DusterBoy

Re: Royalty Character I'd go for HRH Zara Phillips as my model. She's Queen Elizabeth's eldest granddaughter and and accomplished, medal winning equestrienne, like her mother Princess Anne, the Princeess Royal. She's not a princess, but she is a bona fide member of the royal family and one of the most photogenic.

Re: Bat gear JmOz - for the sheer amount of time and work put into this wonderful (and wonderfully comprehensive) list you are hereby reppped to the tenth power. :thumbup:

Re: Lexi Luthor, Celebutante Supervillain? Only little people pay taxes.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Seen WALL-E and The Dark Knight. WALL-E seems prophetic. All we need to do is keep bimbling down the path we're on. Also, Sigourney Weaver as the voice of "Axiom" was a big draw for me. The Dark Knight . . . awesome. Heath Ledger's Joker is terrifying. The look . . . well, it's been described as the "Heat" of superhero movies and I think that's accurate. It doesn't feel like a superhero movie, more like a crime thriller with a superhero in it. Bale is excellent as Wayne/Batman and Gary Oldman is on top form as Jim Gordon.

Re: Enter Fluffy (or "Aw, can't we keep 'em?") On the other hand, that's the team's guard "dog" position sorted out.

Re: Unwanted advances Re: Arachne being of legal age - nowt wrong with looking. There's no such thing as a bad fantasy - it's when people try to make their fantasies a reality with regard neither for those they hurt nor the distinction between fantasy and reality that the trouble starts.

Re: Amalgamation Characters I agree, a gold tiara would stand out more. Ace work SSGT Baloo.

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs I once came up with the DA-Rani - a race of "lizard-men" I had modelled on dromeosaurs (ie: velociraptor and Utahraptor) only more anthropomorphic and with IR vision, since they lived mostly underground.

Re: How different can life get? I'd recommend "What Does A Martian Look Like?" by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart. It's a fascinating read - although I disagree profoundly with some of their ideas of what constitutes "life". And they'll be at the Discworld Convention in Birmingham this August. Yay!

Re: Extraterrestrial photo?? That's pretty awesome. The natural world never ceases to amaze me.

Re: Clever Future Weapons In Storming Heaven Dale Brown posits "plasma-yield warhead" missiles. Essentially, it's a regular missile but instead of an explosive warhead it generates plasma. The idea is that it would completely vapourise the target instead of blowing it up and strewing burning debris everywhere. It was conceived primarily as an ABM system.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares I thought you were talking about "seaQuest DSV"

Re: Clever Future Weapons Sounds like you've been reading the Vorkosigan saga - only there they call 'em plasma arcs. The Tau Empire in WH40K have fusion blasters built into their XV8 Crisis battlesuits. Has anyone heard of MetalStorm - the technology pioneered by Australian Mike O'Dwyer? Essentially it's an electronic improvement over mechanical firearms wherein the weapon has multiple barrels - say two 9mm and two 15mm in the VLE SmartGun - which have a prepackaged number of rounds which are fired electronically. This means that multiple rounds can be fired at the same target in a very short time before the recoil throws off the aim. Get enough barrels together and you can have a theoretical ROF in excess of 1,000,000rpm. The tech can be used in smallarms, but it also makes a great area denial system. Non lethal rounds can be used - the VLE SmartGun fires 15mm beanbags - making it the "firearm" version of the stunner.

Re: Gettin' Crafty! A double plus for effort, Theron. That's a really smart way of keeping track of who's whom and who's where. I'd love to use this DC Animated character maker, but the fact that it's in Portugese keeps putting me off. PS: Much repness heading your way

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Led Zeppelin

Re: Walking With Strangers Me too. Is there any chance . . . ? Please, pretty please? With scones, and cream, and raspberry jam?

Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch Cowboys on Barsoom would totally rock - I'd play that in a heartbeat. In fact, it sounds like something Burroughs might have written - the "lost" Mars books, if you will. SAS or Royal Marines in Middle Earth, bring it on (I'm reading Tony Gerraghty's "Who Dares Wins" right now - and any of the men in that book would make John Carter look like a pansy.) Or here's another suggestion: "Gunships in Pellucidar". But if I was playing in a campaign like that, I would appreciate some warning.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Actually, I think Elrond would have been better played by Arnold Vosloo. (Tolkien was born in South Africa, after all - actually, Bloemfontein, Orange Free State as it was then).

Re: Famous People Super Heros I'd say Peter Weller would make a good powered armour hero as well. And if you're referencing Buckaroo Banzai - you should add in science-hero/gadgeteer as well. Summer Glau - definitely a martial artist, with maybe a side of mentalist as well (y'know - River Tam, but not so crazy). Desolid/invisibility powers would work as well. Or for really weird - River Tam crossed with Cameron Philips . (I have to mention Summer Glau - it's contractual, y'know ) Jason Flemyng - a science-hero/gadgeteer type ('cos he played Professor Quatermass in the BBC's live remake of The Quatermass Experiment and I reckon you could drop Prof Quatermass and the British Rocket Group wholesale into a Champions campaign.)

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs If I was to run a fantasy campaign with the standards, my elves would live in the mortal and fairy worlds simultaneously, which would account for their immortality and their supernatural abilities. Their lack of body hair would stem from the fact they are not human, or even really animal. Nor would they have huge pointed ears or slanted eyes or long blonde hair (or at least, not all of them). They would also be completely amoral, totally unconcerned with human concepts of good and evil. All they really want to do is have a good time. It's just that sometimes, mortals get caught up in their fun and bad stuff happens. 'Cos originally elves were the bad guys, yes? Robbing cradles, kidnapping people, conning us into worshipping them, keeping us superstitious and afraid. They were not good people to know.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Enough with ******* Jar-Jar Binks already! Gungan pR0n - :thumbdown

Re: Is a Jedi reasonable in a Marvel Avengers campaign? A Jedi could work in an Avengers-style campaign. Personally, I would favour the "Fugitive From the Empire"/"Last Jedi" scenario. A lightsaber is a technological artefact usable by non-Jedi - witness Han using Luke's saber on a dead tauntaun in Empire Strikes Back. "It might not smell too good, Luke, but it'll keep you warm," (I can't believe I can remember the dialogue well enough to quote it). The Force is essentially George Lucas's term for ch'i and a jedai-geki is a Japanese period drama (7 Samurai, Hidden Fortress, etc). Lucas has gone on record as saying Hidden Fortress was the thematic template for Star Wars - or one of them, another was Frank Frazetta's Famous Funnies, especially the Buck Rogers covers.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares And do the Safety Dance to it, maybe. Accompanied by a dwarf with a lute in a jester's outfit on May Day in an English country village. C'mon, c'mon . . . someone must have got that joke.

Re: Walking With Strangers I like this. I really want to see where this goes. Mr Wolf, huh? Is anybody else seeing John Leguizamo here? Oh, just me then.

Re: Super Transportation Ace pix, SSGT Baloo. I've always imagined a top-flight team of superheroes would have something that looked like USAF/Area 51/NASA "black project". I'd give it an electric (ie: "anti-gravity") propulsion system too. Is this a real science? It depends on who you ask. I suspect that an orthodox scientist would say no, but Thomas Townsend Brown and Dr Paul Biefeld, neither man regarded as a crackpot, had success with electro-hydrodynamics and the "Biefeld Brown Effect" is a real phenomenon. Of course, the controversy exists because of the crossover into UFOlogy and the banned phrase "anti-gravity". Of course, in a superhero campaign with super-genius gadgeteers, there's every possibility that there exists a working electro-gravitic drive. And maybe FTL as well. Of course, reproducing the technology is the trick, isn't it? I look forward to more of these pictures. :thumbup: