Remarkable, Incredible and Amazing nerdiness
A brilliant excoriating essay by Cat Valente talking about corporate treatement of internet community. With antibonus Russian spies in the case of livejournal.
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
I am older than her, so remember further back but exactly how I felt about the loss of Google+ particularly.
Go read.
The idea started after I saw the statues below. I thought, hmm, why not an OSR setting of bushranger era Australia, say around 1820? Could have lots of things apart from bushrangers: pulp vigilantes, monsters, exploration, super science cities, time travel….
Superhero Random Encounters
Generating Random Encounter –
Kill
1 – Target
– Military Personnel
2 – Perpetrator
– Alien
3 – Alien Encounter
– Alien Artifact
4 – Aliens
– Formalhautians
Formalhautians again! It is definitely Superhero 2044 steam engine time. More soon!
Artwork? Pretty reminiscent of the RQ2 style in this.
Combat effects include Bleed and Impale as well as Bash and Stun (ah, Crush sounds nastier!)
Fumbles….a fumble gains you a free increase of 1% in a skill later on. That is a nice tweak.
Experience Rolls…GMs award these it seems rather that getting one for the successful use of a skill. You then improve if you roll d100 > current skill and add INT as a bonus. Then you go up 1d4+1%…fail the roll, go up 1%.
Then there is the paying for training version, as well.
The Disease and Poison Conditions table has 18! Death is one. 🙂
Fatigue – rules for this, speaking of more conditions. ‘Tracking Fatigue and its effects makes for additional book-keeping’
Permanent Injury Table….character loses 1/3, 2/3 or all but one Hit Points in a location. Ouch!
Inanimate Object ratings – expanding on the swords/armour idea in RQ2 with tables, so a chair has 2 Armour and 6 Hit Points. Solidly useful stuff games that have tables of that sort of thing. Although of course can use the standard BRP opposition table for that sort of thing, fast version.
Page 77 – Combat can be a very deadly business:
This we knew, game of Impales (and Slashes and Crushes in the past, always used those too…so carnage and mayhem from all weapon types)
Initiative? Ok, now they have gone MSH or V&V…1d10 and add to Strike Rank. Which is reversed, so higher is better!
including:
Dither – A character can decide to simply waste his turn doing nothing useful
Special Effects – difference in combat success levels gets you them it seems…Impales etc also on here.
Ok, so Sunder is wreck their armour.
Magic Points to go with your Action Points.
The Fire table has Volcanic Lava.
Folk Magic – Dishevel…for when you needed a magical way to make your place look not cleaned?
Theism – “Not every being who receives worship is necessarily a god per se.” Got that, Ray?
Cult of the Lord Dark Maggot might not be too pleasant.
Divine Intervention now Miracles by the looks.
Earthquake table, to go with the volcanos. Intensity 11+ ‘even colossal stone monuments like pyramids suffer partial collapse’
Chapter 15 has 35 pages of monsters, including a few flavourful ones like Chaos Hybrids, Panthotaurs, Baboons and Winged Apes. And a big long Chaos Features table.
The first family finally got their monster manual with the advent of the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set, with allies and enemies in large numbers throughout. These advanced team focused mixed collections are excellent. Although the FF are always the third in line as a smaller team with fewer relationships and hence a smaller cast around them. The FF are written up in more detail each due to having the space, there’s a mini adventure at the end and after the first 75 pages of characters it details all the strange and wonderful places the FF might adventure in:hence entries in the below list for Kestorian, etc.
Julie Angel, Aquarian, Alpha Primitives, Atlanteans, — Attuma, Annihilus,
Black Bolt, — Basilisk, Blastaar, Burners,
Crystal, Crusader, Chosen, — Elspeth Cromwell, Clobbers,
Dorrie Evans, Dorma, — Doctor Doom [Doomsman, Robot, Guardian Robot, Killer Robot, Victor Von Doom II, Doctor Doom II, Zorba,], Darkoth the Death Destroyer, Diablo [Air, Water, Earth, Fire, Transmutant,], Doctor Sun, Dragon Man,
— Eliminator, Ego,
— Frightful Four [Wingless Wizard, Trapster, Sandman]
Dr Jacob Grimm, Dr Petunia Grimm, Guardsman, Gorgon, Giganto, — Galactus [Galactus Cat, Punisher I, Silver Surfer, Air-Walker, Air-Walker Automaton, Firelord, Destroyer, Terrax, Nova II,], Gormuu,
Human Torch II, Agatha Harkness, H.E.R.B.I.E., Phineas Horton, High Evolutionary, Her, — Hate Monger, Hate Monger III, Head Brothers,
Invisible Woman, Impossible Man, Inhumans,
Karnak, — Krang, Kestorian,
Luna, Lockjaw, — Lava Men, Living Computers of Xandar,
Mister Fantastic, Medusa, Ms Marvel II, Alicia Masters, Maya, Lorrie Melton, Maximus, — Mephisto, Miracle Man, Mole Man, Molecule Man, Moloids,
Namorita, — Nicholas Scrarch, New Men,
Red Ghost,
Power Man, — Psycho-Man, Peotor, Puppet Master, Pseudo-Skrulls,
Quasar, Quon,
Frankie Raye,
She-Hulk, Sharon Selleck, Stingray, Spinnerette, Sub-Mariner, — Skrulls, Super-Skrull, Skrull-X, Super-Apes, Salem’s Seven [Brutacus, Gazelle, Hydron, Reptilla, Vakume, Thornn, Vertigo,], Terminus, Mad Thinker [Android, Human Torch I],
Thing, Tattletale, Tarianna, Thundra, Triton,
Wyatt Wingfoot, Watcher, Adam Warlock, — Wendy’s Friends, Winged Flyers,
1.21 Character Density
This features the Suicide Squad…and their opposition. So pretty much all villains with a little antihero flavour occasionally.
Plus support staff, etc.
Agni,
Black Orchid, Bronze Tiger, Blockbuster, Brimstone, Bernadeth, Badb, Bolshoi,
Captain Boomerang, Captain Cold, Chronos,
Deadshot, Duchess, Djinn,
Enchantress,
Rick Flag,
Glorious Godfrey,
Hammer,
Ifrit,
Javelin, Jaculi I, Jaculi II,
Killer Frost, Koschei the Deathless,
Lashina,
Mindboggler, Mr. 104, Multiplex, Mad Harriet, Manticore I, Manticore II, Manhunters,
Nemesis, Nightshade,
Penguin, Parasite, Plastique, Privateer, Psi, Pravda,
Ravan, Rustam,
Shade the Changing Man, Slipknot, Speedy, Stompa, Sickle,
Thinker,
Vixen,
Weasel, William Hell,
background on the support staff, but no stats
Character Density = 1.16
FATE – Traveller: Heroic Adventurer
High Concept: Heroic Adventurer
Arrogant and Confident
+6 Strength [on adopted homewold]
+6 Dexterity [on adopted homewold]
+6 Endurance [on adopted homewold]
+1 Intelligence
+2 Education
+7 Social Standing [on adopted homeworld]
+6 Sword, Blade, Dagger
+5 Leader
+4 Air/Raft
+3 Tactics
+2 Gunnery, Guns [19th Century]
Stunts
Telepathy [Haphazard]
Teleporation [Interplanetary but not under conscious control]
From one of the easter eggs in the Traveller characters list – John Carter of Mars