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This is for your ideas for people who would live and work in the ages of comics known as the Silver Age, and the period before that currently refered to as the Atomic Age. Heros, Villains, other NPCs. All are welcomed.

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?

One of the common tropes of the superhero genre is the conceit that alternate universes exist(e.g., the 52 universes in DC, the Ultimate universe in Marvel, the Champions in 3D book for Hero System, et al). Most often this is invoked with a visit by heroes to an "alternate Earth", a place where history was altered or there's just something different about this version of our planet. I thought it would be fun to start a thread where people can discuss their own alternate Earths that they have used in a campaign, and/or brainstorm new ideas for alternate Earths that could be fun to explore. One of the things I've thought about are naming conventions. One can simply go with a numbering system; e.g., Earth-1, Earth-2, etc. Or a letter-based system, Earth-A, Earth-B, etc. Another option is using a descriptor--Marvel Earth, Apocalypse Earth, Dinosaur Earth, etc. If one uses letters and begins to run out of letters, then you could shift to the old Greek alphabet--Earth-Z, Earth-Alpha, Earth-Beta, etc. OR even change from "Earth" to "Terra" or "Gaia". The alt Earths can be serious, silly, horrifying, overpowered, underpowered, titillating, or tedious. I'll start with a couple: Earth-K: On a certain distant planet orbiting a red sun, the high council took the warnings of a certain scientist very seriously, and instead of the scientist only being able to launch an escape rocket carrying his newborn child, the entire population of the doomed planet was able to escape, thanks to a crash building program. Their destination? Earth. When they arrived there was considerable friction with the native population, but eventually most of these issues were resolved. Intermarriage between the races occurred, and while the offspring were not as powerful as their alien parent, they were nonetheless blessed with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Terra Upsilon--a world ruled by a Kleptocracy. The criminals and supervillains are essentially running the show. What heroes exist are either imprisoned or live in hiding. Most of the "real Earth's" heroes are villains in this world, and some of the villains are heroes here. I look forward to reading everyone's contribution.