The Elements of Bronze Age Four-Color Fantasy

By Bronze Age, I mean the Bronze Age of Comics, which largely conicides with the 1970s. Any readers of this blog will know that's an era I have some affection for--particularly its fantasy comics. These comics (particularly when original to the comics medium and not adaptation) present a flavor of fantasy distinct from other fantasy genres or media.

I feel like this sort of fantasy would make for a good game, and I don't think that's really been done. Warriors & Warlocks supposedly set up to do this, but that supplement really winds up adapting a wider range of fantasy to the Mutant & Mastermind system. I've been trying to think of the elements/tropes of this sort of thing:

1. Very much a “Points of Light” thing with large stretches of wilderness and clusters of civilization.

2. Cities tend to look more fantastic ancient world/Arabian Knights/Cecil de Mile spectacle than grotty Medieval

3. Above ground ruins and natural obstacles as more common adventure locales than underground “dungeons”

4. Fantastic terrain is more common (because it makes more good visuals)

5. Magic-users generally fall into 1 of three categories: 1) almost god-like patrons (who maybe secretly be of Type 2); 2) villains; 3)bumbling,  sometimes comedic helpers, makers of anachronistic references

6. Magic tends to be visual and flashy.

7. Elves and dwarves (or Elfs and Dwarfs, more likely) are more Disney and Keebler than Tolkien. They are less powerful than humans and perhaps comedy relief.

8. Beings that stand between humans and gods (like Tolkien elves) are either extremely rare, degenerate, or both.

9. Monsters tend to be unique or very uncommon (even if of a recognized “type”). There are seldom nonhuman territories. More fairytale naturalism than Gygaxian naturalism.

10. Magic items are rare and tend to be unique.

11. Frequent faux-Lovecraftian references, but virtually no cosmicism.

12. Sometimes, there's a Moorcockian as filtered through Starlin sense of cosmic struggle.

13. Armor is as a signifier of profession/role (soldier) or intention (the hero goes to war) rather than actual protection.

This is not an exhaustive list, I'm sure, and it bears some overlap with pulp fantasy/sword & sorcery and fantasy/sword & sandal films that influenced it, and rpg fantasy that arose around the same time, but I think it has elements on emphasis distinct from those forms.

Orbiting the Planet of the Apes

"FUTURESHOCK" 

Player Characters:
Jeff Call as Brock Irving, "We need that liquor!"
Justin Davis as Conrad "Rip" Ripper, "Two-Fisted Psychiatrist"
Billy Longino as Olsen Potter Graves, "Psychological Profiles for Everyone"
Lester B. Portly as Eddy Woodward, "The Pilot Stays with the Ship"
Jason Sholtis as Francis LaCava, "Madre di Dio!"

Nonplayer Characters:
James Gregory as Dr. Jacob Krigstein

Synopsis: Five astronauts taking part in a suspended animation experiment on a space station awaken a thousand years after they were schedule to revive and find civilization apparently destroyed by a nuclear war. With no way to return to Earth, they make a desperate trip to nearby station, The Broderick Astro-Mall, long ago quarantined in an effort to find another way home. They discover a working commercial shuttle, but also semi-gelatinous plague zombies!

Commentary:
System-wise we used a combination of Mutant Future and skills from Stars Without Number, which worked pretty well for a low-effort kludge, though a single zombie fight turned into a a bit of a comical slog thanks to low damage weapons and low level.

Jacob Krigstein is likely the same Doctor Krigstein that shows up in the Marvel Planet of the Apes comic and in the novel Conspiracy on the Planet of the Apes. By the 1980s, he has been promoted to the head of ANSA.

Krigstein mentions the tragic fate of Dylan Hunt, lost in a cave in the laboratories in Carlsbad Caverns. These events are depicted in the Genesis II pilot film. The experiment our PCs were taking part in was a continuation of Hunt's work.

Broderick Astro-Mall was built by aerospace entrepreneur Harry Broderick. His rise from scrapyard owner to ersatz space program director is depicted in Salvage pilot film and the series that followed, Salvage 1. The Astro-Mall was a more "realistic" (i.e. no artificial gravity or matter transporters) take on the station appearing in the Gamma World classic adventure "Albuquerque Spaceport." The zombie-creating plague in our version is caused by a botched attempt to find a cure for the alien malady that wiped out all domestic dogs and cats in 1983 (see Conquest of the Planet of the Apes).

The shuttle the PCs found allowing them to safely head for Earth (their own spaceplane had damaged heat-shielding) is of the same model as Spindrift, the suborbital commercial vehicle seen in Land of the Giants.

Wednesday Comics: Future Quest #3 Annotations

My on-going look at Don Lawrence's Storm will take a break so that we can revisit Future Quest, one of DC's re-imagining of classic Hana-Barbera characters. This will contain spoilers.

"Birdman in: The Deadly Distance" and "Vortex Tales: The Herculoids in Mine-Crash"

Future Quest #3 (2016), Written by Jeff Parker; Art by Steve Rude/Aaron Lopresti and Karl Kesel

Vortex Tales. The stories in this issue are a departure from the storyline in the first two. They showcase past exploits of characters.

Mt. Avia. We see Birdman in his secret hideout with his pet eagle, Avenger. We learn he was an academic before he was endowed with power in the temple of Ra (a process he doesn't understand) and became a secret agent.

"I wonder if Mentok has surfaced again?" Mentok was a villain with mind control powers who appeared in a 1967 episode aptly titled "Mentok the Mind-Taker."

"Her name is Deva Sumadi." We are seeing the events just before the start of the first issue. Birdman leaves Avenger behind and sets off to meet his contact.

Xenomass. The amorphous creature called Omnikron appears again, though Birdman

Amzot. The homeworld of the Herculoids, at least until the 1981 Space Stars series.

Quasar, The name of the Herculoids homeworld in the Space Stars episodes. Here it is used as the name of a sister planet, the former home of Zandor and Tara.

Organite. A living mineral. It makes up much of Igoo's rocky hide and it's used to make the synthetic brains of the robot overlords of Quasar. The Herculoids are the gardens of the largest deposits on Amzots.

Land of Azurth Rumors

I've got a Land of Azurth 5e game coming up next weekend. Here's another round of rumors/adventure hooks I'll give to the players:

70s Primetime Sci-Fi TV Crossover Timeline

The Planet of the Apes game I'm starting up, isn't just borrowing from that mythos, but stealing liberally from other science fiction shows as well. In talking this over with my friend Jim Shelley of The Flashback Universe Blog, he hit on doing sort of trading cards of major timeline events. Here's my timeline and what Jim did with it. I'm not using everything in the game, but it was a fun
exercise.

An additional note: This is a TV timeline. A lot of dates in Planet of the Apes are given in the movies, so it doesn't so up in this version. The Logan's Run tv show and film offer different starting dates, but the show is being used here (though in my game, should the City of Domes ever show up, I'm using the movie date).

Creation of cyborgs (like the Six Million Dollar Man) may also rank among the late 20th Century's achievements.

Suspended animation was used in spaceflight in the 80s, so either a less developed version was already in use (as suggested by the POTA films) or data from Hunt's project  did lead to a breakthrough despite the loss of the team leader.

The actual date is August 19, 1980.

The Great Conflict is the name given this war in Genesis II/Planet Earth. These shows make it clear that the war occurred in the 20th Century, though it most have been after a subshuttle station we see in the Planet Earth pilot was built in 1992. The Planet of the Apes tv show suggests a later date, no never specifies, but this date fits with the POTA film series. The Logan's Run series sets the apocalyptic war in the 22nd Century, which is why I chose to go with the earlier film dates in my game setup.

This is also true of the 2nd Roddenbery pilot to deal with this material, Planet Earth. There Dylan Hunt is played by John Saxon.

No evolved apes are seen at the time of PAX (or even Logan's Run), true, but it could be the apes were confined to the area that once was California then. Neither of these shows necessarily covered a wide territory.

Astronauts Burke and Virdon arrive in a North America (or at least Western North America) controlled by apes in a well-established civilization in 3085, so the culture must have spread before that.

Hexcrawl on the Planet of the Apes: The Set Up

art by Declan Shalvey

I'm getting ready to start my Planet of the Apes hexcrawl so I prepared a document outlining the mission that brings the PC astronauts to the ape-ruled future. Following the ideas in my initial pitch, there are easter eggs linking to other 70s sci-fi shows:

Wednesday Comics: Future Quest #2 Annotations

My on-going look at Don Lawrence's Storm will take a break so that we can revisit Future Quest, one of DC's re-imagining of classic Hana-Barbera characters. This will contain spoilers.

"Part Two: Visitors from Beyond"

Future Quest #2 (2016), Written by Jeff Parker; Art by Eric "Doc" Shaner, Ron Randall & Jonathan Case

The main cover. Features the nonhuman characters of several Hana-Barbera series: Bandit from Jonny Quest, Blip from Space Ghost, and Zok, Igoo, Gloop and Gleep from The Herculoids.

"Now a spaceship?" Space Ghost materializes in the Everglades and appears ready to blast Jonny and Hadj with his power bands. He seems to be in conflict with someone named Omnikron, then he disappears. The kids next discover a crashed spacecraft, Space Ghost's Phantom Cruiser. Inside, is an injured, unconscious Jan and an irate Blip.

"A lot of tough guys that point guns at kids." A bunch of goons--agents of FEAR from Birdman attack. They also have a spider eye-bot like the one employed by Dr. Zin in the eighth episode of Jonny Quest ("The Robot Spy"). The boys are rescued by the timely arrival of Race Bannon and Birdman.

"Don't you dare point guns at my family!" Dr. Quest and Deva Sumadi arrive in a two-man flying craft of the type we've seen previously employed by Dr. Zin's henchmen in "The Fraudulent Volcano." The badguys manage to get away, though, airlifting out the Phantom Cruiser. They also discovered an unconscious Jace, still under Inviso power.

Jezebel Jade. She appears to be working with Dr. Zin. Jade appeared in two episodes of the original Jonny Quest series. She appears to have a history with Race Bannon, has Dr. Zin hints here again.