Search the Community

So... if someone were to write up campaign sets, not full adventures but the basic setting, characters, and concept with a series of summaries of adventures of a page or three each adventure as an outline... what kind of campaigns would you be most interested in seeing published? Hypothetically.

In order to help myself better understand how to give my games and other product the appropriate tone, I've begun to make a list of the differences between a typically Golden Age setting and a typically Silver Age one. Here are the lists I've made so far. Typically Golden Age: powers gained through magic, religious reincarnation, or (mainly) no powers except the virtues of manliness. An un-self-consciousness and mostly unwarranted ease and confidence in the face of adversity. Lurid, horrible, and ghastly ends for Bad Guys. Bad guys normally gangsters, spies, saboteurs, and mad scientists. Occasionally wizards or devils. Relatability is often achieved chiefly through the device of a Kid (or otherwise mundane) sidekick. Continuity loosely adhered to, if at all. Costumes designed to be easy to draw and print with the primitive four-color processes of the day. Typically Silver Age: powers derived from elaborately science-fiction-dressed sources like radiation, advanced chemistry, time travel, and aliens. More human-scale interpersonal relations and the problems of Real Life. Villains retained moral reprehensibility but developed powers and wore costumes. (For instance, The Melter wasn't a military saboteur, but rather an industrial one.) A different strain of adversaries, derived from Monster comics of the 50's, hang around to confound the wits of heroes both street-level and godlike. Stories became interconnected both within the title and between company's titles, and continuity becomes a strong hand guiding future development, for good and ill. Due both to better color separation and to avoid repetition, costumes become more garish and more intricate. What are some of your own ideas about the differences?

Some time ago, back during the days of the BBB, I was in talks with Bruce Harlick about bringing my Flash Gordon homage out as a campaign book for Justice Inc. It didn't happen because that version of HERO Games was imploding due to various reasons at the time. But I always hoped to bring it out someday. The recent success of the Strike Force kickstarter had me thinking about Aaron's Lands of Mystery, which led me back to the Zarkon campaign and the aborted attempt to bring it to a wider audience. I like to see if now is the time. In our current sue-happy world I've had to change things that I didn't bother changing back in the mid 80s, when I shamelessly "borrowed" quite a bit, often without even changing the names. Hopefully this will keep King Features Syndicate of my back. But the flavor and feel remains the same, just the details have been changed. For example: instead of one race of Lionmen there will be at least three Catmen races each comprising a caste ala the Apes in the original Planet of the Apes, Warriors, Scientist/Philosophers, and Workers. I'd have to conform to the current rules of course but I'd also like to include a set of stats as per JI for those dinosaurs, like myself, that prefer the original system. So my question is do you guys think this would be viable? In other words would you be interested in supporting it and buying it? Here's a look at the outline to help you decide, and please feel free to ask questions Zarkon.pdf

I am planning on moving 20-30 years from 1 campaign to seed a new one, and have original characters show up at times. Potentially characters from 20-30 years ago will be played along new characters and so I have been giving some thought to experience points for this 20-30 year period. I was wondering if others had done this, had thought about it, had guidelines they had used in the past for dramatic time advance and 'blanket' EPs to fill in the period. My initial thoughts: A large portion of the EPs will go to knowledge, professional and 'day-to-day' work skills. It should vary from individual to individual - EPs already do when players switch between characters at different times - so _some_ variation is to be expected and is accepted. How much should it 'swing'? I don't think that the EP gain should be based on any particular Characteristics. The rate will be nothing akin to full-on adventuring as will not have been intense and the threat is likely to have been a lot lower. I would not expect there to be EPs for good role-playing, as I am not looking to 'play' the intervening period - though once a structure/total time and rough events 'along the way' have been worked out I will encourage players to create a story to cover the period. I would consider bonus points being available for good role-play in the writing of this. I had considered that the EP gain will reduce over the period as day-to-day existence reveals less that is unknown to the character - therefore less of an 'experience'. I had thought something around 3-4 points a year with a small variation (perhaps based on 3d6), with some of the points being assigned by the GM, certain disadvantages should also be targeted to be bought off - afterall, how long can one person remain 'young, innocent & naive'? Cheers for any thoughts.