TheImperialKhan

To be honest I wouldn't dare try it in public. I guess my problem is it seems kinda childish to me. It's one of the things that makes my friend MisterBaldy look at me and exclaim "Khan, you're a dinosaur!" To which I invariably reply "And damn proud of it, Baldy Boy!"

Much as I hate to admit it you've just gone waaaaayyyyy over my head with that one. What is Veruca Salt and why is it in the garbage chute?

It's a silly name that Steve unfortunately blurted out without realizing how far it would go. Derek very kindly printed the long explanation above. He's such a good egg. Myself I perfer the term 5E for 5th Edition. It has fewer letters and a much less convoluted explanation. It also doesn't make non-gamers look at me funny when I call it that.

I just got this yesterday and I want to compliment Bob and Steve on the excellent job they did with this one. A very well done to you both! I'm especially pleased with the well thought out work that went into the sailing rules. I have to admit that I was worried about this. But you guys did a great job with it. I do have a couple of minor nits however. Would you expect anything less from The Imperial Khan? I wouldn't want to disappoint you. 1st.) In contrast to the write-up on page 63, 16th-17th century Galleons rarely carried anything heavier than a 20 pounder. Although heavier cannons did exist then the ship's timbers couldn't stand the strain of the the recoil very well so they were mostly used as the guns of the fortresses. A typical galleon of the time was primarily armed with a mix of 6, 9 and 12 pounders plus a few heavier guns for use against fortresses. The 32, 24 and 18 pounders didn't come into general use at sea until the early to mid 18th century. 2nd.) The ship's boats were much bigger than the canoe on page 61. The smallest would have been size 3 and the biggest size 5 and capable of setting sail as well. Change the sizes and the canoe's stats will do in a pinch however. 3rd.) It took a lot longer than one turn to load those cannon. An experienced and very well-trained gun's crew could fire 3 rounds every five minutes. So under no circumstanses should that load time be under 2 minutes to load and fire and should actually start at around 5 minutes for an inexperienced crew. 4th.) And last, for when you start on the Vehicle Sourcebook I'd like to reccommend The Illustrated Guide to Nelson's Navy by Nicolas Blake and Richard Lawrence and The Wooden Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy by E.H.H. Archibald that could be of use to you. See, I told you the nits were minor. Once again thanks for a great book.

Back during the early days of it's existance Strike Force: Boston was called in to investigate a building that was packed with some kind of black goo that smelled like oil. The team detective, the martial artist White Dragon, approached the building to examine the substance. Our brick Rock, an appropriate name for a brick don't you think, who was an alien silicon-based life-form, decided to see if it was flammable. Before anyone could stop him, he picked up a road flare, lit it, and threw it at the building which White Dragon, with no resistant defenses, was standing next to. My character, the team techno-geek and powered armor wearer Centurion, grabbed White Dragon and threw him under cover. The cover was Centurion. Of course the building was leveled in a blast that nearly KOed Centurion despite his armor and would have turned White Dragon into a crispy critter. Needless to say this incident did not do much for the team's reputation.

Very nice. A good, logical reason for the Champions to have moved to NYC based on real-world events that everyone is familiar with. Very well done. But I have to admit I'm a bit partial. I like working with timelines, it's so easy to insert changes in them. Unlike long paragraphs of prose although I've used them too. Top Marks, Mike, as they say on the other side of the pond.

Try the Crimson Skies website. Here's the link: http://www.microsoft.com/games/crimsonskies/ I should have thought of that. I love Crimson Skies and was very disappointed that the sequel is only coming out for the X-Box. Still it's an intriguing Pulp style setting.

I've played in quite a few groups and a large number of campaigns in the 20+ years that I've been playing Champions. In the begining we mostly put our heroes in NYC, we were all Marvel readers and New York is pretty much Hero Central in that Universe so we went with that. As time went on we started setting our campaigns in the city we were gaming in, Worcester MA, it was home for most of us and everyone was reasonably familiar with it, which made describing things a lot easier. After a while we decided that Worcester was just too small for a super-team and started using Boston instead, although we still used Worcester for small one-on-one campaigns. There was one campaign that bucked the trend and was set in Houston TX (a place the none of us had ever been to), don't look at me, it wasn't my idea and no one asked my opinion. When Justice, Not Law introduced us to Hudson City we moved our street-level campaigns there. By then we were only using two settings: Boston and Hudson City (which we placed in CT by the way). I'm hoping to get a new campaign started using Millennium City, unfortunately except for that silly card game whose name I wll not mention gaming is kinda dead around here nowadays. So it may never happen but I keep hoping.

Hey Steve or Darren! Is any of this helpfull? I'm sure that we all hope so. Also I'm assuming that Pulp Hero will have the usual supporting books coming out at about the same time. What were you thinking of for this? I'd suggest a villian book full of Gangsters, Petty Tyrants and Insane Geniuses to start. And a setting book, maybe Aaron Allston's planned but shelved "The Big City", or even a reworking of Hudson City for the pulp era.

An excellent source of material is the "War Years" reprint books that many newspapers published on WWII 50th anniversary. They compiled full pages from their papers into a book form. Lots of ads and local information as well as world events, you could even find local high school sports reports in there. Another source that is even more complete is the newspapers themselves. Many libraries have the complete run of the local paper available on microfilm. By now they may have them on CDs. Everything from the most sensational murder trials to the price of milk is right there for you. There was also a series of books titled iirc "This Century". It was published back in the early 80s I think with one volume for each decade and a set-up volume on the last decades of the 19th Century. Lots of material that could be useful, particularly the Volumes for the 20s, 30s and 40s.There's a salary list for 1932-34 in one volume as well as a price list for the same period. If you were say a Public School Teacher you made $1,227.00 a year, a Coal Miner made $723.00 a year and a Lawyer - $4,218.00. A pound of Bacon would set you back 22 cents, a 3 piece Bedroom Set was $49.95, a new Studebaker automobile was $840.00 and a Modern 6-room House with a 2 car garage in Detriot would lighten your bank account by $2,800.00. Oh and gas was 18 cents a gallon which was considered high, very high.

I don't know anything about the original BB so I'll refrain from voting but I was wondering... How many of you saw the Phantom movie that came out a few years back with Billy Zane as the Phantom and a young Catherine Zeta-Jones? I really enjoyed this movie. It was just about perfect as a Pulp-Style popcorn flick. I just wish it had done better at the box office. I would have loved to have seen them make more of them. Just shows you what bad timing and no advertising can do to a great movie BTW has anyone tried to run the Phantom as a Champions or JI character?

I don't know. I think that The Mandarin should be a seperate hunted. The others, sure put them together, but Mandy has always been Iron Man's Arch-Foe, I just don't think he should be bunched up with the rest. And Jason don't you mean the Mk IV armor?

Very nice pics. The Imperial Khan is pleased. There shall be a banquet in your honor:)

Yeah, he was still called Doom. The basic idea was kind of a "What if" scenario. The what if being what if you were creating these classic characters today for the first time? What would they be like? Doom was a desert warlord in the Middle East rather than a Dictator of a tiny eastern European nation. His Armor was bigger and heavier looking and he carried a scimitar as well. They showed some artwork in the back of their existing titles for a few months but that's all that came of it. I know I've got the issues around here some place. The problem is finding them.

I am really, Really, REALLY glad that I didn't see this!!! Dr. Doom is The Imperial Khan's Hero you know. After Iron Man of course. Actually I got the idea for character of the Imperial Khan from a re-imagining of Dr. Doom that some guys at marvel were toying with a few years ago. I just wish I could find the damned picture somewhere.

So did I And worse. I rented that awful Captain America movie, you know, the one with Italian Red Skull :o

Not on your life! I big part of the casting will depend on the script being written and who the villian is. But I actually liked Tom Cruise for the part. Put a moustache on him and he comes pretty close. I wish he were taller but you can't have everthing. And he's already expressed interest in the role. But that's an interesting question - How do you see in the Armor of Iron Man?

True enough. I haven't seen Blade II, but I've seen the first one and thought it was pretty good. Still I wish it were being done by the folks who did Spider-man, or myself for that matter. I worry about what someone else might do to the Armor.

The difficult part will be when you get to the War Machine armor. Not the varient that Rhodey used, but Tony's. According to The Iron Manual it was equipted with a tac Nuke level missile! The Imperial Khan did create this armor for 4th Ed. just the nuke alone came to 1909 points! Created according to the information on nuclear weapons from Hero System Almanac II it pushed Iron man's cost well over 3000 pts. Of course as Tony never actually used it you could always just ignore it.

Sorry to tell you this Mister Vimes, but Whedon dropped out of the project back in November. It was dead in the water for a while but now is being looked at by the people who did Blade over at New Line Cinema. Go to http://www.superherohype.com for more information.

Probably Cyber Hero when they get around to it. Maybe in 2005 or 2006 It doesn't seem to be a big priority right now. Of course if enough people ask for it that could change.

Re: Re: Cyber Hero/Star Hero WHAT!!! You dare to mention that hideous raving of a drug addled mind in The Imperial Khan's presense?! While the Khan has had great respect for the vision of The Roddenberry in the past, these new "discoveries" are naught but the scribblings of a fallen man high on cocaine! You will be subjected to unspeakable torture: You shall be strapped into a chair, your eyes propped open with toothpicks and surrounded by a battery of video screens. There you shall be forced to watch hour after hour of Gilligan's Island reruns until your brain has turned completely to mush!!!!!

The Imperial Khan would agree with this for the most part and in fact looks forward to reading Terran Empire with great anticipation. Still it seems that cyberware is reasonably uncommon in the later eras, The Imperial Khan looks forward to seeing why and hopes there is a deeper explanation than "It's no longer in vogue". But then again The Khan would expect no less from the creative minds at HERO Games.

The Imperial Khan will begin with a simple question. In the HERO Universe timeline how are you planning to explain the absense of Cyberware in Star Hero if Cyber Hero exists in the same timeline? Once that particular genii has been let out of the bottle it's rather hard to cork it back up . But Cyberware doesn't seem to fit with say Solar Hero or indeed any tradition Space Opera style SF campaign of the type that I assume The Terran Empire is. Or do you plan to have Cyber Hero take place in an alternate timeline?