Your Own Cinematic Universe

I saw Avengers: Age of Ultron this weekend and my short review is: it's good. I'm slightly troubled by the degree setting up future films and dealing with "universe" concerns are becoming more and more a part of the Marvel cinematic experience, while perhaps paradoxically also miffed they seem to drop plot threads from previous films. These are small concerns, though. I didn't seriously impair my enjoyment.

I had some game related thoughts after the movie--and maybe this is something everyone else thought of a long time ago and only my comic-centric thinking has kept me from considering it. As I mentioned last week, superhero games are potentially bedeviled by the problems of all licensed property games: fan-players' knowledge and connection to canon, and on the other side of the coin, inaccessibility or at least a steep learning cover for newcomers.

Movies and animation all have to deal with that second problem (They have the first too in a way, but that crowd is much smaller for them.) and they get around it by creating their own universe, by picking and choosing from the existing mythology. Since anyone's in-game version of a comic book universe winds up being an alternate universe anyway, why not make it one from the start? To me, this sort of seems like the best option for getting the advantage of a established universe while having a good deal of creative freedom and not have to sweat your player's knowledge of the comics.

One final note: comics rpgs haven't completely ignore other media, but they tend to focus on trying to recreate the feel of certain other media adaptations rather than the continuity aspects I'm talking about. There haven't been any such supplements for licensed rpgs as far as I know.

Rumored Mysteriarchs of Zed

As their name should suggest, little is known of those great magi, the Mysteriarchs of Zed, and this is presumably the way they prefer it. Even great wizards are powerless before rumor and tale-telling, however, and so the names of some alleged members of that shadowy assemblage are widely whispered in the Land of Azurth:

art by Francisco Segura

The Great Enigma may or may not have ascended to a higher plane to compare his knowledge with that of more potent beings than humanity, or perhaps he lingers awhile yet to train worthy apprentices. He has placed himself under a peculiar geas wherein in a challenge he will only cast any spell his opponent hasn't thought of yet, but none that they have.

Art by Algosky

Agar the Green holds unorthodox theories about slime and its place among the primordial elements. He makes a study of various slimes, oozes and jellies, and spends much of his time in a semi-viscid form to aid his research. Some of his colleagues suggest he has even sought the lubricous embrace of Jellia, the Gelatine Princess of the Ooze Folk, but such matters are scarcely the topic of polite conversation.

art by Moebius

Generys the White is said to have lived half her life in the realm of dreams, and this has made her cold and cruel in her affairs in the mundane world. She knows secrets that are only shared in dreams and the making of potions that aid either forgetfulness or memory. Any gift of a jewel or precious stone from her is to be avoided at all costs, but must be refused politely.

Another Head of the Hydra

As mentioned by Chris Kutalik on his blog earlier this week, I've joined forces with the Hydra Cooperative. You already know Hydra, of course, from the very successful Kickstarter and release of Slumbering Ursine Dunes. I've worked with Hydra on some of the stretch goals (soon to be released!) for Dunes, so in addition to knowing the members socially from G+ and the blogosphere, I also know they are a creative bunch of guys and dedicated to turning out great rpg projects. I don't mind admitting that after the grueling last few miles in the marathon that was Strange Stars, I was considering taking a looonnng break from indie publishing after I got the gamebooks out. Working with Hydra has given me a bit of a rejuvenation.

So it seems natural to merge my Armchair Planet storefront with Hydra's. This will give them a higher profile and given customers one place to go to get all of our products.  Like what, you ask? Well, Strange Trails--my pre-Weird Adventures free pdf is already there. So is Mike Davison's feudal Japan-tinged old retro-clone, Ruins & Ronin, and a host of Hill Cantons-related goodies. And that's just the beginning. A Hydra website is in the works, but for now, check out the G+ forum for updates.

Atlas Super-Heroes Roleplaying

When contemplating a new superhero campaign, the choice is usually between creating an original setting or playing in an established comic book universe. It occurs to me another option be playing in a failed or defunct superhero universe: you get the advantage of having some established elements to pull from (not to mention art), but few people will have strong enough attachments to it and the worlds are unlikely to have last long enough to really constrain you with canon. You get to build your own house but with a foundation and all the building materials supplied.

No has-been or never-was universe became so as spectacularly and quickly as 70s Atlas Comics (or Atlas/Seaboard). I won’t delve into the history (you can read it here) but suffice to say despite prestigious talent and money no Atlas title lasted more than 4 issues. Conventional wisdom would hold that this failure was because the Atlas characters weren’t very good and their stories possibly worse. I would submit, however, that uninspiring or mediocre comic book characters are pretty much the stock and trade of supers rpgs. Game characters don’t need concepts that swing for the fences, they just need to get on base. That’s why Marvel and DC B and C-listers are the sweet spot for using as game characters—and Atlas’s “superstars” are pretty much at that level.  Let’s look at the standouts in turns of gameability:

Jeff “the Cougar” Rand is a stuntman that battles supernatural or weird menaces that keep cropping up in LA. He’s sort of Colt Seavers: The Night Stalker.

A Viet Nam vet joins a cult and gifted with supernatural powers, including a cape that serves as a portal to a pocket dimension. He turns on the cult when he found out thy’re out for Xenogenesis, and the advent of Demon-kind on Earth. This is pretty much the same character Rich Buckler would introduce at Marvel as Devil-Slayer.

The Destructor is young criminal whose scientist father gives him an experimental formula to save his life. He gets powers a bit like a combination of Daredevil and Wolverine. He’s sort of like a Peter Parker gone wrong, out for vengeance on the Syndicate who killed his father.

An astronaut rescued by aliens steals a super-powered suit from them and escapes, then fights to stop the aliens from destroying mankind. Phoenix has a bit of a Green Lantern or Captain Marvel vibe, with a little von Däniken/70s UFO conspiracy garnish.

18th Century Highway is released from Hell by Satan serve as his agent in the 20th century, sending the souls of evil-doers straight into Perdition’s flames. He’s sort of the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh by way of Spawn.


Not exactly the “new house of ideas,” but not that bad, either. Well, most of these characters got a big shift in the last issue, so the thought would be: take the first issue or two as “canon”, then build your own universe from there, using things from later stories as fodder for inspiration. PCs could have latitude in how to develop their characters further from their comic roots, perhaps doing some “retcons” to the backstory over time, just as would likely have happened had the comics kept being published.

There are other Atlas characters, some that could be good PC material with a “bold new direction” here or there. There are also several barbarians, a few horror characters, tough cops, and two future dystopias that can help fill out the universe and inspire further development.

What crashed and burned in the world of comics publishing may soar in gaming. The Atlas Age just might be here!

Wednesday Comics: Essential Ultron

With Avengers: Age of Ultron opening this week, there's no time like the present to get caught up on Ultron's greatest hits. Here are some stories you should probably check out, in no particular order:

The Rise of Ultron
Avengers #54-58
You get the Masters of Evil, the first appearance and origin of Ultron, and the first appearance of the Vision.
Collected in: Essential Avengers vol 3; Avengers Epic Collection: Behold the Vision (starts with #57).

The Return of Ultron
Avengers #66-68
Ultron's back, cementing his status as a major villian. This time, he's got a new body of adamantium.
Collected in: Essential Avengers vol 3; Avengers Epic Collection: Behold the Vision

The Bride of Ultron
Avengers #157- 166
Ultron, in all his Oedipal glory, kidnaps Wasp and makes his own robot bride based on her--Jocasta.
Collected in: Avengers: The Bride of Ultron; Avengers Epic Collection: The Final Threat

Ultron Mark 12
West Coast Avengers vol. 2 #1-2, 4-7, and Vision And Scarlet Witch vol 2 #2
Ultron turns good? Perhaps the most unexpected Ultron story of all!
Collected in: Avengers: West Coast Avengers Omnibus vol. 1

Ultron Unlimited
Avengers vol. 3 #19-22
Ultron at his most evil. He decimates a city, turning the dead into an army of Ultron clones.
Collected in: Avengers: Ultron Unlimited (this one's pretty pricey; the issues might be cheaper!)

Our Heroic Age

Though we played a lot of fantasy games (mostly AD&D) in my middle and high school years--probably more than anything else--our longest campaigns (defined as the same characters in the same setting/situation) were in superhero games. While we'd played with Villains & Vigilantes and with the first editions of TSR's Marvel Super Heroes and Mayfair's DC Heroes, our "Heroic Age" really got started in '86 after the release of the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set.

Our first and longest running team was called the New Champions (taking the name from the L.A. based team of the Bronze Age and the idea of a new iteration from The New Defenders, which had just ended the year before). Our characters were street-level/near street-level characters, some of which were reformed villains. We picked the characters from the pages of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, for the most part, rather than going with well-known characters. I used Paladin, my brother, Puma, and our friend Al, Hobgoblin (the former Jack o' Lantern version). That was the core group of players and characters, but other players and other Bronze and early Modern C-listers joined the New Champions ranks at some point: White Tiger, Madcap, Shroud, and Unicorn, among others I've likely forgotten. The team had a West Coast era (borrowing from West Coast Avengers, which I had a subscription to), as well, and probably at least one "all-new, all different" period--but it was also part of the same continuity.

The second edition of DC Heroes, was probably our last gasp of superhero gaming. The Marvel games had mostly been over the summer and with a crew somewhat different than my usual gaming group, since none of us were able to drive yet and it was tough to get together when we weren't in school. By '89 though, that wasn't the case, so the DC group was largely the same as my Dungeons & Dragons and GURPS crowd. This time, we made up our own characters and our own super-hero universe. Lower key, more "realistic" superheroes were the order of the day. About half of the group (which was never named as a team, really) didn't wear costumes, and the villains were are somewhat quirky, and many of them didn't wear costumes either. I suspect the primary inspiration was the Wild Cards universe, but Thriller, the New Universe, and Doom Patrol might have been in there, too.

We played some 4th edition Champions after that and maybe some GURPS Supers, but neither of them had the ease of use of MSHRPG or DCH so they didn't last long. These two campaigns created some truly memorable characters--or at least memorable sessions.

The Faeborn of Virid

I finally got a chance to look through the Elemental Evil Players Companion to see if there was anything that jumped out to me to add to my Land of Azurth campaign. I've already written about the Azurthite version of Aarakocraa, so I probably won't be using them as a PCs race. Deep gnomes are different, so they'll take a bit more adapting first. The Genasi work pretty well, we'll call them the Faeborn.

In the Land of Azurth, people with faerie ancestry are uncommon outside of the Country of Virid. Lady Desira, the Enchantress of Virid, is herself of fae descent. The most common sort of Faeborn folk are those who have ancestors among the elemental faerie who worked for Gob, the great craftsman, and Queen Azulina in fashioning the land of Azurth. Each of these types occupies various subkingdoms within Virid.

While they're variable as other folk, their personalities tend toward the humor associated with their element.

Each of the faeborn subkingdoms has a prince or princess and most of these are friends and/or former suitors of Lady Desira:  Parald, Ariel, Jin, Seraph, Gobe, Necksa and Nixi. They took part in the many adventures of her youth: ,