Opal

It's not something terrorists do a whole lot, is It? OT1H, it is a moral/ethical fallacy, the terrorist, not the innocent given the supposed 'choice', is solely responsible for his actions. OTOH, it requires back-and-forth, credible, communications that would be problematic to authenticate and provide multiple opportunities to apprehend the terrorist or prevent the attack. It does make for melodrama when the good-guy is the focus of the story, though, which is why we see it so often in fiction. And with Eurostar such high power villains, they could be overconfident to take the extra risks. Especially if they want a chance to fight the heros.

Maybe check out Gullivers Travels, Jekyl/Hyde, and any of the Gothic and Orientalist novels of the period. IIRC, you won't find vampires.

Not so much as a player - one armored character had robotic tentacles, stretching was handy for melee weapons with reach - but as a GM I felt stretching came up a little short (pi) and came up with some special maneuvers. Sling Shot: The character with stretching must have two strong objects to hold onto (combined DEF and BOD of the two equal to his inches in stretching). He then grabs hold and moves back half his stretching distance and releases, springing back to normal shape between the two objects. In this way he can increase his ability to throw an object or (if he lets go) increase his leaping distance. In either case his pts in stretching are added directly to his strength for that purpose. Fly Swatter: The character can use two inches of stretching to gain a +1 OCV in HTH combat (for an attack or block maneuver) by stretching out his fists, making them wider. Under Wraps: A stretching character can wrap his elongated limbs and body around a victim he wishes to immobilize. Each inch of stretching used to 'wrap' the target adds 5pts to the stretcher's effective strength for holding on (though not for squeezing). Squiggle: Conversely, the character can add his points in stretching to his strength to escape from grabs and many entangles, in a manner similar to the contortionist skill. Crack the Whip: The character uses his elongated limbs to strike with a whip-like motion, increasing damage. The target must be at least 1 hex away but within half the attacker's maximum stretching distance. Damage is increased by +1d6 per 2" of stretching the character pays endurance on. This attack takes an extra segment to perform - like a haymaker - and reduces the attackers DCV by 2. ...can't say players took me up on it much, though. Sometimes I wonder if stretching wasn't just more something artists liked to draw than a serious superpower.

Arab Nationalism was the last bastion of fascism for decades, yes. Of course, there's a huge difference between being fascist - which the Baathists of Iraq and Syria unabashedly were - and being called fascist, which anyone to the right of Lenin's preserved corpse probably has been at one time or another. And, a comic-book-superhero setting can always resort to re-vivified Nazis and fictional fascists, both fictional countries and fictional movements. And, of course, fictional prejudices, like anti-mutant human-supremacists, or anti-illegal-alien (from other planets) xenophobes.

Mysteries are one of the harder things to pull off, certainly. I had caught the odd player reading a module back the olden days, too, but, back then, they at least tried to hide it.

Kids these days, amirite? Seriously, though, I actually was running games for kids these days, a while back, oh, OK, rather a while back, like 2010-14, I guess. And, no it wasn't Hero, it was just the D&D du jour, but I did not find younger/newer/more-casual players freaking out about capture scenarios or railroading. ...old-school D&Ders, OTOH, wouldn't ever accept the capture scenario, because it meant loss of magic items.... (by the same token, in Champions! capture scenarios, and the obligatory death traps, were not hated/feared near so much)

OK, maybe not for Dr. D, personally, but for keeping rank & file Nazis available for punching. And, while the last peak of Naziness in America in the 80s was pretty pathetic, Homeland Security has called out 'white supremacists' and 'right-wing militias' as the gravest terrorist threats in recent years, and they're basically the same thing.

Y'know, every terrorist organization needs a more legitimate political arm that disavows them while seeking the same political goals peacefully. Similarly, even terrorists understand the benefits of offering carrots as well as wielding sticks, and curry favor with a particular group or other, or paint themselves in a better light so that those sympathetic to the cause don't feel so bad about supporting them. Thus terrorists end up running charities, both as a way of getting resources from sympathizers who can claim ignorance of the charity's terrorist associations, and as a way of getting resources to those they're in some sense fighting for. Eurostar wanting to unite Europe sounds a little out of date, given how integrated the EU has become, but there could be political parties in the member states seeking greater unity, either in general or issue-by-issue, and they could coordinate efforts with Eurostar, offering political European-unity solutions to problems Eurostar highlights or manufactures through their attacks. And, all the above could do with a lot of money. Finally, even if Fiacho & co are so crazy they don't care to do anything but psychotic terrorist attacks, themselves, someone could be bright enough to piggy-back on their cause.

Here's a scarf that leads a life of danger To everyone he beats, he stays a stangler With every loop he makes Another stain he takes Odds are he'll be laundered on the morrow

An easy one is to just change "...was a Hitler Youth in 1939" to "...was a neo-Nazi skinhead in 1989" 'nother 50 years of villainous origin longevity, right there. There'll always be "Nazis" to punch.

I suppose, if, theoretically, you could just keep creating more and more duplicates? Or, if you can only have so many duplicates, Duplication with a limitation that you can only create one duplicate at a time and only if you were wounded since your last phase? IDK what value that'd be, I'm out of practice.

Sure. I suppose it's like literature, some is timeless, some isn't. Shakespeare's plays have been brought forward into various time periods and still worked. 1815's Emma adapted neatly to the screen in 1995's Clueless. Maybe I'm just noticing it acutely in these cases as I actually lived in and remember much of the Silver Age time period - and, lacking the good sense to have died young, also inhabit the current day.

duplicate post

Yeah, the more we talk about it, the less I like it. People are products of their time. Moving them around in time either changes who they are, or what they represent in the new context. 1963 Tony Stark was white by default, and 'millionaire industrialist,' defense contractor, playboy, and genius inventor all carried different, mostly more positive connotations (OTOH, alcoholic, which came a bit later, is not so negative today as it was then). IMHO, the Marvel Movies didn't go far enough in rehabilitating him, and thus made the character less heroic and positive than he originally was. I suppose it's not nearly as pernicious as the expostmodern tendency we see today of leaving the characters in their proper time, but projecting wild anachronism unto them and/or the period. The former does a disservice to the character, the latter to history, and we know what happens when we don't learn from history.

Don't care for the scaly look of 4th/B (little on the nose), nor the conventional fatigues-looking 4/A or 5th. So, I guess I'd go with the goofy skintight green & yellow of 1st/3rd.

Anytime you set a fantastic story in the current day you need to either think through all the ramifications - or think of a way to keep that genie in its bottle. The toughest thing would be to work through all the ramifications of openly-existing - worse yet, well-understood - supernaturals always having been part of the world, to the modern day. Rather than tackle that, come up with a way to make the world unaware of them (phew!), easy by comparison. WoD, the way the monsters were kept out of the limelight was front and center of each game: Masquerade, Delirium, Paradox....

Rising Son Rising Son is technically the last of the notorious 'Hiroshima Babies,' mutants born to mothers exposed to radiation by the bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. His mother was 2 years old when the blast at Nagasaki killed her parents, took her sight, and scarred her face. She lived, raised by poor relatives in a mountain village, unmarried both because of her appearance and the bad luck she was thought to represent. Shortly before the bombs dropped, a certain young scion of an impoverished, nearly-forgotten samurai family had failed in his first and only act as a man: his plane had been shot down and ditched a hundred yards short of his target as a kamikaze, he was 'rescued' by the very enemies he'd tried to give his life to kill, and ended the war in shame, a PoW. After the war he took up the life deserved, as that lowest of all beings, a traveling salesman. More than 20 years later a sad old man makes a sales call to a mountain village and meets a blind spinster, unaccountable bittersweet love blossoms between them, marriage and a child follow. When the boy reaches puberty his mutant powers manifest, his father sees an opportunity to redeem his family's long-tainted honor, and he trains the boy in the ways of the samurai. Rising Son has had a long career and has been both superhero and villain, his powers, too, have waxed and waned over the decades. His original costume was simply white with the crimson-red circle of the Nisshōki on his chest, befitting his patriotism and his mutant powers: he could absorb and generate solar energy, using it to fly, project solar blasts, or manifest a deadly 'sun sword.' In his early career he fought criminals, supervillains and even kaiju all through the home islands, later joining international super-teams and often working in America (which was when the English code-name 'Rising Son' with the 'o' instead of 'u' stuck). In keeping with his father's desire to redeem the family honor, he revealed his true identity and history once he had gained sufficient fame and regard to do so, and has since preferred to be addressed by his family name with honorific, but the codename stuck, especially with global media outlets. He even wrote a book, got a movie deal, and did a long-running series of commercials for Asahi beer. Towards the turn of the millennium, his powers waned nearly to the vanishing point, and increasingly disillusioned, he joined a mystical nationalist cabal that helped him restore his powers, added the rays of the Imperial flag to his costume and became widely regarded as a villain for the next decade, in which he operated only in Japan, and only "in the interests of Japan," which sometimes meant clashing with anti-nationalist demonstrators and even police, his now hybrid mystic-mutant powers fluctuated wildly and often failed him at the worst moment, as a result, he took to use flight less often. He redeemed himself in 2011 when he entered a damaged nuclear reactor and absorbs enough of its energy to prevent a meltdown. Rather than dying, his powers were restored to their former levels for a number of years to come. Now in his 50s, Rising Son's mutant powers are again no longer dependable. He has completely changed his costume choosing the form-concealing robes of an Edo-period samurai, complete with daisho, which he uses when he finds his powers at a low ebb (that now includes hours much after sunset as his body can no longer store much solar energy). He's kept it a secret but, at dire need, he can use fissionable material to boost his powers, but it's not usually practical to carry around plutonium or enriched uranium. He can also, though not consistently, re-start his powers by absorbing energy from an enemy's attack. Fortunately, decades of experience and obsessive training in kendo and judo leave him well-able to contribute even when his powers fail him entirely. Rising Son considers himself the elder and teacher of the group, and expects more respect and deference than he typically receives, leading to snarling cynical commentary and long periods of melodramatic brooding. But, ultimately, he is loyal to and even protective of his teammates. (I guess I was still in 'write a decades-long character history' mode from the other thread.)

I think it just said something ambiguous like "behind the bamboo curtain" maybe? Unless he was meant to be a teen at debut (I got the impression more like 30s), he'd've been Silent Generation, and now in his 80s, most likely. Either that or he just put his brain, or even 'engrams' or whatever, in an android version of the armor. Transhumanism FTW. Personally, I dislike 'floating time.' For my own campaign's history, I used the conceit that major superbeing characters from the comics appeared around the time they hit print, but had relatively short careers, the comics just kept fictionalizing them as long as they would sell. Thus Golden Age heroes appeared in the 30s and 40s, preceded by pulp-era men of mystery, and there actually was a lull in the 50s when there were no active supers left. Then the silver age sorts started appearing, had 20-year or less careers, in time for a new crop of supers - the PCs - to appear in the 80s. When I ran again in the 90s, /those/ heroes were history, and a new low-power batch had come to light, with all super-being activity ceasing around the turn of the millennium. My last campaign ran from 2004 to 2010, and started with the 20th century being remembered as 'the age of heroes' none of whom remained, but, post-9/11, old heroes were dug up out of retirement, and new ones promoted in spite of having little or no power to speak of. The PC started out in that class, low-grade powered and un-powered pretenders, only to be powered up in a new wave of mutant/tech & magical powers, each, perhaps ironically, touched off by a supervillainess.

You know that the 'civil unrest' America just went through last year (and isn't exactly over) was pretty much an instant replay of the late 60s and early 70s? Maybe the media did a better job of minimizing (or not dwelling on, if you prefer) how effed up society was at the time when producing content for kids, like the '66 Batman, which, though it featured the odd (very odd) hippie, didn't feature them being shot by national guardsmen. So, yeah, OK, a happy fluffy fictional 60s & 70s villainy, more so than Flower Power (which was silly, but vicious). Psiclone Cindy-Lee Jennison did not have it easy growing up, her father died in Korea, his family was poor and couldn't help her mother out much, though, at least, they had extended family, and, really, the whole town was pretty poor, so she wasn't always aware of how bad things were. When she suddenly started doing much better in school, right around puberty - it was almost like she could see the answers to tests floating around or hear them whispered - she skipped grades, received a scholarship and went off to a big-city college at the tender age of 16 (though that was young enough to get married in her home state). That's when she discovered a number of things, that compared to even a college student, everyone she'd ever know was dirt poor, that even though she passed for white it was still evident everyone looked down at her for her accent and lower class upbringing, and that a little money or drugs or the right clothes and lingo could suddenly make up for that, and, again, some of those things just came to her. Her success eased by her subtle telepathic powers as it was, it still wasn't enough to save her from some embarrassing and even dangerous situations, when things went bad at a frat party, her telekinetic powers manifested, creating a vortex of poltergeist activity, under cover of which she got away unmolested. After that, though, she didn't feel she could return to school, and she sought out other 'freaks' like herself, eventually falling in with the Teen Bandits. As Psiclone, she learned to control her TK to a degree, it still manifested as a vortex rather than grabbing a specific individual or item, she could invoke or dismiss it more or less at will, though stress would bring it on if she didn't concentrate on dampening it. She gained greater control of her telepathy, and was able to use it to sense hostility and thus avoid attacks, coordinate with her team, and even contact well-known minds from a great distance. In her time with the Teen Bandits she first wore an all-black beatnik-style costume complete with a beret over her straightened hair and large-frame dark glasses, and later changed to an all-white, also full-coverage but looser, outfit tie-died with different patterns & colors each job, an actual mask and left her hair curly, but cut it short. Her poltergeist-like TK vortex served admirably to create distractions while the team pulled their jobs. After leaving the Bandits, she worked on her own or with other mental-powered villains, apparently considering telepathy a key to trust. Her costume changed again, to bell-bottoms and a top hand-crocheted from ballistic nylon (which turned out not to be a very effective at stopping bullets). She was eventually apprehended, and did a few years in prison before escaping (it turned out the drugs they gave her suppressed her TK completely, but her telepathy slowly returned, and she was able to make subtle use of it to trick her guards). In the 80s she returned to crime, this time working with a larger group of psionics & mutants (in my campaign it would have been "Double-Helix" but I think there may have been a CU agent-group like that?) who considered themselves the next stage in human evolution. She somehow picked up a set of crystalline-looking armor complete with partial-face-covering helmet that was able to stand up to most attacks and finally learned to focus her TK selectively against one target at a time. Even so, she was not a match for the Minutemen robots, and was eventually killed by GENOCIDE, ending a 20-year villainous career spanning 3 decades. In the 21st century, a blogger dug up her identity, found a black great-grandparent in her family tree, researched her career, and promoted her as a martyr, forced into a life of crime by poverty & intolerance, yet avoiding ever killing anyone and using her ill-gotten gains to help the needy (the evidence on that was pretty sparse, but the Robin Hood narrative is always sympathetic), until hatefully murdered by an organization that chose it's name with uncharacteristic honesty. Today, Cindy-Lee Jennison's posterized face adorns T-shirts and protests signs - and is regularly mocked in right-wing memes on reddit. (I just couldn't keep it light, sorry)

One thing that's struck me over the years is that the way magic is used, described and related to in very old sources - like Greek mythology, for instance - is very different from traditional fairy tales, which are very different from modern fantasy, is even different from post-modern fantasy. And, yes, it makes sense the presentation of magic changes with the times, with how it contrasts to the mundane, with prevailing beliefs, and with the role it plays in the story. In traditional fairy tales, even as they were written down after in the 18th or 19th centuries, there's an impression that they're making sense of a mysterious universe, much like religion and other folk tales. They were for children, they taught moral and even practical lessons, and they presented a consistency that children need, the same story ends the same way each time, good is rewarded, evil punished, etc, as contrasted with reality which was poorly-understood, arbitrary, tragic and cruel. In modern fantasy, OTOH, while the universe still seemed more uncaring than ever, it was better understood, faith in science was on the rise, which made even everyday miracles seem mundane. So the emphasis on magic in fantasy shifted from providing justice in familiar, consistent stories, to providing a sense of wonder when science had made the world seem less wonderous. The fantasy of Dunsany, Lewis, and Tolkien (and in a darker sense that of Poe and Lovecraft) takes wonder associated with magic, and uses it to create a less knowable world, rather than a more just and consistent one. Post-modern fantasy, the fantasy of D&D, video games, movies and TV, and literature on the order of Harry Potter, takes it further, in that it's trying to provide a sense of wonder to audiences jaded by the wonders of technology, so magic is wildly powerful, cleverly and practically employed, so that it can outshine modern marvels. The stories, told, OTOH, are post-modern stories, full of human failings and innately evil (for evil's sake) systems in dire need of revolutionary change driven by the young and/or outcast. I guess it'd be a bit cynical to say that's why classes are so imbalanced in D&D and Hero GMs are reputedly more suspicious of magic VPPs than gadget pools, because magic has to be straight-up OP to seem like it's really magic.

Yep that covers it, what's next, death tribble?

IDK who that is. But, considering my audience, I'd say that "Fairy Tale" magic functions to teach a moral/in-group/role-affirming/conformity lesson. Don't stay on the path? Bad things happen. Do follow the elders' instructions even though they sound batshit crazy? You prevail. Unfailingly polite to even weird creatures? You make your way past them unmolested. Violate cultural norms? (unless, it's a batshit crazy thing an elder told you to do) Get transformed into something icky.

But they don't make nearly as much noise as internal combustion engines, which are more than loud enough to scare horses, which is why they should never have been allowed to have been operated in public, in the first place.

Admirers of that certain group of idiots would like to deny the particular antics indirectly referenced by the pun, so that's a tad ironic. And the oblique reference to Poison Ivy was lost, too. You could have hit that one harder and just swapped it around to Caustic Holly, and give her an acerbic wit, as well as acid powers. Or, just too on the nose, Toxic Holly. (the more I think about it, the more I like the concept)

Humble, too. 😜 though, really, that's a very human tendency, creating connections, 'magical thinking,' confirmation bias, whatever you want to call it. Like our ability to see faces in tree bark, clouds, toast, and photos of the surface of Mars. The Green Goblin certainly throws bombs, and is crazy. Anarchists stereotypically throw bombs, and may be crazed, but they're not craz-y if I may draw the distinction between extreme action spurred by desperate faith in a belief system and actual mental illness. So GG isn't an anarchist, he actually /is/ crazy, and doesn't have much of a belief system driving his actions that I've noticed. In his secret ID he's another evil rich white man, anyway, isn't he? Y'know, like Lex Luthor, Bruce Wayne, Wilson Fisk, Tony Stark, etc...