Marvelous DC Universe

Here's a superhero rpg campaign idea: What if DC had outsourced their Silver Age revival to Atlas/Marvel? Nevermind that there is not really any reason they would have done this, but imaging what it might have been like has a lot of possibilities.

In general, I think it would mean more commie villains in the early days, more contentiousness relationships with supporting characters, and more angst for the characters themselves. This would mean re-imagining the characters that were revamped in the 50s, so Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow would stay the same (at least at initial concept).

What would this do for you? Well, allow you to recreate a lot of DC characters in a Mighty Marvel manner, and give you both universes to plunder for something both fresh and familiar.

Here's an example:

Hal Hogan is an Air Force pilot, flying an experimental spy plane over Southeast Asia when he is shot down. He is captured by red guerillas and in mortal peril thanks to a piece of shrapnel lodged close to his heart! Imprisoned, he meets a strange old man named Yinsen who reveals to him a green lantern carved from a fallen star and a ring. The light of the Green Flame in the lantern stays the motion of the shrapnel and saves Hogan's life, at least temporarily. Yinsen explains he has been an agent of mysterious beings known as the Guardians of the Universe for hundreds of years, but he is too old to continue, and they directed him to choose a successor as the Green Lantern, the protector of this world. He has chosen Hogan to be that successor. Donning the ring (which must be recharged once a day with the Lantern) Hal Hogan becomes one with the Green Flame of Life. He is the Green Lantern!

Hogan escapes the communist forces and returns to America. His injury gets him discharged from the military, but he gets a job at Ferris Aircraft. The owner, Carl Ferris doesn't fully trust Hogan. He believes he was compromised during his time in communist hands. His daughter Carol, though. is in love with the handsome flyboy. Neither is aware that Hogan is secretly the Green Lantern.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Hounds of Marduk

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues with his adventures in the world of Pandarve. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Hounds of Marduk (1985) 
(Dutch: De Honden van Marduk) (part 3)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

The tattooed fisherman who rescue Storm, Nomad, and Ember come from a place called Pandarve's Ribs. Ember won't seem to wake up. The fisherman explains that she must have taken in some of the waste-water from the sewer, which has an intoxicating effect.

Meanwhile, the hound of Marduk they encountered previously has run far to the north. Marduk still watches through the creature's eyes. he and his servants don't know where the it was when it saw Storm, so they have no clue as to where to find him.

The fisherman take Ember to their shaman to cure her. The old man proclaims that since she is in "the sleep of Pandarve, only Pandarve's breath" can save her:

As no one can be "naked" on the Ribs, Storm and Nomad are sent off to get temporary tattoos while Ember is treated.

As days past, the hound makes its way back to its master. Marduk has an idea of what to do to allow the hound to tell him Storm's location. He transforms him into a humanoid form so he is capable of speech:

Back on the ribs, members of the Anti-Marduk group that was trying to capture Storm in the city sneak up and kidnap Ember. She awakens before they make their escape, and her cries summon Storm and Nomad. They threaten to kill Ember if Storm won't come with them.

Angrily, he agrees, and they leave the island in a small boat.

TO BE CONTINUED

Weird Revisited: Magic from Davy Jones' Locker

This post first appeared in November of 2012. The magic items were intended for the world of Weird Adventures, but could be used anywhere.

Besides the riches dredged up from the wrecks at the bottom of Dead Man's Cove, the treasure grotto of the Phantom Diver contains several maritime magic items:

Spyglass: This brass spyglass allows the user to look back into the past as well as into the distance. 1d4 indicates hours, days, months, or years into the past; d20 indicates how many, at GM's discretion.

Diver's Helmet: This antique diver's helmet smells of the briny depths. It allows the wearer to see the shades of things that have died in the area, all the way back to the dawn of life. Spirits appear almost like neon lights, translucent, faintly glowing and colorful.

Whaler's Harpoon: This antique and somewhat rusted tool has a blade strangely unblunted by time. It's a normal weapon against man-sized or smaller creatures but +1 against large adversaries and +2 against anything bigger than that.

Walrus Tusk Scrimshaw: Yellowed tusk engraved with a swirling pattern that perhaps depicts eddies and currents. When held, it allows command of pinnipeds and communication with selkies. Hungry killer whales and sharks, however, will be drawn to anyone holding it.

Adventures on Weird Worlds

Jason "Dungeon Dozen" Sholtis and I were talking the other day about the potential for D&D or Gamma World-esque adventures in a setting inspired by the Silver Age version of Superman's Krypton or Adam Strange's Rann. I've blogged about inspiration from elements of these worlds before (the maps, here, here, and here--and monsters!), but the idea we were bouncing around was sort of a "Dying Krypton" setting. What if there was no cataclysmic destruction but instead civilization just sort of wound down. (Rann already is sort of post-apocalyptic, though recovering.)

How would this sort of setting differ from the usual Dying Earth or even Carcosa? A glance at those maps provides a clue. The planets are fool of a lot of weird, possibly even goofy locales and monsters. They are evocative and intriguing but made up as color in mostly low violence kid's publications of forty years ago, and so are a completely different line of evolution from the pulp fiction that proceeded it than most old school game material. A vein of untapped gold.

Operation Unfathomable by Blacklight

I shoulded the proof of concept version of this cover before, but here's the mostly final version of cover of the DCC Conversion of Operation Unfathomable:

This Woman, This Warrior

In 1958, another Kryptonian craft crashed on Earth. Superman was able to beat the authorities to the crash site and rescue a teenage girl who turned out to be his cousin, Kara Zor-El. She was the last survivor of Argo City, which had remarkable escape the destruction of Krypton by becoming a hastily improvised generation ship, only to have his people succumb to radiation poisoning over the course of the next 30 years.

The comics depicted Kara being placed in an orphanage by her bachelor cousin before being adopted by the kindly Danvers couple. In reality, as in certain “imaginary stories” of the day, Clark Kent was married, and he and his wife, Lois, eventually adopted the girl. Through there government connections, they were able to obtain for her a cover identity, Linda Lee Danvers, an orphaned child who had died. Her Kryptonian heritage was thus safeguarded and kept hidden to allow her a normal childhood, as Kal-El/Clark had had.

But Kara didn’t arrive as an infant. Adapting to life on Earth wasn’t always easy. She had to hide you she was, and she fought against the foreign culture of her adopted world. Kryptonian society had a much greater degree of gender equality than Earth of that era, even in the home of assertive investigative reporter, Lois Lane, and the so-called Man of Tomorrow. Kara defied her cousin and guardian and began adventuring as Supergirl. Superman was eventually forced to publically introduce her.

Kara left home at 18 for Stanhope College and didn’t look back. She got involved in movements for social change: the civil rights movement, protest against the Vietnam War, and the women’s movement. She largely abandoned her superhero identity. In the late 60s, she was living in San Francisco and working at KSF-TV as a camera operator and freelance journalist. That was when she wasn’t involved in activism. She joined the women’s group Sudsofloppen and other organizations, and participated in protests from picketing to guerrilla theater under an assumed name, Karen Starr. It was at one of these protests that she showed up in a cape, white swimsuit, and blue go-go boots. The police and others trying to counter the protesters didn't know what to make of her. The press started calling her Power-Girl, much to her irritation.

By the mid-70s, she was in New York City and took a job as editor of Woman magazine, owned by J. Jonah Jameson. Jameson disliked the “women’s lib” approach the previous editor had taken. He wanted something useful for women: diet tips, fashion, recipes, the like. He was going to be disappointed. The magazine was also provide coverage of a new superhero, Ms. Marvel, who espoused the magazine’s feminist viewpoint. A superhero who was none other than Linda Danvers.

Annihilation and the Dungeoncrawl

Some relatively non-spoilery ways I think the movie adaptation of Annihilation could inform dungeoncrawls:

1. Relatively mundane creatures with an odd twist can create atmosphere, but also a more interesting threat.
2. Oddly behaving things can create a sense of menace without actually doing anything hostile.
3. Dressing a locale is important. The details don't have to be extensive, but they should set the adventuring environment apart from mundane environments.
4. Even a map-able/navigable terrain can be made to feel disorienting or untrustworthy.
5. The terrain itself may be toxic to the visitor. (Operation Unfathomable already points in this direction, as no doubt others have.)
6. The remains and things left behind by those who went before can provide useful clues, but also add to a sense of dread.

My previous posts on Roadside Picnic-inspired elements might be helpful here, too.