[RPGs] Campaign idea: War of the Space Gods

In my last post, I mentioned how the superhero genre can be a whole lot of different things. One superhero subgenre that I don't think really gets enough representation in games is the Jack Kirby mode.

It's a little odd to talk about one dude's work as a subgenre, but when you look at a comic like Gødland or that old 1963 miniseries, it starts to make sense. Kirby had a very distinctive thing going on, and there was more to it than just his art style. The most kirbyesque Kirby works were the ones where he went beyond superheroes and into what I'd describe as sci-fi mythology: the various Fourth World books, The Eternals, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, OMAC, and others.

I'd love to run a game sometime that mines that vein for setting material, but doesn't actually reproduce any specific elements. Here's what I've got right now.
There are two tiny planets orbiting Earth, each smaller than the Moon, but with as much mass as our own world. And they're both hidden from us. Even their gravity is blocked. The first, Kaliba, is a wild, green planet dotted with soaring white cities. The second, Shath, is a barren, cloud-wrapped world of stony deserts and grim, black cities.

Kaliba is inhabited by a race of living gods. They're largely human in appearance, but an idealized kind of human, with a wide range of vivid coloration, sometimes including patterned skin, or even a metallic sheen. Their eyes glow brilliantly, as does their golden blood. They're very nearly immortal: ageless, immune to all disease, astonishingly resilient, and able to regenerate any damage short of the destruction of the brain or heart. What's more, they're invested with a brilliant cosmic energy that they wield to create a variety of effects. Their power is so flexible that they've never developed technology in the sense that we're familiar with. Their cities and clothing are built through the direct application of their strength and energies. They can also invest simple metal and stone tools with some of their power, or use it to change and sculpt living things for their own purposes. They've populated their world with extravagantly modified Earth animals, and are served by semi-sapient worker creatures.

Shath is also home to a race of gods, but one for more physiologically diverse than those of Kaliba. While still mostly humanoid, they exhibit monstrous or animalistic features as well. Their coloration is just as unusual as the gods of Kaliba, but less vivid, tending towards, dull, pale, or muddy tones. Their blood is black, with a faint iridescent sheen. They are essentially immortal, with less resilience and more regenerative capability than the Kalibas, but they have a tendency to change gradually over time, becoming ever more inhuman with the centuries. They wield a cosmic power of their own, but theirs is dark and murky, and far better at affecting its wielder than affecting the outside world. The Shathen tend to be gifted with powers of shape-shifting, invisibility, intangibility, and the like. Unlike the gods of Kaliba, they have needed technology. Their machines are in many ways more advanced than those of Earth, but are generally bulky, unsubtle, inefficient, and sometimes dangerous to be around.

For reasons that have long since passed beyond memory, the two races of gods have been at war with each other, on and off, for as long as they've been aware of each other. It's a bitter conflict, driven by the same hatred it generates, bereft of ideology or purpose.

The planets of the gods are hidden from Earth, but Earth isn't hidden from them. Both races visited our world often our distant past. The Kalibas were called gods, and devils, and fairies. The Shathen were also called these things, as well as dragons, vampires, goblins, and the like. Both races taught, terrorized, enslaved, and enthralled humanity, shaping our history and culture. But, most of all, they fought each other. Sometimes directly in divine battles that scarred the Earth's landscape for millenia, and sometimes by human proxies, through wars and pogroms and myths that we will never truly understand.

Now, though, the gods call Earth neutral ground, and their endless, senseless war is in one of its colder phases. Humanity has forgotten them, and both races of gods work to keep it that way, both for our good and their own. In the past, the gods' interactions with mortals had done us much harm. And now, as our technology has grown to rival that of Shath--and shows every sign of surpassing it, someday--it's very possible that humanity could actually threaten the gods to some degree.

Of course, by the same token, it's obvious that mankind could be the key to the Kalibas' or the Shathen's final victory, if only they could quietly turn enough of us to their cause. So the war between the gods has become a secret struggle to gain influence on Earth. But, as each side becomes aware of the other's breaches of the treaty, their cold war is heating up.

...Okay, so if that's enough setting info, I'll finally talk about just how this could be played. Naturally, I'd use Mutants & Masterminds or some variant of it. Player characters would probably be a mixed group of Kalibas and Shathen, also possibly Kalibas-Shathen hybrids, god-human hybrids, regular humans who've gotten ahold of powerful divine artifacts, or even regular humans who are just really awesome at stuff. Maybe servitor creatures from Kaliba or robots from Shath, too. Just how these people would know each other and why they'd work together--and, yeah, I'd really rather we have that worked out from the very beginning--would depend on just what kind of mix of characters we end up with. I like the idea of the group being centered around young gods from opposite sides of the line who became friends and hope to end the war, or gods and humans who are breaking the rules to learn about each other. And, naturally, some larger external problem would loom before long, forcing the PCs to stand alone between the warring gods against a threat only they are aware of.

The whole tone I'd be going for with this game is BIG. Epic, bombastic, mythic stuff. Interplanetary adventure, apocalyptic threats, the discovery of secrets older than mankind, divine tragedy, that kind of thing. Not superheroes. Sci-fi mythology.

Would it work? With the right players, hell yes. I can only hope to actually get a chance like that some day.

[RPGs] Campaign idea: The Alliance

My big white whale of RPGs--the thing I think I'm least likely to get to do, anyway--is a superhero game. I think superhero games are especially dependent upon a gaming group's experience with and ideas about the genre. I mean, if five people sit down to play a game, variously expecting it to be like The Tick cartoon, 1980s X-Men comics, Warren Ellis' run on The Authority, the Watchmen movie, and the TV show Heroes, there is going to be some cognitive dissonance. Getting everybody on the same page would be a project in and of itself, and might not even be possible if there isn't enough common ground in the group's experience. My own group ain't really filled with people who read superhero comics, so I'm not sure I'll ever get to do this. But I do like to dream.

This is what I've been dreaming about lately.


The Alliance isn't so much a static superhero team as a loose network of associated superheroes who can contact each other, share resources and information, and work together as circumstances require and their schedules permit. When a case or mission comes up, a team is assembled from the available Alliance members and pointed at the problem.

The gimmick here, game-wise, is that the Alliance is a pool of characters that all the players can pull from on a session-by-session basis. No character belongs to any one player; they're all shared equally. So, of course, the characters would all have to be created cooperatively by the players. And that's where the character creation sheet at the right comes in.

Actually, though, I'd start by discussing with my players what kind of tone and tropes they're interested in for the game. We'd try to establish a target seriousness level, and come up with some example media. Then we'd talk over the setting a bit, see what kinds of components people are cool with (magic? aliens? time travel?) and just how "superhero-ish" characters should get (costumes? spandex? masks? code names? secret identities?).

...And then I'd hand out the character creation sheets, two to a player with a pile of extras. I'd explain all the different bits: "Purpose" could be something along the lines of "glory hound" or "With great power comes great responsibility." "Relationship" could mean a romance or rivalry with another Alliance member, or it could be a civilian NPC friend or family member, or even a recurring arch enemy. "Weakness" might be something like "poisoned by kryptonite," but it could just as easily be "hardened alcoholic" or "dangerously short temper".

Anyway, the deal with the character creation sheets is that each player would write something on their sheets, and then pass them off to other players to write some more stuff on, with everybody freely sharing ideas and talking openly about what they're doing. Hopefully, at the end of the session, we'd have at least two filled sheets for each player, and everybody should have some idea about the whole array of characters they'd outlined.

Then, I'd before the next session, I'd do the actual game mechanics side of building all the characters. I'd almost certainly use Mutants & Masterminds, in spite of the mention of "aspects" on the character creation sheets. I just really dig aspects, and think they can be imported from Fate into almost any RPG system. Also, I think they could be employed here to encourage the kind of ensemble-cast soap opera effect that tends to arise in long-running superhero team comics.

Part of what I'd be hoping to achieve with this kind of character generation is a player mindset that doesn't regard the PCs as representations of the players so much as shared game pieces. As such, they should be easier to sacrifice. Dramatic PC deaths would be a really cool and genre-appropriate thing to work into the game. I'd even like to incorporate some variant of Ryan Stoughton's death flag mechanic to encourage it. (CliffsNotes version: Normally, no PC dies. But you can trade this plot immunity for a temporary powerup, thus very possibly going out in a blaze of glory.)

Will I ever actually get to run this game? Dunno. Might not work too well with my local crew, but I'm edging closer and closer to running a Skype game of some kind, and I know I could find the perfect crew for this game once geography isn't a factor. So maybe. Some day.

[comics] Avengers: The Initiative: Is that a jheri curl?

I really love that they brought back the Skrull Kill Krew for this whole Secret Invasion thing. And I dig the hell out of Stefano Caselli's art. And I do realize that this character is a shapeshifter.

...But, man, it's pretty lame that Ryder has apparently turned himself into a white dude.

Right, so the image on the left is from Ryder's initial appearance in Skrull Kill Krew #1. The image on the right is from his reappearance (after 13 years of limbo, far as I'm aware) in Avengers: The Initiative #16. And, to be perfectly fair, I don't really think Caselli actually intended to draw the character as a white guy. The dude is from Italy, and perhaps isn't quite as familiar with what dreadlocks look like as an American artist might be.

...And, hell, the dreadlocks / jheri curl confusion has long been a pitfall of some Marvel characters. I think Bishop is an example, although maybe his Rick James hair was totally intentional. Hell if I know. Terrible freakin look, either way.

[comics] Milestone characters joining the DC Universe

Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this. According to Newsarama, a few characters from the lamented 1990s comics imprint Milestone--specifically, Icon, Static, and the Shadow Cabinet, I think--will finally be brought back, this time as part of the DC Universe. I heard some theories about exactly this kind of thing happening, back around Milestone's demise in the late '90s. At the time, the idea kind of bugged me, since it had already been established in Milestone continuity that DC's heroes were known in the setting as comic book characters (which made that "Worlds Collide" crossover they did kind of weird), and I was a big continuity purist. Fortunately, I've gotten over caring much about that kind of thing, so I'm totally happy about this.

I think the fact that Milestone's beautiful experiment didn't work out back then kind of indicates that I should make a case for why this is awesome. Milestone, sadly, was written off as "DC's hip-hop imprint" by a lot of folks, and generally seen as just another line of superhero comics, except with black characters. The first problem with this perception is the idea that Milestone wasn't black-exclusive at all: The casts of its books were generally very diverse, both ethnically and sexually. The other problem with Milestone's image is that the characters' demographic checkboxes were never really the most important thing about the books: The big draw for me was the fact that they tended to have much smarter writing than the other superhero books of the era.

Of course, the writing and the characters are two completely separate components, so I can't really expect that ever DC writer who uses these characters will use them as well as their original books did. But, hell, they've got Dwayne McDuffie himself--creator of the Milestone line--leading the whole return. Also, I'm of the opinion that DC is a better company now than it was back then, anyway, so I'm pretty optimistic.

I am a Dungeon Master, and my wife is awesome

Right, so my wife is awesome. She's been commissioning comics about me being a really, really bad Dungeon Master from various cool webcomics people. I'm not really sure why she started doing this, but it is extremely cool of her. I want to make "Minus 10 horse points" my avatar / custom title on every RPG forum I frequent, now.

Anyway, the first comic is by John Campbell, who does the odd, quiet, and very funny Pictures for Sad Children. The second is by KC Green, who does Horribleville and a whole mess of other bizarre and hilarious comics. They are cool guys.

Absurdly, these actually make me want to start running a D&D game again. But then, hey, freakin everything makes me want to run or play some RPG or another. Now I gotta go figure out when my used-to-be-Tuesday-nights game crew can meet for Spirit of the Century, next. (Yeah, the game's been moving along nicely, even though I can't be arsed to post session summaries, lately.)

[comics] Justice Society of America: Drastically lame atheism portrayal

Right, so this is from Justice Society of America #17 (written by Geoff Johns, drawn by Fernando Pasarin). And I'm really digging the current JSA storyline; it's about this giant, god-like entity called "Gog" who's walking across Africa performing miracles and being awesome to people, while the superheroes all hang around wait for the other shoe to drop. I'm hoping against my own judgment that they've got a more interesting resolution planned than "Ha ha ha! Now the people worship me and I will conquer the world!", but it's definitely a cool ride at the moment.

But, damn, this scene between Michael "Mister Terrific" Holt and Pieter "Doctor Mid-Nite" Cross is just cringe-worthy. I think the setup hear is that the blatantly god-like Gog didn't respond to the atheist Mister Terrific's attempts to communicate. Now, I'm gonna ignore how deeply bizarre it is for anyone to be an atheist in the DC universe when they've got actual damn angels flying around in public as members of super teams, but the way they're portraying Holt's atheism here pretty grating.

They've got him saying "I don't have faith in God because I don't want to." in one panel, and "I wish I had faith . . . I wish I believed in this with all my heart." in the next. I'm not alone in seeing a contradiction here, am I? Was there a word omitted from that first line, maybe? Like "lack"?

And they end with Holt angsting about how he can't "understand" spirituality. Shit, man, he was just wishing he believed he'd see his dead wife again in the panel before that! I'd say that's about all you need to understand.

Maybe I'm expecting the wrong kind of belief system from a world where "atheist" kind of can't mean the same thing it does to me. And I'm almost certainly expecting too much depth and logical consistency from a character who runs around with the words "FAIR PLAY" written on his sleeve. But, damn, this scene just rubs me the wrong way.

[comics] Fantastic Four: Marvel super-prison protocol

Not to rag on the same book all over again, but this page is from Fantastic Four #558 (written by Mark Millar, drawn by Bryan Hitch), and it's a shining example of a weird, annoyingly-common phenomenon in superhero comics. Click it and take a look at the full size version.

Doctor Doom is being held (according to the next page), at the Raft, a prison facility for superhuman offenders. And, for some reason, the people running this place let him keep his goddamned armor. You know, with the lasers and the forcefields and maybe a fucking time machine, for all I know. I'm sure he'd pitch a serious fit if they tried to take it away from him--especially since he's so nuts about keeping his scarred face covered up--but I kinda think it'd be worth the trouble. Hell, even if they think they've removed all the weapons from his getup, I can't imagine it'd really be safe to leaving the evil genius walking around in a whole pile of electronic scrap.

And, of course, superhero comics do this shit all the time. And, of course, we all know why: character recognition. If a supervillain isn't wearing his brightly-colored tights, how are the readers supposed to know who he is? Well, okay, maybe through the dialog. Or even a narration box. But how are potential readers just flipping through a book to see if it contains something of interest supposed to recognize the dude? I guess that's what it's really about.

Still. I'd call this kind of a special case, here. Why not show Victor von Doom without his armor and cape and such, but with his mask? It's enough to make him recognizable, and it'd slightly imaginable that he'd be allowed to keep something he's got such a psychological dependency on. Also, he'd present a much more interesting visual, wearing just the mask with an orange prison jumpsuit.

Anyway. This silliness aside, it's a good issue. Looks like the start of a very interesting arc. Just hope it ends better than the last one did.

An excessively longwinded update

Oh, man, busy days.

Been helping Charlie out with the prepress stuff for the second volume of Templar, Arizona, and some related t-shirt design. Also, she's doing Wizard World Chicago this weekend, and I've been playing comics roadie for her.

We met colorist Corey Greene at Wizard World's preview night (Thursday), and he seems like a cool guy. On the train ride home, we got to horrify him with the contents of my iPod. Those who know me will not be surprised: Among all the Professor Brothers shorts and episodes of Cooking Master Boy, I also have some unspeakably horrible stuff. Interestingly, this attracted the enthusiastic attention of two total strangers, a young couple named Becky and Dallas. We watched a deeply terrifying video from BME together, and that was all they needed to guess that Charlie and I are Something Awful goons like them.

The Internet. Still with us wherever we go.

Charlie and I have both totally been neglecting Age of Conan, which is kind of tragic. Both of us basically just got off of newb island (Are we the only people who use this term for the starting region of any MMORPG?), and then immediately stopped playing. And that is dumb. We'll get back into it soon, I think. Especially if we finally her her a copy, so that we can actually play together. (Honestly, I'm not really into the "massively multiplayer" featured of MMORPGs, so unless I can play 'em with my wife or some other people I know, I get bored fast.)

Anyway, as all good humans should know, the Spore Creature Creator is finally out, and that has been taking up most of my gaming time (if you'd really call it gaming). Spore is basically going to own Charlie and me when it finally comes out for real, and even the little Creature Creator is well worth my time and money. It's just a construction kit for creatures you can't really do much with, but it is hugely, hugely fun. I've really got to make a big post sharing my creatures, soon.

We're also getting back into Team Fortress 2, lately. That is such an incredibly well-made game. Charlie and I tend to play as a Medic-Heavy team (respectively), although last time we found ourselves really loving the Scout and Pyro (separately, of course). Valve is one of those companies that can just have all my damn money right now. They're just insanely reliable. (Getting real interested in their upcoming co-op zombie game, Left4Dead, by the way.)

On the RPG front, I'm still running my Spirit of the Century campaign--Lost Worlds and Secret Histories--every week (well, theoretically every week) and loving the hell out of it. I'm also playing in a monthly Amber game with almost the same bunch of people as my LWaSH players.

I think after I finish up with arc of LWaSH, we might give In a Wicked Age a go. I told my crew about it, and they were immediately interested. (I really love this group. They are basically up for anything. We've really been playing a good variety of stuff.) I also kinda want to do something with 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, if only to try it out.

Also! Brian from my RPG group has been thinking about running a Stargate game for a while, now. I'm not generally a big supporter of licensed properties as RPG settings, but I'd totally be up for this. Stargate really strikes me as a hugely, awesomely gameable setting, and I'd just love to see what Brian does with it.

Oh, and I'm still doing photography, even if I haven't been showing it anywhere. ... Ah, what the hell. I'll post one with this update.

[comics] Avengers: The Initiative: Oh, snap!

Okay, as long as I'm talking about comics, I might as well say some nice stuff. In Avengers: The Initiative #13 (written by Christos N. Gage, drawn by Steve Uy), lame flash-in-the-pan character Prodigy lays this awesome dis on lame perennial character Henry Pym. I just love it when characters (and writers) in comics actually remember shit like this: Hank smacking the crap out of his wife in The Avengers #213 (writer: Jim Shooter, penciller: Bob Hall). (Damn, can you believe this dude is back is to wearing his costume from 1981? Wow. Whose idea was that?)

There's a contingent of nerds out there who are quick to point out the fact that the infamous panel was an isolated incident that was intended to be seen as wildly at odds with Pym's established personality, and turned out to be the result of some kind of manipulation by some forgettable (and, indeed, forgotten) character called Egghead (not making this up, serious), and I guess they've got a point. But I don't think the dude was actually being mind controlled or anything, so I figure he still deserves to get abused for the incident. Also, it achieved LOL, and that's all the justification need.

So, yeah, I'm kinda digging The Initiative. I even really like their quasi-costume of a pair of camo pants and a shirt with an individual logo on it . . . but it really gets pretty lame when they start with an existing costume and just add the pants to that.


Prodigy, you fuckin tool. (To be fair, his costume is the source of his powers, but in that case, they really oughta waive the pants and boots.)

[comics] Fantastic Four: Oh, man, I did not read that.

From Fantastic Four #557, written by Mark Millar and drawn by Bryan Hitch. This is Reed Richards, here, turning down some old girlfriend who just tried to get him to leave his wife for her. Earlier in this issue he managed to figure out she was still in love with him in what I'd call a moment of wildly uncharacteristic social sensitivity (for fuck's sake, this is dude who basically has the assburgers). And now he brings out a cheesy-ass Hollywood line like this? Millar, you are fucking fired.

[comics] The Order: Is this a retcon?

Right, so is anybody else reading Marvel's "The Order" series? I've been looking around, but I can't find any real discussion of the book. So I'm wondering if anybody else noticed what I think I noticed.

I'm gonna skip explaining the background on this book. Interested parties can ask Wikipedia, as always. Suffice it to say that it's a superhero book, and it includes this dude they call Heavy.

When he first shows up, he looks like this:


Rockin the Stratos look.

Then, next issue, he gets shot in the face by some Cold-War-era supervillain. He goes "blurgle" and is thoroughly out of commission.


But he's back an issue later, apparently wearing a bacta tank on his head. So we--okay, I--assume this is part of his shot-in-the-face-by-a-Soviet-relic treatment plan. Naturally.


But he keeps running abound in a helmet full of blue fluid. For a whole mess of issues.


Finally, the most recent issue (the ninth of the series) explains Heavy's background in a flashback sequence (which is something this book does for a different character each issue, which is awesome, and would be worth talking more about if I didn't have a different topic, here). It turns out that he was actually horribly injured well before his superhero career started, and was confined to an iron lung. And the fluid inside his costume is apparently a fix for that pre-existing condition.


...So what the hell was he doing running around without his blue goo in the first and second issues?

So has this character's background been changed significantly just eight issues after he first appeared? I'd assume this was either a deliberate or accidental retcon by a new writer but, no, Matt Fraction's been writing the book the whole time. Hell, it's been pretty much the same story arc throughout all nine issues, even. There doesn't seem like room for retcon here, or time for a good writer (and Fraction is a good writer) to forget major details about a character.

Is there something here I'm just wildly misinterpreting? Was there a mask full of fluids in the first two issues that the inker and colorist just didn't pick up on? I don't get this.