The Alex Toth Casting Agency

Need a different look for an NPC or a weird monster of some sort? Check out the model sheets and concept art created for Hanna-Barbera by the late, great Alex Toth:

"futuristic city dwellers", maybe. Or maybe some fantasy city:

Demons:

The rulers of the cat people:

A wizard and his pets:

A wizard with a nose piercing and fairy lackeys:

Visiting dignitaries:

Strange Stars Update

Thrax warrior in progress by Waclaw Wysocki

Work on Strange Stars continues. The artists I'm working with have been turning out a lot of cool stuff only some of which I shared here.  I'm also happy to announce that John Till of the blog FATE SF is lending his extensive knowledge to the Fate adaptation of the setting. Given John's blog output, I can't think of anyone better qualified to collaborate with.

My current plan (still subject to change, based on POD restrictions and what not) is for a full color setting book that's systemless bundled with a "just the facts,"  no frills game stat companion for both Stars Without Number and Fate. I've lately thought of patterning the stat after the old Ace double novels in format, but we'll see. The reason for the separation is to keep costs down (pages of game stats don't have to be printed on glossy full color paper), but it also means the setting book could be used as an in game reference.

Anyway, there will be further updates as things develop.

Do the Time Warp (Again)

With X-Men: Days of Future Past about to drop this weekend, I was thinking about alternate futures. They're a staple of comics and have made appearances in movies and TV. Outside of the superhero genre, they probably don't show up much in gaming--and I 'm specifically excluding settings that may technically be alternate futures, but have no interact with a different present. I mean an alternate future of a current campaign world.

It's not a stock fantasy concept, admittedly, but since when has that ever stopped anyone, particularly in the old school crowd? There are so many ways it could be utilized. The old Dark Shadows show had a parlor room that led to a parallel time line; there's no reason a whole dungeon couldn't have links to an alternate future. Like on Star Trek: Enterprise, maybe the Big Bads behind--well, something or another--are from an alternate future, perhaps different alternate futures.

The PCs could interact with alternate future versions of themselves  traveling to the past for some reason (usual to cause/prevent their future occurring). For extra fun, the big bads could actually be one or more of the PCs.

Anybody ever done something like this in a non-supers game?

Meeting one's alternate future self always means getting to see one's snazzy alt-future duds

Wednesday Comics: Requiem

Here's the next installment of  Jim Starlin's Metamorphosis Odyssey. The earlier posts in the series can be found here.

"Requiem (Metamorphosis Odyssey Chapter X)"

Epic Illustrated #7 (August 1981) Story & Art by James Starlin

Synopsis: Aknaton shows the others the history of the Zygoteans. Their world was once a veritable Utopia, but it fell into the hands of venal and incompetent rulers. First, they despoiled the planet.

Unfortunately, few of the people seemed to notice. They were consumed by their distractions and amusements and complicit in the despoiling of their world:

The people eventually realized what had happened. The gap between have and havenot was large, but the cries for social justice went unanswered. Instead, it was determined some would escape their dying world. Thanks to the influence of the military and religion, the many were inspired to toil to launch a few into the stars.

Zygotea died, but the Zygoteans lived on. They repeated the same process on every world they came to. The more monstrous they became, the more they came to resent those that reminded them of their origins. The Osirosans, the progenitors of all humanoid races, were the greatest reminder of how far they had fallen and so had to die. But the Osirosans conceived of the Infinity Horn--and a way to end the Zygotean menace.

The others are silent as Aknaton finishes his tale. Elsewhere, though, their enemies mark them all for termination:

Things to Notice:

• The Zygoteans originally look just like humans.

Commentary: 
We see the Zygoteans at last and...they look just like us, at least at first. Starlin is obviously offering a critique on and perhaps a warning to our own society. Interestingly,the Zygoteans wind up with long noses and bald heads, looking like a slightly more monstrous version of the Osirosans--or at least Aknaton. Maybe this is because they're bookends: the Osirosans started humanoid life and the Zygoteans were going to be the end of it.

Or perhaps, they are two sides of the same coin, given Aknaton's intentions.

Four-Color Mutant Futures

Looking for some for some good inspiration for a Gamma World or Mutant Future game? You can do a lot worse than comic books. Here are my picks for the best, alphabetized for easy reference:

Atomic Knights
Not as many mutants here as some places, but it's got knights in plate armor riding giant dalmatians.  Read more about them in this previous post.

Cobalt 60
Vaughn Bodē's titular character is out for revenge the man who killed his parents. There are mutants and aliens a plenty.

Kamandi
Everybody knows this one, right? If not, start reading it here.

Killraven
Mutant mayhem after Martians invade earth in a second war of the worlds. And its all been collected!

Hercules Unbound

Mashup Thor and Kamandi and you get this short-lived series. In fact, it ties in to both Kamandi and Atomic Knights.

Hunter
A half-human, hunter fights against mutant-kind ("goblins") on an irradiated future earth. Dark Horse has put it out in a nice collection.

Mighty Samson
In a devastated N'Yark (that seems like the inspiration for future of Thundarr) the mighty Samson fights a lot of improbable mutants. Read more about it in this post I wrote a while back.

Giant Fire-Breathing Lizard vs. Giant Space Robot!

With a new Godzilla movie in theaters, it's a good time to stat him in terms suitable for my quick-and-dirty Giant Space Robots! old school minigame. A close examination of the films might lead to different tactics or special abilities being applied to each of the versions, but I'll leave that to the Gojira-philes amongst you. (bear in mind that all creatures are giant in GSR!, so the scale of hit dice and what not are shifted).

A 50-55 m giant fire-breathing lizard has 3 HD (a less robust giant dinosaur might have 2+1) and does 1d4 with a bite or 1d6 with a tail slap. Their breath attack does 1d6+1.

An 80 m specimen has 5 HD and a 1d8+1 breath attack.Their bite and tail slap are 1d4+1/1d6+1, respectively.

The 100 m version is 6 HD with a 2d6 breath attack. Its bite/tail attacks do 1d6/1d8

The truly monstrous 124-150 m variety has 7 HD and a breath attack doing 2d8. It's bite/tail slaps do 1d8/2d4.

Androids & 'Zines

Looking for a little weekend reading? I've got a couple of suggestions:

On the "directly gameable"side, you could do a hell of a lot worse than picking up Tim Shorts's latest issue of The Manor. It's got a brothel locale by Matt Jackson, some clever pairs of rooms that can be stuck into any dungeon by Ken Harrison, and a class and a one shot adventure by Tim. Then, there's that Jason Sholtis cover.

On the fiction (but with game inspiration potential) side, you can do a lot worse than Charles Stross's Heinlein homage, Saturn's Children. It's the twenty third century and humanity is extinct, but their androids are keeping interplanetary civilization going in the solar system in a "something's missing," Toy Story sort of way. There are few android lineages missing something more than the main character Freya and her template sisters, sexbots all. Trying to escape a vengeful aristocrat, Freya stumbles into political games and goes to work for a spy agency (Jeeves Corporation) run by a former gentleman's butler. Jeeves is trying to prevent (maybe) the synthesis of a human by a black lab on the dark edge of the solar system.

This is the first book set in the universe of Neptune's Brood (which I discussed here), albeit in a much earlier era than that later work. There are a lot of cool ideas that could be worked into a science fiction of post-apocalyptic setting including androids or robots--or even a fantasy setting, as my other post discusses. Also, Stross spends a lot of time on the very real difficulties of interplanetary travel that will give you a lot to think about, even if that level of realism isn't typical for games.