Toward a System for Four-Color Sword & Sorcery

I've been thinking about cobbling together a system for a Bronze Age of Comics Sword & Sorcery rpg, a rarefied genre, perhaps, but one I'm quite fond of. I figure it will be a Frankenstein's monster of ideas from Year Zero Engine games, Broken Compass, and a few things from 2d20, maybe. Like all of those games, I'm thinking its a d6 dice pool system. The base roll will be akin to the Attribute+Skill of those systems.

The attributes with the appropriate flavor came relatively easily:

• MIGHT: Force and physical power.
• DARING: quick motion and boldness of action.
• INTELLECT: Intelligence and reason.
• INSTINCT: Intuition and perception.
• CUNNING: Deception and manipulation.
• PRESENCE: Charisma and force of personality.

The skills though have been much harder. I was never able to get the list as comprehensive and right-sized as I wanted. Ultimately, I decided to go the direction of some of the 2d20 games and the Atomic Robo rpg (which uses a form of Fate) and go with something a bit broader than standard skills. I settled on calling them "Domains."

• SWORDS: The use of weapons and the general application and defense against violence. It also covers a practical knowledge of armor, weaponry, martial styles, tactics, and strategy. 
• DEEDS: Acting boldly and physically to alter or navigate the environment or withstand its rigors. It is used to climb or leap, push on despite exhaustion, or smash physical obstacles, but also to pass detected, hide, or hold one’s drink. 
• WILDS: Wisdom taught by the wilderness and living close to nature. It covers discerning the best way to move through difficult terrain, finding or building shelter, and tracking and reading sign, but also interacting with wild and domestic animals and knowledge of plants. 
• CITY: Knowledge born of the habitations of humans and their societies. It covers a character’s learning and ability to find and acquire new information, but also their sophistication in regard to social graces and etiquette. 
• WORDS: Relating to and communicating with others. It is used to influence, inspire or sway others through impassioned or reasoned arguments–or lies, or to discern the intent of others doing the same.
• SORCERY: Knowledge of the arcane or occult arts. It covers the reading of mystic tomes, the recalling of esoteric lore, the performance of spells or rituals, and sometimes resisting the effects of magic.

The astute reader will note they form pairs of sorts. I think 36 possible combinations of the Attributes and the Domains covers pretty well most relevant skill areas. Some are obvious like Might+Swords being used for melee attacks, but others are perhaps less so but hopefully make sense, like Intellect+Wilds being used to navigate by the stars or identify medicinal (or poisonous plants). Some combinations might seem equally plausible for some actions, but I see that as a feature not a bug.

Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1982 (week 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of May 6, 1982. 

Arak Son of Thunder #12: Thomas and Colon/Acala continue Arak's adventures in Greece. After getting shot by the arrow of a soldier of Byzantium last issue, Arak's new friend Khiron the Centaur is dying must reach the river Styx and cross into Hades. He's followed on that journey by the soldiers, but also by Arak and Satyricus. The soldiers enter the Underworld after Brutius kills one of his own men to distract the guardian Cerberus. Satyricus uses his pipes to put Cerberus to sleep, then he and Arak use a coin from the dead soldier to pay for passage over the Styx. In the end, Arak kills Brutius by drowning him in the river. Khiron is then allowed final peace, while his friends depart once again toward Byzantium.

The backup in this issue is the origin of Valda by the Thomases and Colon. Valda is revealed to be the daughter of Bradamante and a protege of Malgigi. She was taught warrior's skills by the spirit of a dead knight. 

DC Comics Presents #48: Mishkin/Cohn and Novick/McLaughin turn in a lackluster effort about alien octopoids invading Earth, and Superman and Aquaman being on-hand to stop them. Between this and the recent backup stories in Action, Aquaman has dealt with a lot of octopoid aliens lately.

The backup by Thomas and Alcala deals with the Black Pirate and has his son convincing him to side with the Puritans over the Crown.

Fury of Firestorm #3: Conway and Broderick/Rodriquez are doing the Spider-Man thing where our hero just can't get a break. Firestorm tracks down the muggers responsible for the death of John Ravenhair's grandfather, and Stein has to keep Ronnie in check to keep him from hurting them. Then, Ronnie goes home and his father is angry that he was kicked off the basketball team. When Ronnie can't explain why, his dad slaps him. Ronnie's girl also breaks up with him. 

Meanwhile, Killer Frost has escaped at her trial. She goes to the Bronx reservoir and freezes it solid. Then she turns her power onto the rest of the city and coats the five Burroughs with a thick sheet of ice. Firestorm finds Killer Frost sitting atop a custom-made ice throne on the roof of City Hall. Frost forces Firestorm to bow down before her and acknowledge her as the Queen of New York.

Justice League #205: Conway and Heck/Tanghal bring the Royal Flush Gang arc to well-needed close. Elongated Man and Black Canary capture the Ten aboard the satellite, but not before Green Arrow joins the ranks of comatose JLAers in the hospital. Batman and Flash join Elongated Man and Black Canary for an attack on the Royal Flush Gang's hideout, only to be taken out of action, one by one. In the end, the villains are predictably (it was setup in the first issue) betrayed by the Jack, who has conspired with Black Canary to take down King and Queen and reveal Ace as a robot. The hospitalized League members are saved when the astral self of Hector Hammond, the Royal Flush Gang's secret organizer, Wild Card, is unexpectedly attacked by the mental persona of  Prof. Stein, the only one aware of Hammond's psychic presence.

Weird War Tales #114: Kanigher and Carillo have the Creature Commandos seemingly beaten, forced to perform in a circus for the Nazi leadership, including Hitler. The Commandos allowed themselves to get captured, though, so they could get into the concentration camp where a French scientist they were looking for had been sent. The Commandos liberate the camp, but the scientist chooses to stay and fight as a partisan rather than coming with. There's a pretty good sequence in this issue where the parachuting commandos have to fight with a German fighter squadron attacking them.

Wonder Woman #294: Thomas/Wolfman and Colan/McLaughlin start a new story that seems to involve mind controlling hand held video games--probably something of a topic de jour in 1982. First Wonder Woman rescues a trucker who wrecked his rig because of a compulsion to play the game. Then a copy of the game gets into the hands of the Blockbuster, who is staying with the Macon family in Bleak Rock. When Mr. Macon tries to take the game away, Blockbuster gets angry and, resorting to savagery for the first time since meeting the Macons, smashes out of their house and runs off. While Diana Prince is at her surprise birthday party (the day is actually the fake birthdate she gave the U.S. Army), she hears on the news that Blockbuster is attacking missile silos in the Appalachians. AS Wonder Woman, she goes to the Appalachians and battles Blockbuster until little Carrie Macon gives him the broken video game, which calms him right down. Wonder Woman allows Blockbuster to go back with the Macons, which seems a bit dangerous, but okay. Later, Wonder Woman tells Steve that there is something sinister about the "Commander Video" game, but after she leaves, he takes the game out of his desk drawer and starts playing it.

Weird Revisited: The Anthology Crawl

This post was originally published on May 2, 2013, shortly after the death of Andrew J. Offutt.

News of Andrew J. Offutt's passing on April 30 got me to thinking about the Sword & Sorcery anthology series he edited (Swords Against Darkness) and fantasy anthologies in general. It seems to me you could use such an anthology (or anthology series) for inspiration and nonrandom "random placement" of encounters/things of interests in a hexcrawl or dungeoncrawl.

Simply pick an anthology. Read every story in it (even the duds--but skimming is ok) and pick some interesting element out of each, be it a monster, encounter, location, or item. Place these on your map in order, or arrange them to taste. You could even get more "madlibs" about it and predetermine what you were going to take from each story (an item, a place, an encounter), before you read (or re-read) the story, forcing you to stretch your creative a bit more to fit it in.

The Grind of Acheron

There is a realm where the obdurate, crystalline structure of a Mechanus shatters and fragments, floating free into the void of half-formed concept. This is a border, though not any physical border because the clockwork nirvana is infinite and redundant in its mechanism, but a conceptual border where the Prime Mover's certainty no longer holds, where the grand program fails. This was the place where, after the fall from Unity (as Law sees it), rebellious Archons sundered themselves from Mechanus. This is the ideaspace separating Pure Law from Hell. This is Acheron.

It's a hell of sorts in its own right. Its acolytes know it as the Crucible. Here, they contend, new truths of Law are formed. Perhaps one day there will be one stronger and surer than either Hell or Mechanus? Adepts of Pure Law view it as gall on the purity of Order, the place where Hell's error abrades it. The Lords of Hell see it as an opportunity.

Pieces of supernal machinery break off at the edges of Mechanus, twisting and reforming, to store failing Order within, into planet-size Platonic solids which continue to degrade, erode and crumble. These have been colonized by numerous beings: malcontents from Hell, reformed things of Chaos, and authoritarian souls with iron dreams of their own version of Order. All the would-be dictators and tyrants begin to gather their followers among the lost and the beaten and forge their own armies of conquest. And then they go to war.

The struggle is as senseless as it is endless. None of the despots or authorities are ever able to overwhelm the others and seldom do they convert them. The strength of Law is shattered, after all. Also, none of them have clear vision of Unity, for they were only born after it. They merely ape what they know of Hell, crudely. 

One might be tempted to view Acheron as a place of Chaos, but philosophers point out that when taken as a whole, the plane is as predictable as Mechanus. Its war machines grind forever on at the behest of devils who will never achieve the godhood they crave.

Wednesday Comics: DC, July 1982 (week 4)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, we review the comics hitting the newsstand on April 29, 1982.

Action Comics #533: Wolfman and Swan resolve the H.I.V.E. story. The organization threaten the world with a cloud of nuclear waste to distract Superman so they can kill Jimmy and Lois. Our heroes stay one step ahead. 

In the Atom backup, Air Wave and his father D.A. Larry Jordan help the tiny titan foil a Dallas oilman's plot to blow up the nuclear physicists' convention.

All-Star Squadron #11: Thomas and Gonzales/Ordway have Akhet and his Flying Eye are preparing the annex in the Earth in the name of his Brotherhood. After an encounter with the All-Stars, the alien abducts Hawkgirl, Steel, Robotman, and Atom. While the Flying Eye patrols the globe, the world leaders weigh their options. A group of All-Stars investigating the disappearance of a group of missing scientists and the captured All-Stars in the Eye both discover the same thing: Anton Hastor, the supposedly dead enemy of Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #5: The Zoo Crew help museum curator Oklahoma Bones (son of the famous archeologist) with the issue of alien easter eggs uncovered before World War II on Easter Bunny Island. Pig-Iron accidentally activates an egg and releases an alien yolk monster. The Crew ultimately scrambles the egg monster, but at the annual White House Easter Egg hunt a visiting ambassador turns out to be the Ratzi Baron von Vermin and the eggs he donated eggs are duplicates of the one which nearly destroyed the Zoo Crew.

Detective Comics #516: Conway and Newton bring the School of Crime storyline to a close. The criminals catch on to Batman's disguise as Matches Malone. The Headmaster asks him to be the next guy to dress up as Batman for a demonstration. Batman realizes what they are up to and escapes the trap, then starts taking the thugs down one by one. The Headmaster has a total breakdown seeing all his plotting and planning brought to an end. Meanwhile in Gotham, Vicki Vale is pushed to deliver her photos with evidence of Batman's identity--which will go into the hands of Rupert Thorne, and Gordon becomes partners with Jason Bard, determined to find the truth behind Hamilton Hill.

In the Batgirl backup by Burkett and Delbo, Barbara is in a bad way after the bite of Lady Viper. While she remains unconscious for about a week, Lady Viper continues her criminal spree. But when Barbara finally wakes up, she finds out things have gotten even worse: She's now a snake woman like Viper!

New Adventures of Superboy #31: An obsessed scientist gives his son super-powers. As Pulsar, he's pitted against the Boy of Steel. Dear old Dad continues to sap Superboy's strength with a red sun ray just to make sure of his kid's victory. In the end, though, tips from Pa Kent on the "sweet science" of boxing help Superboy win the day, and Pulsar turns against his father's "win at all costs" methods.

Dial H for Hero continues to be a thing. They fight a villain named Whitefire and their are two characters created by one fan this issue, which is notable, but honestly that's all I recall and I only read it two days ago.

Tales of the New Teen Titans #2: Wolfman and Perez reveal the origin of Raven, most of which we knew already, but now we get more of her time in Azarath and the reveal (at least I think it was a reveal) that Trigon was actually born of the evil of the people Azarath they cast out into the space between dimensions. One nice touch is how questions the Titans ask Raven as she's telling the story kind of lampshade questions the reader might have like: "How did these people leave Earth and go to this place between all dimensions to begin with?" Anyway, given that most of this was known, I don't feel like the extended origin justifies its page count.

Unknown Soldier #265: Haney and Ayers/Talaoc send the Soldier to North Africa where he must solve the murder of the tyrannical Brigadier General "Bull" Bannon. He has full authority to act as judge, jury, and executioner, but Bannon was hated by his men and the Colonel that seems likely to have killed him is beloved and by all appearances a fine leader. This one is continued to next issue.

The Losers encounter some kids really gungho to go to war and the Losers are sort of forced to let them in a story by Kanigher and Evans, which is disappointing in that it barely uses the Losers at all. Kanigher/Severin bring the Enemy Ace back to the killer skies where takes out some French planes trying to ambush him then tangles with crazy ol' Steve Savage briefly.

World's Finest Comics #281: Burkett and Novick bring Superman's and Batman's class with the military name-themed b-listers to a close. While Batman prepares to thwart their plans from the inside, Superman escapes the timeless dimension they sent him to by focusing on his heartbeat and thus bringing time to the timeless place. With the team back together, the bad guys go down. 

Next up, Green Arrow tracks down a homeless woman to was witness to an arson for insurance money scam, but not before the arsonists kill her. Ollie figures out the real estate mogul responsible and blackmails him into building a homeless shelter to avoid jail. Rozakis and Saviuk still have Hawkman out in space fighting aliens. This incident has gone on too long for me. We end on the Bridwell/Newton Marvel Family, which has the Family (plus Kid Eternity) having to contend with a giant Mr. Mind.

Weird Revisited: Comic Book Swordswomen of the Seventies

The original version of this post appeared in 2010...

 

"Sword-swinging fantasy protagonist" has generally been a male gig. The pulps gave us a number of Sword & Sorcery heroes of renown, but Jirel of Joiry, CL Moore's "gal Conan," is the only heroine of note from the era--Howard's Dark Agnes being a "historical" adventuress. It wasn't until the Sword & Sorcery revival of the late seventies-early eighties that more women joined the fray.

Despite the smaller number of Swords and Sorcery heroes in comics, there's a much larger percentage of swordswomen. This can probably be attributed to the visual nature of comics--and the inherent appeal of scantily-clad warrior ladies to a predominantly male audience. Despite that, the beauteous women warriors of comics are for the most part more obscure than their male counterparts. It's time they got their due, starting with the trailblazers of the 1970s.

The first swordswoman of the seventies didn't have to deal with sorcery, but she did exist in a post-apocalyptic-fantasy setting, so I'm going to give her a nod. Lyra of the Femizons is from the pages of Savage Tales (vol. 1) #1 (1971) in a story called "Fury of the Femizons." This might be Stan Lee's update on William Moulton Marston's psychosexually underpinned Wonder Woman concept, or an alarmist "cautionary tale" of women's lib gone wild--or, you know, an idea he scrawled on a napkin at a local deli to fill pages.

Lyra's 23rd Century is essentially a reverse Gor, or The Planet of the Apes if you replace "apes" with "Amazons." Lyra is the toughest gladiatrix around, defeating (and killing) the weak for the "vicious voluptuaries" of Queen Vega's court. That's until she meets hunky slave Mogon and agrees to help him with his revolutionary aims for the sake of love. It all ends tragically, of course--well, mostly for Mogon. Lyra is forced to kill him to "prove" her loyalty to Vega. But she feels really bad about it and realizes, "when a man is but a slave--it is the women who live in bondage." Not sure what Lee meant there, but let's move on.

Our next swordsman is a little less obscure. Red Sonja, the so-called She-Devil with a Sword, debuted in 1973 in Conan the Barbarian #23. Sonja was Roy Thomas' Hyborian Age adaption of Sonya of Rogatino in his Conan-ified interpretation of Robert E. Howard's historical actioner "The Shadow of the Vulture." Thomas' Sonja got magical puissance with a blade from a goddess, along with geas that she would never know (in the Biblical sense) a man until he had defeated her in fair combat. After her Conan appearances, she got a famous chain-mail bikini from artist Esteban Maroto and a lot of further appearances, including a succession of three self-titled series.

Marvel's loss of the Howard licenses couldn't sheathe Sonja's sword. She came back, and so did her chain-mail outfit so beloved by artists and fans. After a couple of one shots at other companies, Dynamite Entertainment picked up the character in 1999, and she's still going strong in an ongoing series and a succession of limiteds.

Just as Red Sonja was beginning to climb in popularity, DC unleashed their own swordswoman. Raven-haired Starfire got her own title from the start, debuting in 1976. The creation of David Micheline and Mike Vosburg, Starfire swung her sword for her world’s freedom from the alien Mygorg and Yorg for only 8 issues. Like Lyra, she had a dead love for motivation, and like Red Sonja, she was always spurning the advances of men.

The next two heroines chronologically have a connection to Red Sonja. The first, and the one to appear in the seventies, was Ghita of Alizarr. Frank Thorne took over the pencilling chores for Red Sonja in Marvel Feature #2 (Jan. 1976) and continued through the eleventh issue of her first self-titled series. Thorne spent most of the seventies getting photographed with attractive women--mostly by dressing up like a wizard and judging Red Sonja lookalike contests at conventions:

It's fair to say that ending his tour on Red Sonja didn't end his interest in buxom warrior women, so he created his own. In Warren's futuristic 1984 #7 (1978), the Red Sonja-reminiscent but blonde-tressed, Ghita of Alizarr debuted. Freedom from Comics Code restrictions freed Ghita from her clothes--frequently--and she proved not at all encumbered by any Sonja-esque restrictions on whom she might have sex with or how often.

Ghita appears in three issues of 1984 and also in several collections where Thorne gets to play Thenef the Wizard in the cover photographs.

And here our heroines ride forth out of the seventies. 

Go Ape

 

Over on the Flashback Universe Blog, Jason Sholtis and I have started an episode by episode review and commentary on The Planet of the Apes 1974 TV show.

Head over there are check it out if that short of thing interests you.