Opal

That's an apt metaphor for racist Replacement Theory.

Which just makes it that much better a metaphor for racism, since the very concept of race also falls apart on close inspection.

Closer to the traditional meaning, nice. And, thanks for doubling my knowledge of Pathfinder. I didn't even realize they weren't playing 3.5 D&D.

I was mainly thinking of the guy - there's hot fantasy art of guys out there (and there's always romance novel covers), but his concept was being old and dissipated. And, yes, those two are less on the nose than an exotic worshipper of a lust goddess - but they're still a tattooed (former) slavegirl and a shapeshifter. Civilla also gets points for protagonist potential and hints of an internal life, tho.

It doesn't take particularly strong Libertarian views to want to point out that the Right Wing is not Libertarian, at all - like, ew - But you did kinda throw down the gauntlet there, I mean, I assume unintentionally: The board's policy - and less casual denizens can correct me if I'm wrong - is not go into RL politics much in the gaming forums, and that gives you the option to say "hey, enough with the politicks" when someone does go off on a political tangent you don't care for - but to preemptively say you don't want to hear about politics /from one side/ is kinda introducing politics into the discussion, in itself. (And, it's straight-up politics, call it history because it was 30 years ago, but a Third Party President? That's possibly the least plausible thing in the whole batch - magic is real, ley lines unstoppered by Tut's tomb, gods & monsters, alien invaders ..OK, sure, it's genre... but a 3rd Party winning the Presidency?) Blogs are a good option, too, you can keep all your writing together, and you can moderate comments, yourself. So, I've noticed several bits of alternate history so far, and I am curious how that happened. IRL, Rhodesia was immediately beset from all sides - UN sanctions, the Russians, and the Chinese, /and/ their neighbors in Africa all backing their foes and basically no one backing them. Did Doc D or Viper intervene as part of a long game plan for world domination that simply called for more unstable minority-rule states muddying international waters? Did specific home-grown supers intervene? South Africa is easier to see - if the mass program of divestment hadn't held together, for instance - though it also makes me think they probably stayed Nuclear. Also North Korea is an interesting choice for super-powered army. What resources did they get that somehow the world's superpowers couldn't uncover or duplicate with decades of trying? A mystery that might offer possible plot threads and origin stories. It'd also completely change the PRC/DPRK dynamic, and give 'juche' some real teeth.

And it would also have his DCV. Bulky, assuming that's still a thing foci can suffer from, would take care of that, too, IIRC.

Gynoid Paige Lari, reclusive co-founder of tech titan, Moogle, best know for its descending order of morality search result algorithm, retired in 2019 to become a superhero named after her company's popular operating system. As Gynoid, Paige sports a custume, battlesuit, or perhaps holographic forcefield projection, of a glowing blue, idealized, statuesque female form topped with her undisguised notoriously nerdy face including her trademark rectangular reading glasses. In combat or emergency situations, she produces powerful blasts, fields, and persistent energy constructs that behave much like solid objects. While her head is always visible it's actually protected by a virtually invisible fishbowl helmet or force globe. Whatever sufficiently-advanced technology she uses seems to blur the line between energy and matter.

They might've been thinking "Lucrecia Borgia" or that it would be ironic in the hipster sense... ...but, the idea of the church being secretly Satanic is a mainstay of anti-Catholic intolerance, and that kind of thing can creep into a fictional depiction unconsciously... ...kinda like the whole Male Gaze thing may have done with the character concepts and illos of the PCs. Just in terms of sentence structure, I mean. IDK why stuff like that hits me, it's obvious what he meant, of course.

The way it was phrased, it sounded like that was part of the ceremony, like how could you have a beautiful wedding without a scarab to symbolize Ra's journey across the sky? Of course, since it's a royal wedding, we got you a reaaaally big scarab...

Random thought. Someone afflicted with some horried "death field generation" (that's a GW reference) type superpower might not want to be a mass murdering villain and also might not see too much potential for heroing with a power that only kills - but, if controlled and used cautiously enough, could be one heck of an exterminator of conventional pests. There's probably any number of AE and nastier CE type powers that might be used that way.

Paradigm is just a major concept in Mage. Each Mage tradition - and their foes the Technocracy - is pushing their own paradigm, it's how their magick works (including technology, which is the technocracy's paradigm of magick). Unless Paradigm's secret Id is Bill Frucato or something, I doubt the reference is personal - even if the M:tA reference was intentional. *Full disclosure: "Bill Frucato" and "Jessica Heinous" just may have been used in Mage parody back on usenet alt.games.white-wolf days... I'm sure they weren't the only ones working for "Black Dog Game Factory" ....

Brucato was the lead on M:tA for its second, more coherent/less inspired, edition. Stewart Wieck was the primary on the original.

I wondered about that, because I thought the infinty stones were 80s... so I looked it up, it was a close one: the Rod of Seven Parts appeared in Eldritch Wizardry (1976), while the precursors to the Infinity Stones, called Soul Gems at the time, were only 'revealed' to be a set of 6 that could be combined into a more powerful whole in 1977. The familiar Thanos story line retold in the movies, in which they're finally called Infinity Stones, is of even later provenance, I believe.

Oh, I also meant to mention that another thing that's been going on over on the D&D side of the hobby (which is, of course, the lion's, or even the T-rex's, share of the hobby), is the old fogies of the game's early days coming out and sharing their memories. Like Rob Kuntz, I think it was, was on ENWorld just chatting with people about his relationship with Gygax back when D&D was being developed. That seems to energize some fans.

"The Edition War" went beyond just that one bit of misinformation, but yes, the point being that D&D strayed from tradition for a bit and did much better when it reached back to it's earlier incarnations. So, yes, there are gamers out there who can be rdawn in by appeals to tradition/nostalgia/originalism. Fuzion was also analogous to 3e D&D, in that it was an attempt at an open-source RPG, and while it changed the game cosmetically, it left the core balances (and imbalances) - the system-mastery dynamics - very much the same. It was also in addition to Hero, rather than a replacement for it. 4e D&D, though, was also analogous to Hero 6th, in that both changed significant, long-standing elements of the rules that impacted dynamics especially, in terms of system mastery, and for legal reasons changed around IP & lore. Of course, D&D had a lot further to go in a single ed than just eliminating a few 'cost breaks,' and Wizards' 'legal reasons' were self-inflicted. It just seems like D&D fans were a lot more vindictive about it. Fuzion wasn't really quite Hero, so I kept playing Hero; 6th kinda lost me, but I just stopped paying attention for a while. 3.x & old-school D&Ders went off on 4e like it was an E′phraimite trying to sneak into Gilead without saying "Shibboleth." Opal was the first Champions! character I got to play long-term, and the single character I played the most, so when I found Red October I used her name, and that just became my handle for Hero discussions. She was inspired by an image from an 80s video of a strange-looking platinum-haired woman in a mirror-like silver costume that reminded me of the flared-shoulder look of old sci-fi costumes. I'm not sure what else went into her, but I did decide to give her 'Unearthly Beauty' since she was an alien, and Barbara Bain fit the bill - beautiful, but not an approachable beauty - when I visualized her. At least, the way 18yo me remembered her from Mission: Impossible re-runs and Space:1999 10 years prior. And, yes, I loved Space:1999 and UFO and what other Gerry Anderson shows I got to see as a child - even the supermarionation.

Wizards o/t Coast could barely get anyone to buy modern/balanced/accessible 4e D&D, but as soon as they brought back the familiar brokednessity of 80s D&D and recycled the Red Box cover, they had a full scale comeback on their hands and D&D sold faster than ever.

Maybe a little silly, but... A precursor race - Atlanteans, ancients, proticultures, slavers, olympians, whatever - created planetary defenses for the earth thousands of years ago. To modern human eyes, though they just look like piles of rocks - pyramids, zigurats, Neolithic megaliths, etc - attacking the components directly with advanced alien weapons would activate them, so, instead, the invaders have been trying to get humans to demolish them piecemeal. I just liked the idea if the mcguffins not being little portable things hidden away. For the control system to use the weapon proactively, it's not a bunch of hidden items, either, it's coded into human genes. Some from each human population. Unfortunately humans are kinda into genocide, so some of those ancient populations have been dispersed or all but whiped out. Others have mixed. So it's necessary for a diverse set of human representatives to unite and defend the planet by consensus control of the ancient weapon.

You're also doing a male & female version of each, I take it. The male Apex upthread and female one you linked both look 'sweet' to me, like they're each on the gentler side of heroing. The male is all muscled and may even be flexing, but not in a way that looks aggressive, and his facial expression is just... sweet, maybe a trifle sad. The female version's pose is less serious, though. The male vs female Dr Nope, OTOH, you have an aggressive pose for the male and suggestive for the female - if that were consistent throughout your artwork you might stop and think about it. Please, note, I'm not saying every female illo has to be aggressive or heroic, just a reasonable proportion of them. That and some males need to be depicted in other ways, too - maybe even including suggestive ones. And I know that last bit it tricky.

"Common sense isn't common." Both in the sense of frequency, and in the sense of universality. One players common sense may be very different from the GMs, and that's why players always do such crazy things. So, yeah, a Common Sense power that lets you know what the GM thinks is 'obviously' a bad (or good) idea would be pretty awesome. It not like RL villains haven't done exactly that.

How'd they get stuck with 'gen z' (gen X was not alphabetical) or 'zoomer,' anyway? (I mean, ZOOM was on in the 70s). It's not because they're using the Zoom App, is it? Because Discord is also a popular app for the same thing, and The Discordian Generation (Hail Eris!) would be way cooler. (And, y'know, anarchism has sure made a comeback.) According the American generation-cycle theory, they'd correspond the Silent Generation, supposedly an 'Artist' generation meant to quietly consolidate the gains of the Millennial Hero-Generation and Baby-Boomer Visionary-Generation, while also laying a foundation of thought for the next generation of Visionaries (the way Beatniks and Jack Kerouac did for the Hippies).

Not that I haven't already been told that the EU doesn't count, but I still feel like the cause of 'uniting' Europe is a bit out of date in the sense of already partially accomplished, not really all that sinister as a goal (until you get into the means), and well within the Oberlin window of thinkability - not the kind of thing heroes should be immediately up in arms to stop. OTOH, White Supremacy, even if in genre, Nazis have kinda got it covered, is an obvious evil that broader western culture has been moving away from since the end of WWII (if not for much longer), has a proven historical record of extreme awfulness, is essentially unthinkable as a civilized goal, and immediately prompts heroes to suit up and go punch some Nazis .. er.. White Supremacists. So, I agree, way more villainous than Esperanto-speaking-guy wanting to unite the Old World - the only downside is it risks loosing any uniqueness the theme of Eurostar might have by making them just another batch of comic book Nazis.

The Legion of CANCELED Heros (try to picture 'canceled' like it was put there with a big rubber stamp) Of course, they're villains, now, but they tried to be heroes, or at least pass themselves off as heroes, initially. Whether their powers were too freakish, their motives too purulent, or their name/costume/appearance/special-effect too problematic, they were widely decried and rejected and either revealed as villains, turned to villainy, are hunted as such even as they try to be heroic (if only in their own minds), or just walked away from the whole thing never to be seen again. So, they're not really a team or even a group that ever gets together, but just a grouping of supers-gone-wrong. 0-6 members - that is, call an end to it and propose something more sane at any time Put the character description - and even the name, if that might be triggering - under a spoiler cut, with appropriate warnings. You can go dark, or squick (you might want nested spoilers), or silly, or all three. example

The Great Orange One No one knows for sure whether the Great Orange One (or simply GOO) is a human mutated into a gigantic, comical, simian form, or an unfortunate orangutan cursed with superhuman strength, invulnerability, and the power of incoherent speech. What is known is that the rampaging monster appeared suddenly on Jan 8, 2021, and invited itself to join The Capitalists, on the grounds that it was "the richest orange-furred primate in America," leaving aside that primates have hair, not fur, it was eventually, after much property damage, granted membership (by majority vote, the dissenting opinion is that it is an AntiFa thug undertaking a false flag operation - oh, if only), since that seemed to calm it down a bit. It is evidentially anatomically neuter, and it's sentience has not been conclusively proven - it's banter may be the result of the biological equivalent of an Eliza program, albeit one designed specifically to offend anyone who engages it in conversation. GOO has swinging (brachiation) useable even in the completely branch-free environment of glass and steel skyscrapers (so flight, essentially), and is fond of feet-first swinging move-throughs into opponents, without regard for relative physical defenses, nor whether they be foe, innocent, friend or scenery (though he does, for some reason, refrain from attacking statues). That and soliloquies, long, rambling, completely incoherent, soliloquies, that mean nothing, yet can outrage anyone (trigger any and all Berserk or Enraged disads in anyone listening). and, of course, any good capitalists know how to delegate, (plus I need to dispose of some bad puns) so, how 'bout some agents... The Agents of Change & Equity Some of these moderately-trained, well-equipped agent-level capitalists have individual names and costumes, like Blue Chip, and are something like officers, while others, like the Wooden Nickels and Thin Dimes are a generic class of agent with as many members as the capitalists can find qualified non-Union applicants. Blue Chip Charles "Chip" Vanderwarden is an old-money dilettante who always wanted to do a little superheroing, in return for a sizeable investment in the cause, the Capitalist have given him command of the Agents of Equity most elite cadre, the Bonds' Men, and a pretty snazzy blue-caped super-suit that lets him fly (float, really), project taser-like bolts of electricity, and take a punch from Grond (and eventually wake up with a few bones not broken). The Bonds' Men - recruited from elite military, security, or law enforcement who have fallen on hard times, the Bonds' Men literally owe everything (their family home, their spouse's cancer treatment, the settlement of huge punitive judgements against them - whatever solution to the calamity that broke them financially) to the Capitalists, and are among their most grimly loyal enforcers. They're also the most capable and well-equipped, with cutting edge military gear, or high-tech equipment that was too much for UNTIL's budget. The slowest of them would make a better commander than Blue Chip. The Almighty Buck Mild-mannered banker, Archibald Worthington Penniphew, has the odd mutant - or perhaps, inherited magical - power to transform into a glowing stag composed of pure energy. Why, he has no idea, no one is his family line was exposed to weird radiation, he never had any strange accidents or picked up an innocuous seeming talisman in an eerie second-hand shop or anything. He is the leader/mascot (he can't talk while transformed, but he's terribly noble & inspiring looking) of the hyper-patriotic Agents of Equity militia, the Yankee Greenbacks. In stark contrast with his mortal demeanor, the Almighty Buck charges HKAe-Antlers first, into any enemy, and his fearless men follow. The Yankee Greenbacks were recruited from lost veterans of the World Wars, Korea, and even the Spanish-American war, forgotten old men on the verge of death with no family or friends left, and offered youth & vigor in return for loyal service. The Yankee Greenbacks wear uniforms inspired by the US Army, and Series 1918 Federal Reserve Notes, and use semi-automatic blaster carbines designed with a feel in use similar to the M-1, equipped with deadly laser-bayonets, and various specialized grenades. They do not typically wear armor, but, given time, can recover from virtually any wound as a result of whatever immortality treatment they received. As should be obvious, they are the result of a long-term conspiracy that predates the Capitalists, who presumably acquired them in some sort of takeover deal with some failed nationalist mastermind villain. The Exchange A metamorph and power-mimic since she could walk, Miriam Goldsmith, also known as the presumed-dead 90s villain X-Change (who presented as male), has been manipulating, impersonating, and destroying people literally longer than she can remember, her true appearance, like her pre-powered infancy, has been forgotten. The sultry femme fatale appearance she usually assumes when dealing with allies aware of her powers or otherwise 'off duty' may have been lifted from some little-known film-noir actress of the 40s. She could have easily joined the Capitalists as a full member, but she chose to be their well-paid spymaster, instead, leading an organization of lesser-powered and unpowered, spies, infiltrators, and grifters who gather, analyze, and funnel information, at her discretion, to the Capitalists. The Derivatives are recruited from the ranks of dissolved intelligence agencies, disbarred corporate lawyers, white collar criminals, grifters - and minor-league supers with underwhelming powers - from all over the world, and trained by Exchange in espionage, infiltration, impersonation, identity theft, and the long con. They are her eyes & ears - and deft fingers - serving, and subtly influencing, the Capitalists. Three-Dollar Bill A Flamboyantly Gay Texas Gunslinger - imagine John Wayne and Liberace had a love child, OK, a transporter accident - none-the-less on the far right when it comes to business and fiscal issues, Guillermo Navarro, had previously, while closeted, adventured as the grim street-level gunslinging vigilante, Vencedor in San Angelo. As $3 Bill he wears a comic-opera cowboy costume of intricately tooled white leather & fuchsia 'silk' (actually advanced ballistic polymer) and carries 6 ancient Colt revolvers (because, as Vencedor discovered, they are impractically slow to reload in a firefight, so just shoot it dry, drop it, and draw the next one). He leads a comical-seeming but unpredictably dangerous Agents of Equity cadre known as the Penny Stocks The Penny Stocks are recruited from the ranks of failed, disaffected, misfits from the southwest US down to the furthest reaches of South America. Their pink-and-grey, but, at least, reasonably armored, uniforms were inspired by the defunct 'Pink Sheets' used to trade over the counter stocks before everything went digital. They are essentially 'baiter agent,' using a bizarre variety of high-tech, high-risk, weapons, no two agents the same, weighted towards entangles, flash attacks, pointless-seeming change-environment, and oddball F/X blasters. Anything a hero might be vulnerable to could be there. You never know when a Penny Stock will unexpectedly hit it big. General Quarters leads the Agents of Change, generally (pi), from an overwatch position using a flight pack that generates blue-white forcefield wings. His costume is silver with an eagle motif. He generally (yeah, yeah) prefers a combined-arms approach, using a selection of his agents, below, in proportions suited to the current mission. Thin Dimes, jokingly called the two-bit ninjas, recruited for petite builds & agility, they are trained in conventional escape & evasion and infiltration, and equipped with 'duo-dimension' belts that allow them to virtually eliminate their physical presence along one dimension (height, breadth or depth), thus they can turn sideways to become nearly invisible, walk under doors, or slide between bars or the like (limited desolid). Wooden Nickels are recruited from the physically very strong, especially college students, as that is the only positive trait they retain in action, because they are equipped with a 'neural neutralizer' helmet that suppresses all thought, emotion, and mental or psychic activity. Though zombielike, they are minimally affected by pain and immune to most mental powers, making them useful for specific sorts of missions. When Wooden Nickels are captured they turn out, once their helmets self-destruct, to not only have no memory of their actions, but no idea they were ever working as super-villain minions, at all, generally believing some cover story about drug safety tests, sleep studies, or hypnotherapy. Lincoln Pennies are recruited, with great difficulty, from black athletes and veterans, they are expected to wear copper-colored uniforms that include tailcoats and stovepipe hats. Aside from that, they're equipped much like low-rent UNTIL or VIPER agents, with high-tech energy weapons and armor. Bad Pennies are violent men, recruited from among ex-cons, ex-cops, washed out military recruits, and broken, failed men of all sorts. They're given a banned vaccine that has the side effect of either turning you into a puddle of still-living goo, or gives you super-regeneration powers - either way you're 98% immune to e-bola, as well. They are generally dressed in ordinary clothes and armed with ordinary melee weapons, often chosen for concealability or to appear 'improvised' as if they weren't /really/ looking for a fight. When the action starts, they don spray-painted-copper plastic full-face masks equipped with radio earbuds to receive orders, but otherwise, they can easily pass for bystanders, counter-protestors, sport fans, or other mostly-male crowds. OK, I totally slid into Adam West Batman villain territory, there. On the heels of that I hesitantly offer the following idea....

Why steal money if you're never going to spend it? Of course, IRL, a normal crook would feed the meter to avoid suspicion, but, y'know, centipedemobile.....

Esperanto, and yes, I'm pretty sure it's as strongly gendered as Spanish (Obviously, for the dream of an invented universal language of peace and niceness and mutual respect to make it, today, it'd either have to have all the genders - or, more practically, be even less gendered than English, even completely genderless - it could have words for anatomical sex, but they wouldn't imply gender, for instance)