Chat about the game...

Updates in the morning chaps, sorry. Have to hit sack for a night shift, will get stuck in when I get back in morning

Next couple of days I have long shifts (11hrs +) during the night so I'll apologise now for any slow down. 3.00am on Sunday morning as I type this, it's about -1 outside now and I'm going to go start up some locos so they don't freeze, then will be heading home (been here all night running about). Will try to get everyone updated but expect updates at strange times in the day/night until Wednesday, when everything goes back to normal - week off Thanks as usual for your patience chaps

Agreed about the challenge - with the Dark power, few things are powerful enough to challenge you! That's why there'll be a shake up, soon

DavidMcMahon wrote:I think it would be cool to have robot samurai and super ninjas coming at you

Don't forget magical girls! Sailor Suited Magical Girls, which was the normal school wear for junior high [3 years -12 to 14 years of age] and high school [ 3 years - 15-17 years of age] girls plus those few girls who went on to the equivalent of a 2 year college.

There's an anime out about high school age witches who were drafted in WW2 to fight against the enemy. Forget what its called but can you imagine how we are going to react when 12-17 year old girls come attacking?????

The world may be lost!

As if we've not got enough challenge as it is. But none of this so far has been as challenging as was my first couple of solo adventures, where I was right under the enemies nose, trying not to let their meta human scanners detect my being a meta human. Man being alone relying on my wits and not being that powerful at all - now that felt dangerous.

But I'm not unhappy with where we are, nor in a hurry to return, so bring it on.

Sj

I think it would be cool to have robot samurai and super ninjas coming at you

Don't forget magical girls! Sailor Suited Magical Girls, which was the normal school wear for junior high [3 years -12 to 14 years of age] and high school [ 3 years - 15-17 years of age] girls plus those few girls who went on to the equivalent of a 2 year college.

There's an anime out about high school age witches who were drafted in WW2 to fight against the enemy. Forget what its called but can you imagine how we are going to react when 12-17 year old girls come attacking?????

The world may be lost!

It's a good point (and it's been backs to walls for the Vanguard since the start of the war anyway) but at some point they'll get a breather, I'll take a look in one of my several, (inch thick) WWII day by day books and involve the far east. I think it would be cool to have robot samurai and super ninjas coming at you

Don't want to get ahead of myself, but since I was sending you photos you might use which included Japanese gals in cosplay outfits, the thought did enter my head. Not that I'm real interested in finding it out mind you, just curious if they had demons or futuremen helping them out or not.

Well, you have:

Nazis
genetically altered Animal/Human monsters (Ani-men)
The Qrii (alien insect people)
the Skrall (Alien reptile/cyborgs)
The Star League (group of planets with the Star Guard as their bully boys, including Imperator, a Class 5 character)
The Shadow Demons - current status... who knows? Since Anyman turned them down they might go into hiding or stir up more bother for one last feast of fear!
The K'atinarians - these are evil version of the good P'utinarians who eat meat, kill and shape change. One of them is possessed by a shadow demon
The Atlantians - an uneasy truce between Frostbite and them keeps them quiet though
The Americans - staying out of the war until Japan get involved (and of course, the future foes know all about history - if Japan never attacks, would the US stay out of the war?)
Damon Trowers and Claude Bentham, part of a coalition of villains from Lionhearts time, determined to reshape Earths history as they see fit!

Once several of those are sorted out, you have the Devourer, the greatest threat Earth has ever known!

If there is anything left after that, we'll be jumping some with the war, but we won't get too far ahead of ourselves...

This may be borrowing trouble but what about Japan? Are they getting futuremen helping them? Demons? And knowing that they are going to attack the British holdings in the Pacific in December, 1941, what changes has the new government under Churchill done to be better prepared? Or is it a matter of "we have to survive Germany now and worry about them later" kind of thing?

If futuremen are helping them, then they pretty much know about Britain's and Australia's ability to fight them off. Will they attack sooner? Will the technology that the futuremen bring help them from needing all the oil, which is why they attack in the first place, to secure the oil in the Pacific Far East and Indian Ocean area?

Just wondering. Wouldn't want anyone getting bored JUST fighting Nazis.

DavidMcMahon wrote:Anyman and Healing.

I'm stuck here and need some advice.

If I go all Dark Powery on them and kill them all, including myself and the P'utinarians since once the power leaves me I will be in space with no spacesuit, having their advance squadron of supers never come back might prevent their empire from ever visiting us or at least not for decades. Killing myself is something I don't want to do but I really am feeling backed totally into a corner about this. Or maybe I'm reading it all wrong.

Suggestions? Comments?

Hey Dave I am glad you asked, I think it can sometimes be so difficult to guess and second guess what is the 'right' course of action. Sometimes you want the game to have rails, especially when as heroes you want to know that we will win in the end. The more ambiguous things get, the harder it is both to know what to do and then unsatisfying it can be if you perceive you choose wrong (or you end up plagued by the thought, "what if I choose the blue pill" etc).

I think Paul likes to play a more open ended game, sometimes I wish this wasn't so (its good to have rails sometimes), but ultimately I think this has made for a more varied and challenging campaign. But basically I agree the time for using the unfettered Dark Power isn't with friends close by.

I think we've got to accept his terms, let them take off with half the Lunarium. There is no reason when all is said and done we can't use our power to mine the stuff out of the Moon ourselves at some future point. We've got the mother load, and so we can afford to be generous.

Also we could do with some friends, or at least people who aren't joining in the lets bash Earth race that has been going on. So I agree with his terms but see what you can get for yourselves. The Plutinarians could do with some help - let them join the Star Guard etc - that way the Star Guard are their protectorate! Might work if their not to snobbish to take them?

See what you think

Dave aka Sj

Well, that's one way of looking at the situation, though it's a bit of a 'doomsday' scenario. Bear in mind that they are in the business of conquering rather than annihilating first and foremost. And you're not alone. In theory there are half a dozen of you with the Dark power. On your own, you can stand up to a bunch of the most powerful supers in this part of the galaxy. Together?

Handing over the Lunarium might go one of several ways:

1) Buy you time. They won't want to be here when the Devourer gets here anyway. They may even be thinking that there may not be much left to mop up once the living cloud has had its way. In any case, it's a way of fobbing them off and save the ship/lives of the P'utinarians, something else they'd be grateful for.

2) Give them an irresistible carrot. Knowing that the rarest most valuable element in the universe is in abundance here more than anywhere else might spur them into action. They may even offer Anyman and his friends the chance to join the Star Guard, and as such Planet Earth would become one part of a larger empire, and they'd have to help defend it.

Either way, Anyman is hurting now, and yes, you get the scenario right - Lance Allards body would die in the cold of space once the dust settles. Not the end of Anyman but certainly the end of Lances' human existence (and like Nowhere Man he'd become another voice in the head of the new Anyman after a week long coma. Come back as a woman? An old man? A kid? An animal? The Mind boggles!)

Death in the comics is never the end - merely the beginning of a process that leads to an implausible explanation about how the character survived. The Human Torch, having died for a dozen or so issues, is back and it was never in any doubt, nor was Thor, Captain America, Spiderman, Superman, Batman, the Flash, Supergirls' return ever in doubt...

Joining the Star Guard would open up a new world of adventure for the Vanguard that takes them to the far corners of the universe. That is purely down to you guys. How you deal with having a blue complexion and extra powers is up to you, but with great power comes great responsibility etc

It's your call. The doomsday button is always an option, but I'd save it for a truly desperate situation. A lot can happen in a short time, and whilst Anyman feels isolated at the moment, when Lionheart is back in commission, the others get back from Albion and Sky Eagle back from France, and the ever tormented Nowhere Boy comes out of whichever hole he's hiding in, your options will change again...

Anyman and Healing.

Hmmm ... must be my fuzzy memory but I seem to recall when told that Anyman had cancer that he could not access Vigour anymore. May have been misremembered which is why I have never taken it since then.

Alien's Offer

I'm stuck here and need some advice. Maybe it is the way I'm reading it but if I let the blue skinned aliens get away with half the Red Lunarium, they will be back after we defeat the Devourer [notice how confident I am that we are going to do that] with the choice of being a part of the Empire or having our planet bombed out of existence. That, at least, is the feeling I got reading about reading the other alien's mind.

And bombing a planet out of existence is pretty darn easy. You get a big asteroid, line it up and fling it at a planet at a respectable speed and if the planet does not have an extenisve outer space defense sensor array set up for just that thing, then bye bye planet with no warning at all. Or shoot a ship moving a respectable percentage of the speed of light, even 3%, at a planet, will also wipe out the planet. Read a nice series where the good guys fired such a ship into suns of the destroying aliens to make them go super-nova and wipe out everyone in the system.

If I go all Dark Powery on them and kill them all, including myself and the P'utinarians since once the power leaves me I will be in space with no spacesuit, having their advance squadron of supers never come back might prevent their empire from ever visiting us or at least not for decades. Killing myself is something I don't want to do but I really am feeling backed totally into a corner about this. Or maybe I'm reading it all wrong.

Suggestions? Comments?

Apologies.

I've been installing my new computer bits today, figuring to make things better, faster, more powerful! (And other such phrases.) It's been a nightmare of frustration and banging my head against a brick wall. The hardware I bought doesn't get on with one another (the cpu fan pushes up against the memory, for instance) my old case struggled to contain the cooler, my power supply was state of the art - 7 years ago. basically means I can power some stuff and not others. Half assed effort basically (I should have spent another 150 quid basically instead of trying to use my old stuff). Anyway, all not lost - always have several laptops to fall back on. Just a bit... annoying to have spent several hundred quid on what has been so far, junk. Plus my windows 7 disk has thrown the teddy out of the pram when it installed just fine last time I used it...

Nnngh. Ever have one of those days when you know you shouldn't have bothered?

Anyway, I can update Silver Sentinel, then need to hit the sack for work. Expect an update in the middle of night, chaps, and apologies, again.

*Goes off to grind teeth and pull hair out*

I'll make sure Major Nazi rears his ugly head again for you I thought it was about time bad guys started showing up again after an initial first appearance, and we'll start to get a kind of 'rogues gallery' going (will put it in the notable information section). Lionheart lost his archfoe (Saladin) when he merged with the guy but I'm sure there'll be other opportunities to fall out with powerful enemies

MAJOR NAZI


Didn't get around to mentioning this before but I really really enjoy the interaction between Anyman and Major Nazi, a very wonderful Captain Nazi knockoff. The original Captain Nazi was THE VILLAIN for most of the Fawcett Universe during WW2. He first fought Bulletman and then went after Captain Marvel, was involved in the creation of Captain Marvel Jr. and fought him. Not sure if he ever tangled with Mary Marvel or Spy Smasher.

Just like our Major Nazi, he was arrogant and a bit dim and loved the sound of his own voice and very very cruel but also something of a buffoon. But powerful and dangerous enough to fight the Big Guys, even though he lost all the time.

Anyman kicked his butt the first time they met, tough fight but kick his butt. Then runs away the last time they met, having the tent fall down on top of the guy and getting Major Nazi's own soldier to blast away at him. Loved it. Hope for a couple of other "humorous" rematches in the future against him. I put that in quotes because he is a dangerous buffoon, more than capable of slaughtering a dozen armed men on his own but it is his own arrogance and love to hear his own voice that causes him to fail again and again.

Meetings with him can be short and sweet like the last one or long drawn out knock down drag out fights.

Thanks again. He is sort of a wonderful archfoe for Anyman.

I'll let Lionheart have the Nazi Superman for his archfoe with my blessings.

Well, first, there's France, but that's more or less a case of driving some tanks to paris and putting a few Nazi flags on the buildings after the disastrous 'defence' by the French (they gambled on Hitler attacking the Maginot line only to find the Tanks went through the Ardennes forest just fine. Uhm, oops.) And of course, they have the benefit of the Future bad guys, who have a good idea of how history turned out. Of course, everything that happens now is history rewritten, so even they aren't sure. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out attacking Russia in winter was a bad idea though.

Issue 4 up this afternoon. I started to write it yesterday, had to do a night shift and now need sleep, but it's half done and rather than be thrown back in the war, the Vanguard have a day or two to themselves.

I just had an ugly ugly thought ... Hitler sneak attacked Russia because he was convinced that his troops that he had in the West could invade England after the Blitz. But with the pounding we gave him and destroying Berlin and "killing" him, will he leave Russia alone and send most of those troops west instead to take us on?

Issue #4 up tomorrow - Anyman is welcome to continue in his solo thread or be repatriated to find the mysterious Nazi scientist another day. Sky Eagle isn't far off joining with the others if he can find a way to stop the rampaging Nazi once and for all. The Vanguard has taken a king sized kicking but come out with it's pride intact, having tipped the balance in the direction of histories natural course of events, despite the Nazis technology, alien allies, superhuman agents and space rays blasting the battlefield into dust.

That was the easy part.

The Battle Of Britain and the ensuring 'Blitz' was a seriously challenging time for the British People, but even that will pale in comparison to the challenge the Vanguard face next...

That would be the PSI power Transmutation. Expensive to use with Dark Power (it's a power that costs double, so 40 points for rank 1, then 15 points for every extra rank though rank 1 will do it). The transformation should be reasonably straight forward though, as opposed to turning it into something solid, like a metal or a brick (which was always Firestorm of the JLA's thing).

I'd have thought water into the induction system would've stopped more vehicles - into the airbox, the cylinder head, BOING! Banana shaped piston as a hydraulic effect is created Heard it happen, seen the results a few times

Just had a "D'OH!" moment about the dark powers. Which power would allow you to change elements? Turn large portions of gas and aviation fuel into something like water? Using it as an area effect or multiple targets attack? How much would such a power cost?

Water in fuel lines has stopped more vehicles in its tracks than just about any other method I can think of.

Just hit Ebay and Amazon and found a copy of Superbabes - Femforce Roleplaying Game. Prices range from $60-70 American. Way too pricey. The game first came out in 1993 and supplement to it came out for the next three years and then it died out.

I wonder if AC Comics' own website still sells the game.

The one big advantage SQUK has over most of the other supers games is its ease of combat with its frames and such. For a PBEM game it is one of the best for combat. Champions would be the worst. Heck, sitting at a table a simple battle usually takes us an hour or more to do with all those frames of action before one round is over. Probably take us over a month just to do one round of combat if we did Champions.

2nd and 3rd editions of DC Heroes were the best, though I'll agree that Batman shouldn't really have a prayer against Superman with Martial Arts (but then Batman defies all probability in game terms for that system anyway - running at 50mph and being resistant to small arms fire? uh, yeah. Actually, no!) Mutants and Masterminds took so long for me to make characters it destroyed any enthusiasm I have for it, especially as I'd have to read and re-read the thing ever combat round I ran

Marvel Supers was a bit all over the place with random character creation. Odds were you ended up with a right mish mash, which, whilst playable, might or might not survive against a single thug. It's all free on the internet now (which is good, and legal) but doesn't really work unless using a point buy system or simply assigning stats.

Never played Superbabes, but sounds like you had fun with it. I'll keep my eye out but it sounds hard to get hold of over here. There's Truth and Justice, ICONS, BASH, Supers! Wild Talents, Godlike, Aberrant and others by way of supers games, think I have them all (including superhero 2044, which is unplayable) and I agree about Champions. Nice feel about the early versions but the later version (5th edition on) was near as thick as a house brick. No thanks!

V&V you needed a calculator to make characters with (hit points) and was like Golden Heroes, as you say, for low-mid level at best. Besides that, it had levels and experience, not really great for supers games in my opinion (level grinding is one reason I shy away from fantasy games for the most part)

I have both versions of Silver Age Sentinels like you and like you, never really read them. One was the 'tri-stat' system adopted from the the 'big eye small mouth' game and the other was D20. Also have a couple of other D20 supers games that gather dust in the loft, Heroes Unlimited from palladium (ugh!) and some other stuff (Heroes Forever, Cosmic Enforcers, other stuff I never heard of stashed away in boxes). I went through a stage of gathering games and never got round to reading most of them!

To my mind 2nd edition DC Heroes was the best, in terms of design, value for money (loaded box of stuff!) and completeness. I own everything ever published for all versions of the DC heroes game 1st to 3rd edition (that's a lot of adventures and sourcebooks!) so for me the system is the preferred, but I'm willing to learn a new one if it helps with game play and does what we want it to do (so speedsters running faster than 30mph or whatever grade 1 is... *sigh*)

The only reason I'm doing this is that the Squadron UK game feels somewhat long in the tooth and without some major surgery, it will be low-mid power level at best (e.g. energy blasts are ok, but everyone does the same damage (7d6 for quick blast, normal blast at 10d6 or 15d6 with high power blast) regardless of grade. So the Wasps sting does the same damage as Supermans heat vision or Silver Surfers energy blast, or Human Torchs' fiery blasts? Hmmm.) and at some point the game will transcend earthly limits (though only with agreement of the players). The DC heroes game (and possibly others which we'll try) might do a better job, faster and easier, than the SQUK game, which has its own charm and feel, but is in need of updating. More later..
Admin

Which version of DC supers were you looking at? I've played the first two version but have forgotten most of it. I know one version tried to balance things out which was ridiculous. They had Batman able to knock Superman out with his martial arts ability. Been decades since I last looked at the system.

Mutants and Mastermind looks like a good system. Tried making a character for it and it seemed to work out okay. Don't know about the D20 version of it though.

Marvel Supers was terrible. You couldn't make your own character with the rules and have it be affective, but that was the first verion of it. Don't know anything about later versions of it.

I played and ran a game called Superbabes, based on the AC Comics Femforce. It was a good system except for hit points and energy to do anything like move or throw a punch or use a power all came from the same power pool. So if you didn't have a lot of CON, you would be out of the fight in about three rounds, even if the bad guys didn't hit you. Splitting the pools into two would have made better sense. It had a nice set of powers too and they are the one who came up with the best magic system I found for a supers game - you could have any power you wanted out of the list but it would cost twice as much to use it. That pretty much let their mages mimic having any power they needed but without making them overpowerful. Used a D20 to resolve attacks and you went up in levels from 1 to 20. That takes you from street level to mid level hero to uber hero.

Champions is a good system but too numbers heavy and slow for a PBEM. And a 10d6 attack is a 10D6 attack.

Silver Age Sentinels came out about the same time as Mutant and Masterminds. Have the regular version and the D20 version. Never got too far into reading it since I couldn't find anyone locally who was interested in a super games.

And then there is the old Villains and Vigilantes, but SQUK is better than that and it is also stuck in mid level heroes.

Can't think of any other systems at the moment.

THE GREEN HORNET

Green Hornet would have probably just started to make a presence known in the UK by early 1940. Here's the wikipedia bit for the early part of his career:


Main article: The Green Hornet (radio series)
The character debuted in The Green Hornet, an American radio program that premiered on January 31, 1936, on WXYZ, the same local Detroit station that originated its companion shows The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon.[2] Beginning on April 12, 1938, the station supplied the series to the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and then to NBC Blue and its successors, the Blue Network and ABC, from November 16, 1939, through September 8, 1950. It returned from September 10 to December 5, 1952.[2] It was sponsored by General Mills from January to August 1948, and by Orange Crush in its brief 1952 run.[2]

Distinguished by its use of classical music for themes and for bridges between scenes, not least "Flight of the Bumblebee," composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, for its title theme, The Green Hornet was "one of radio's best-known and most distinctive juvenile adventure shows."[2] The series detailed the adventures of Britt Reid, debonair newspaper publisher by day, crime-fighting masked hero at night.

"With his faithful valet Kato, Britt Reid, daring young publisher, matches wits with the Underworld, risking his life so that criminals and racketeers within the law may feel its weight by the sting of the Green Hornet!"[3]
In 1935, George W. Trendle, the WXYZ co-owner and managing partner who had spearheaded the development of the Western series The Lone Ranger, sought to bring a similar but contemporary crime-drama to air. With writer Fran Striker and director James Jewell, Trendle sought to create a series that would "show that a political system could be riddled with corruption and that one man could successfully combat this white-collar lawlessness."[4] Liking the acoustic possibilities of a bee sound, Trendle directed it be incorporated into the show. The team experimented with names, with Trendle liking The Hornet, but that name had been used elsewhere and could have posed rights problems. Colors including blue and pink were considered before the creators settled on green.[4]

The vigilante nature of the hero's operations quickly resulted in the Green Hornet being declared an outlaw himself, and Britt Reid played to it. The Green Hornet became thought of as one of his city's biggest criminals, allowing him to walk into suspected racketeers' offices and ply them for information, or even demand a cut of their profits. In doing so, the Green Hornet usually provoked them to attack him to remove this competitor, giving him license to defeat and leave them for the police without raising suspicion as to his true motives.[citation needed]

He would be accompanied by his similarly masked chauffeur/bodyguard/enforcer, who was also Reid's valet, Kato, initially described as Japanese, and by 1939 as Filipino of Japanese descent.[4] Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, references to a Japanese heritage were dropped.[5]

Specifically, in and up to 1939, in the series' opening narration, Kato was called Britt Reid's "Japanese valet" and from 1940 to '45 he was Reid's "faithful valet." However, by at least the June 1941 episode "Walkout for Profit," about 14 minutes into the episode, Reid specifically noted Kato having a Philippine origin and thus he became Reid's "Filipino valet" as of that point.[6] When the characters were used in the first of a pair of movie serials, the producers had Kato's nationality given as Korean.[citation needed]

[edit] In other media[edit] Film serialsMain article: The Green Hornet (serial)
Main article: The Green Hornet Strikes Again!
The Green Hornet was adapted into two movie serials.[7] Disliking the treatment Republic gave The Lone Ranger in two serials, George W. Trendle took his property to Universal Pictures, and was much happier with the results. The first serial, titled simply The Green Hornet and released in 1940, starred Gordon Jones in the title role, albeit dubbed by original radio Hornet Al Hodge whenever the hero's mask was in place, while The Green Hornet Strikes Again! of 1941 starred Warren Hull. Keye Luke, who played the "Number One Son" in the Charlie Chan films, played Kato in both. Also starring in both serials were Anne Nagel as Lenore Case, Britt Reid's secretary, and Wade Boteler as Mike Axford, a reporter for the Daily Sentinel, the newspaper that Reid owned and published. Ford Beebe directed both serials, partnered by Ray Taylor on The Green Hornet and John Rawlins on The Green Hornet Strikes Again!, with George H. Plympton and Basil Dickey contributing to the screenplays for both serials. The Green Hornet ran for 13 chapters while The Green Hornet Strikes Again! had 15 installments, with the Hornet and Kato smashing a different racket in each chapter. In each serial, they were all linked to a single major crime syndicate which was itself put out of business in the finale, while the radio program had the various rackets completely independent of each other.



What this also doesn't say is that Britt Reid was the great-nephew of the Lone Ranger. So this was the first really known family dynasty of crime fighters.