripe)

Some character conceptions work very well on 250 points. Hourman is a fine example.

Others work adequately: a Hulk-type combat monster would be quite feasible. Use Multiform, and pay for it out of his Bruce Banner form, which has all the scientific skills you can eat. He won't be quite as tough as a 350 point character, but if you spend experience in a very single-minded manner, he will catch up very fast.

And, of course, some character conceptions just aren't as powerful as others. Many of the Golden Age non-powered characters can be built on remarkably few points. Very few of them had the extreme range of abilities possessed by Batman. Then again, neither did Batman when he began in 1939 - he's a fine example of a character who grew as he gained experience.

As, of course, is Superman, but he probably works best starting on 350 points.

Re: We're Gonna Need Guns

A couple of days ago, I wrote:

I'd like to see some older weapons. For example, the kind of gear that was floating around between, say 1946-1966. That would allow for some classic Cold War espionage games, (and provide some support for Silver Age Champions!). It would also help fill in a gap between Pulp Hero & Golden Age Champions, on the one hand, and the modern period on the other.

Since then, I've rechecked the weapons listed in 4th Ed DC. Most of the weapons I was thinking about were, _of course_ there, and doubtless will be in the upcoming version of DC. Oops!

Still, some other "old" gear would be nice - perhaps some vehicles and old, clunky radios...

Re: Shamrock- Scorpia... Ever Connect These Two?

My thinking was this: They are both near the same age and they both grew up in Belfast, not to mention the other similarities I listed in the first post. Now I realize that Belfast is a big place and people can go their whole lives living one block away from each other in a city and never meet, but these are just too many coincidences for me to ignore, at least in my campaign.

 

Also, I don't believe that Scorpia was always so bloodthirsty. Something must have happened in her life for her to become as twisted as she is. I think that, over time her behavior escalated and she will continue to get meaner.

You are correct that they are likely to know each other, whatever their current relationship.

It seems fair enough that Scorpia went off the rails in stages. There is plenty of trauma around in that kind of conflict. And escalation of her behaviour seems like enough.

Sooner or later she is likely to wind up dead.

Now, here's a thought: how old are they? Remember, the IRA has been on ceasefire for about a decade now. Scorpia and Shamrock can't be under thirty. Thirty-five or so seems more likely.

They've been on the run a looong time.

Presumably they couldn't go for an amnesty even if they wanted one. Both would have lots of non-political warrants out for them that wouldn't go away when their political ones did. That suggests that Shamrock will probably eventually have to find a nice safe bolthole to retire in, like the Federation of Atlantia in the Strike Force campaign. I've already mentioned what I think will happen to Scorpia.