Now in Color

I've been working on coloring the pregen portraits from Mortzengersturm, mostly to practice for coloring things for the Azurth Adventures Digest, but also just the have them in color. Jeff Call (the original artist) has not seen or approved my coloring job on his images, so blame me!

Here's Minmaximus the Mighty:

And here's Astra, Princess of the Star Folk:

Dungeons of High Camp

Art by Jim Holloway

Over the weekend I was reading Hero A Go-Go by Michael Eury. which chronicles superhero comics' response (and influence on) 1960s camp pop culture. It's a combination that didn't always work well; many of the works perhaps now seem more goofy kitsch, and some are really just unfunny parody or of superheroes. Still, when it works there is a certain charm to a lot of folks, as the revival comics Batman '66 and Wonder Woman '77 indicates.

I wonder why there hasn't been as much of concerted attempt at published camp works in Dungeons & Dragons? Certainly, farcical humor abounds at the gaming table, and a number of comedic adventures have been written (a lot illustrated by Jim Holloway), and there are humorous illustrations in the older AD&D books. But as far as I know their has never been a camp setting or camp-informed setting--unless maybe HackMaster counts? Maybe it's just too difficult a tone to sustain well throughout a written project?

The settings of some OSR-related folks seem to me to have elements of camp without going all-in: Jason Sholtis' Operation Unfathomable, Chris Kutalik's Hill Cantons, some of Jeff Reints stuff, and my own Mortzengersturm. Dungeon Crawl Classics with its "airbrushed wizard van" elements could be taken as camp, but I'm unsure whether that is the intention.

Art by Jim Holloway

Time Gone By

Despite Gygax's admonition about meaningful campaigns and strict time records, the games I've participated in don't show a lot of evidence that anybody is doing this beyond the tactical level. In some ways, I feel like this is a miss opportunity and I enjoy media with a "sweep of history" or strong chronological grounding. It isn't really an issue in drop-in adventuring, but it makes a campaign feel more real to me.

That said, I don't usually pay enough attention to it myself when I'm gamemastering. There are always other things to think about. Sometimes I do, though. In my Weird Adventures campaign, I was able to construct a timeline, not so much from clocking downtime activities but from time references within the adventures, and the length of time they took in-game. Holiday themed games are a help in this (two Yuletimes past in that game).

My current Land of Azurth game is a good bit looser, partial because I want to capture the "time runs different/timelessness" inherent in inspirations like the Oz books. While I typically narrate some passage of time to have occurred between the adventures (we only game once a month), I've also drops hints that time "runs strange in Azurth' so they might spend a longer or shorter subjective time on an adventure than what time has passed for folks back in town. This allows me to have a fairly static status quo at times--or to shake things up. For instance, the party return from one adventure to find an election cycle passed and a new Mayor elected--and a new group of heroes the toast of the town!

How about you? Kept really strict time records or done something interesting with the passage of time in your game?

Some Azurth Adventure Digest Art

The art for the Azurth Adventure Digest is rolling in.

Here's a a group of heroes versus the mummy of the Candy Temple by Jason Sholtis:

And here's the creature from the Prismatic Hole by Jeff Call:

Stay tuned for more!

Wednesday Comics: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents

Taking a break from Storm for a week, I want to consider the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, a 60s superhero comic conceived primarily by the great Wally Wood. The series only ran 20 issues in its initial run, but its characters and concepts were appealing enough they there have been several (brief) revivals over the decades.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents combines two popular things in the mid-1960s: spy-fi and Marvel-style superheroics. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stands for The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves (I don't know what that means, either). It's essential SHIELD or UNCLE with more superhero agents. All of them are the product of technology: Dynamo with his thunderbelt, NoMan, the elderly scientist who can transfer his intellect into robotic bodies, and Menthor, a secret traitor with a helmet that gives him mental powers and a more heroic personality.

There enemies are a mostly forgettable cadre of aliens and freedom-threatening organizations: the Warlord, the Subterraneans, S.P.I.D.E.R. They serve their purpose for generating superhero action, particularly rendered in Wally Wood's style.

DC Comics did hardcover archives of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents material when they had the license. These aren't too hard to find, but do require a bit of looking. IDW now owns the license and has put out paperback collections called T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Classics.

And now...Zarak!

Those of you of a certain age may remember the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons toyline line and a certain half-orc assassin by the name of Zarak. I found a nice image of Zarak from 1983's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Characters coloring book that had a bit of a Jack Kirby-esque vibe about it. I believe the artist is actually Jim Mooney.

I thought it would be cool to color and give him a logo:

I might do a few more of the characters in a similar style, if I get the time.

Rifts 1970

Rifts, arriving in 1990, is certainly a product of the 1980s. Could Rifts be scrubbed of its 80s chrome and be translated to another era? Why not? Let me pitch you Rifts 1970.

Now, you might say (but don't, because I will have already said it!): "Isn't Rifts 1970 just Gamma World?" Well, they're both post-apocalyptic games, but Gamma World is right down the middle of post-apocalyptic stuff, whereas Rifts wants to throw a kitchen sink at you: you've got cyberpunk, mecha, magic, Star Wars-style fascism, and the Rifts themselves that can get you pretty much anything else can appear.

In Rifts 1970, the mix is a little different, but there are analogous inspirations. Anime/Manga haven't really made a big impact in the U.S. yet, but there's kaiju films and Astro Boy. Fighting giant monsters would be a bigger thing in Rifts 1970, I think. Mecha would look more like Rog from the Doom Patrol, but the real Glitter Boy replacements might be guys with giant robot friends like Frankenstein Jr.

Cyberpunk hasn't arrived yet either, but computers have and concerns about the possibility of AI. Think Star Trek or Colossus: The Forbin Project. Cyborgs are already around like the Cybermen or the various Robotmen in DC Comics. Probably high tech equipment should be more T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents than Appleseed. This might push things in a bit more of a "superhero" direction, but there is an argument to be made that that's what it always has been.

Magic, of course, works well in either era. A distinctly Ditko-esque Doctor Strange vibe would set Rifts 1970 apart, though.

The Coalition and their not-stormtroopers, the Deadboys, become some other Nazi stand-ins, like HYDRA or any number of villainous comic book organizations or '50s comics alien invaders that were either Nazi or commie substitutes. Of course, Starship Troopers was written in 1959, and we saw how easy it was to paint those guys with a fascist brush in the film adaptation. Maybe the Deadboys can have their powered armor after all?