Mystery Men

Mystery Men! Anyone?

/ jstater / 13 Comments

Well, I’ve finished my draft of the Mystery Men! Beta Document and put it on the free downloads page. Here’s what you in the studio audience can do to help me produce a free/cheap superhero game that everyone can enjoy:

* If you read it, please let me know what you like and what you dislike and any errors that you notice.

* If you play it, please let me know what works and what doesn’t, and when you email me include your name and the names of other play-testers so I can credit you in the finished product.

I’m going to initiate some play-testing myself, but I really value the opinions of people outside my little circle of friends. In the coming weeks, I’m going to put some stats for the heroes and villains that will appear in the final product up for people to use as they see fit. In the meantime, make some heroes and villains and have a fight or two. Enjoy!

Scaling Speed in Mystery Men!

/ jstater / 6 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that the trick of writing a super heroic RPG is dealing with scale. Whatever system you use has to be able to handle 98 lb weaklings and guys who can bench press locomotives, and it needs to do so in such a way that the two can adventure together – i.e. you have to part ways with reality a bit to make it all work.

If scaling Strength in a comic book hero game is hard to do, scaling speed is just as hard. Again, you need to have a system that accommodates normal (even slow) human beings and folks who can zip around at the speed of light, and you need to integrate speed with the other rules systems to make super speed meaningful, but not overpowering.

My initial idea was to use the traditional movement rate concepts from old school games, but expressed in yards or meters per minute. Thus, a movement rate of 100 became standard. The problem, of course, was that cars, for example, would have a normal movement of about 900, and other vehicles higher than that. That means super speedsters would have the same speed advantages. With most of the action in a comic book hero game taking place in fairly confined quarters, speeds of 900+ don’t have much relevance, and when you get into the 1000’s they become fairly unwieldy. So, I decided to change my scale.

Playing around on Wikipedia, I discovered the concept of “orders of magnitudes of speed”, and decided alter it to fit my purposes. Mystery Men! will have ten speed bands, ranging from 1 (slow humans) to 2 (normal humans) to 10 (speed of light). People can move from one speed band to a higher speed band by running, maintaining the higher speed with feats of Constitution, and reaching even higher speeds (just momentarily) by a feat of Strength.

The speed scale is as follows:

1 – 50 yards/round – old folks, children
2 – 100 yards/round – healthy adult human
3 – 200 yards/round – bicycles, many animals
4 – 500 yards/round – cars, motorcycles
5 – 1500 yards/round – high-speed rail, airplanes
6 – 5000 yards/round – jet airliners
7 – 20,000 yards/round – sound
8 – 100,000 yards/round – supersonic speed
9 – 10,000,000 yards/round – sub-light speed
10 – 20,000,000 yards/round – light speed

Obviously quite a leap from “old lady” to “light speed”, but I think in the context of the game it should work. You’ll have your normal speed, rated 1 to 10 – characters begin with a normal speed of 2. You can run at the next highest speed for 1 round, and thereafter can continue at that speed with a feat of Constitution each round. You can generate a burst of speed at 2 speed levels higher than your normal speed by making a feat of Strength, but the burst only lasts 1 round, max. You always have the option to move at a slower speed, of course. The table included in the rules will show speed per round, speed per turn and mph/kph for each speed rating.

Initiative. which was to be determined by speed, will now be determined by a d10 roll modified by your Dexterity bonus and speed (so, with a 30 Dex and 10 Speed, you’d end up with a +19 to initiative – pretty hard to beat). Speed will also govern how many actions a character can take during a round. When engaged in combat with a foe, compare your speed to his speed. If your speed is twice his speed, you can make two actions (move, attack, activate power, etc) per round. If your speed is triple his speed, you can make three actions. In order to keep super speedsters from being unbeatable, we’ll cap it at three actions per round for now.

Hopefully, this will make speed a relevant ability in the game, while keeping it easy to track and not something that will break the game.

And yes, I think I’ve decided to drop the panel/page/issue time concept for the more traditional rounds/turns, etc. MM! is supposed to be a reworking of old school games to make learning it simpler, so it makes sense to stick with language most gamers already know.

Art by Mike Wieringo

—

RANDOM ANNOUNCEMENTS

Currently, I’m working on NOD 7, which will feature 3 cities. Blackpoort is written and I’m working on Lyonesse now and then have to write Antigoon. Right now, I’m on schedule to publish in the middle of February.

After I adjust the speed rules, I’ll be ready to put the Mystery Men! beta rules out for play testing. If this project interests you, please consider downloading the rules and running a quick game, or even just going through character generation and running a fight. If you do play with the rules (or even just read them), I hope you’ll give me some feedback. The beta rules won’t include the sample setting or all the explanatory text on “what is role playing”, “how you roll dice” – that will be included in the final product. Right now, looks like the final game will come in at a slim 60 pages, so it should be pretty affordable in print, and the e-book will be free.

I’m also working on writing my third Hexcrawl Classic for Frog God Games. The first should see print in February – very excited, as it’s my first freelance sort of gig. I’ve just been tapped to be a part of a much larger project for the Frog God, which I’ll be cranking on for the next couple months. Despite the work load (being busy is a blessing!), I’ll continue to post to the blog just about every day.

Speaking of posting – I’m getting lots of page views on the Megacrawl 3000 posts, but nobody is playing along in the comments – not for the last 2 posts. Since I inteded Megacrawl 3000 as a game for the community at large and not a creative writing exercise for me, I’ll probably drop it after this last episode for lack of participation. If you want to see it continue, by all means get involved!

That’s all for now. Should make another Blackpoort post tonight, and then start posting on Lyonesse later this week. I also want to do some more retro-engineering on Darkness & Dread, have Noble and Everyman classes that need to see the light of day, and want to begin statting out some demon lords for NOD. Lots to do.

Thinking About Feats in Mystery Men!

/ jstater / 4 Comments

So, one thing to come out of my little play-test of Mystery Men! yesterday was that my “feats” concept had some serious flaws. Essentially, feats in MM! are meant to be a catch-all ability check, skill check, saving throw system. It was inspired by the old “X in 6” method of old school fantasy games and the “roll under your ability” score concept we also used back in the day. The trouble with Mystery Men! is one of scale.

Traditional fantasy games have ability scores ranging from 3 to 18. This encompasses the whole of human experience, with a 3 being fairly pitiful and an 18 being the human maximum. Characters in old school fantasy are either human or close enough to human that a simple X in 6 chance works pretty well. Most folk have a 1 in 6 chance to do things, extraordinary folk knock this up to 2 in 6 or 3 in 6. For ability checks, you can roll 1d20, with pitiful characters having a 15% chance of success and amazing characters a 90% chance of success.

In Mystery Men! you need a system that will handle both Willy Lumpkin and The Hulk. This makes a flat 1 in 6 chance a problem, because the Hulk can do things that Lumpkin does not have a 1 in 6 chance of doing. Likewise with “roll under ability score”.

My first instinct was to roll different dice ranges for different types of tasks, trying to roll under an ability score. Initially, I was going to do 1d10 for normal feats (i.e. things a normal person could do with great effort and a bit of luck), 1d20 for heroic feats, 1d20+10 for super feats (things well beyond the capacity of normal human beings) and 1d20+20 for epic feats (things best left to the gods). This meant that Willy Lumpkin, with ability scores probably ranging from 1 to 3, had no chance of performing super or epic feats, and only 10-30% chance of performing normal feats and a 5-15% chance of performing heroic feats. Okay, problem solved.

And then I started playing out the combat. Resisting a power or attack was going to be classed as normal, heroic, super or epic based on the level of the attacker or power user. With Catwoman being 16th level, resisting her attacks and powers would be a super task, and usually beyond the ability of Invisible Woman. A game where a hero or villain always succeeds or always fails against another one is not terribly playable, especially when Invisible Woman and Catwoman were not that far apart in levels.

In my combat example, I decided to change the dice rolls from 1d10 / 1d20 / 1d20+10 / 1d20+20 to 1d10 / 2d10 / 3d10 / 4d10. That removes the problem of Invisible Woman not being able to resist Catwoman, but it reintroduces the problem of Willy Lumpkin having a slim chance (5%) of performing super feats, like leaping over buildings. So, no solution there.

I could bump the feat bonus a character gets, having it match the character’s level. But then level trumps raw ability, and Invisible Woman, with human levels of Strength, can leap over buildings. Not going to work.

I could ditch the idea of using feats for saving throws, and institute a single save value a’ la Swords and Wizardry (which means high level heroes are almost never taken down by powers, and low level heroes are almost always taken down by powers) or even institute different types of saves (Death Rays, Poison, etc) with generally the same effect.

What I’m thinking of doing is giving feats a flat number that one must meet or beat by rolling 1d10 and adding ability score bonus and feat bonus (and also ditching the “normal” feat category) –

Heroic Feats  – meet or beat a 10
Super Feats – meet or beat a 15
Epic Feats – meet or beat a 20

Resisting an opponent’s powers requires you to meet or beat 5 + your opponent’s feat bonus. That would put even 20th level characters in the upper ranges of the heroic level, giving most heroes some chance to resist the powers of their opponents. I’m going to drop the “save vs. attacks” angle, because it’s a pain in the rear and easier to just ditch the “instant knockout” idea. This means the more powers you have the lower your level and thus the easier your powers are to resist, and vice versa.

Now, pathetic man, a 1st level hero with an ability score of 1, is rolling 1d10-1, meaning he can’t perform heroic feats. I can live with that. Not everyone can be a hero all the time, and if this is a character, he doesn’t have a score of 1 in every ability.

Normal woman, a 3rd level hero with an ability score of 3, is rolling 1d10+1, meaning she can perform heroic feats 20% of the time.

Excellent dude, a 6th level hero with an ability score of 6, is rolling 1d10+3, meaning he can perform heroic feats 40% of the time.

Amazing woman, a 10th level hero with an ability score of 10, is rolling 1d10+7, meaning she can perform heroic feats 80% of the time, and super feats 30% of the time.

Maxi-Man, a 20th level hero with an ability score of 30, is rolling 1d10+18. He cannot fail at heroic or super feats, and he performs epic feats 80% of the time. Since this character represents the absolute pinnacle, I think I’m okay with this.

I might also add an optional rule wherein a roll of “1” always introduces a complication to the situation – i.e. you leap over the building, but land on the mayor’s car or crash through the street on the other side. That way, Maxi-Man still has to roll for heroic and super feats, and though he’ll always succeed, the Referee can introduce a complication of some kind 10% of the time.

I’m open to suggestions on this one – what do you think?

—

Picture taken from Amazon. I just finished reading Superman: The Dailies, 1939-1940, and it was great.

Catwoman vs. Invisible Woman

/ jstater / 7 Comments

Now there’s a blog title that has to get some attention, right?

Well, a couple weeks ago I statted up Catwoman and Invisible Woman using the alpha rules I’m writing for Mystery Men! I’m about one or two weeks away from putting my beta rules out there for the world to playtest. The stats below take into account a couple changes from alpha to beta …

Invisible Woman (Sue Richards)

Class: Adventurer
Level: 11
Hit Points: 51
Armor Class: 15 (+1 Dex, +4 Armor)
Feat Bonus: +5
Attack Bonus: +11

Abilities: Str 3 (+0), Dex 5 (+1), Con 5 (+1), Int 10 (+3), Wis 14 (+4), Cha 11 (+3)

Permanent Powers: Force Missile, Invisibility II, Shield
Limited Powers: Force Sphere, Invisibility Sphere, Wall of Force

Catwoman (Selina Kyle)

Class: Adventurer
Level: 16
Hit Points: 53
Armor Class: 18 (+6 Dex, +2 Armor)
Feat Bonus: +7
Attack Bonus: +16

Abilities: Str 5 (+1), Dex 19 (+6), Con 3 (+0), Int 5 (+1), Wis 3 (+0), Cha 10 (+3)

Permanent Powers: Alarm, Feather Fall, Find Clue
Single-User Powers: Moment of Prescience

Now that I have some stats for a hero and a villain, the only thing left to do is have them fight.

Getting wind that a valuable statue of Bast taken from the tomb of the Living Mummy was recently locked in the vault at the Baxter Building, Selina Kyle decides a trip to New York is in order. Doing her homework, she discovers that on one particular night, three of the Fantastic Four will be away from home, Johnny doing some publicity stunt in L.A., Reed lecturing at Medfield College on the possibility of a computer’s circuits being impressed upon a human mind, and Ben Grimm involved in some sort of team up. That left the Invisible Woman alone to hold down the fort, giving the infamous Catwoman odds she could live with.


Having picked her way through the building’s security (involving many heroic feats of Dexterity and Intelligence – see the rules document for an explanation of feat rolls), she finally gets to the vault. Unfortunately, one of those feats was unsuccessful, and the Invisible Woman, getting the alert, proceeds to the vaults to confront what she figures is a routine malfunction. As she enters, the Catwoman strikes …

Panel One
Since CW and IW have the same movement rate, initiative is decided with the roll of 1d10 + Dexterity Modifier. CW rolls 8 while IW rolls a 6. With the initiative, Catwoman decides she better try to knock IW out quickly. In Mystery Men!, you can declare a special attack every round. If you beat your opponent’s DC by 5 or more, you succeed on your special attack. If you beat your opponent’s DC without beating it by 5 or more, you still score a hit and do damage. If you don’t wish to do a special attack, you simply score double damage if you beat your opponent’s DC by 5 or more. For this attack, CW is going to try to knock IW out – if successful with her attack, she’ll score normal damage and IW will have to roll a feat of Constitution to maintain consciousness. So, CW lunges at IW and rolls a 21 (4 + 1 for Str +16 for attack bonus). This not only scores a hit for 2 points of damage, but also forces IW to roll a feat of Constitution to avoid being knocked cold.

Feats replace skills and saving throws in Mystery Men! The dice you roll for a feat depends on the difficulty of the feat, rolling 1d10 for normal feats, 2d10 for heroic feats, 3d10 for super feats and 4d10 for epic feats. To succeed at the feat, you must roll under your ability score + your feat bonus. In IW’s case, she needs to roll under a 10 to make a feat of Constitution. Since CW is 16th level, avoiding her powers and attacks requires a super feat, thus rolling 3d10. IW gets lucky, rolling a 9 and maintaining consciousness.

IW backs off a bit and launches some force missiles. Although based on the magic missile spell, I decided that a power that can potentially be used every round had better require a ranged attack, in this case against a DC of 10 + the opponent’s Dexterity modifier, or 16 in CW’s case. As an 11th level adventurer, IW can launch five missiles, rolling 26, 28, 21, 26 and 13, and thus hitting with four missiles for 4d6 damage + 1 per die for IW’s Dexterity bonus, rolling a 13.

IW still has 49 hit points, while CW is down to 40.

Panel Two
CW rolls a 14 for initiative, IW a 9. CW decides to use her whip this round, making a ranged attack against IW’s DC of 15. Her special attack this round will be tripping, needing a 21 to trip IW and knock her prone. CW has an attack bonus of +16 and a Dex bonus of +6 and rolls a 23 total, scoring 12 points of damage (1d6+6 for high Dex) and forcing IW to make a super feat of Strength to avoid being knocked over. She rolls an 18 and needed to roll an 8 or lower, meaning she hits the floor.

IW has had enough of this nonsense and fortunately can use her Force Sphere while flat on her back. She tries to capture the Princess of Plunder, who must make a heroic feat of Dexterity (roll 2d10) under 27 to avoid it – in other words, she can’t help but flip out of the way, and IW is going to have to take another tack if she’s going to win this fight.

IW has 37 hit points and CW still has 40.

Panel Three
CW rolls 10 for initiative, and IW 4. CW is going to try to knock IW out again, rolling 27 against a DC of 15 and scoring 3 damage and forcing another super Con feat to avoid falling unconscious for 1 page. IW rolls an 18 this time, passing out and leaving CW to make another stab at cracking the vault.

Cracking the vault will also take 1 page, meaning she’ll be dealing with a conscious IW whether she succeeds or not. Cracking the vault, designed by Reed Richards himself, will require a super feat of Intelligence. Catwoman needs to roll a 12 or lower on 3d10, getting a 17 and failing, just as IW returns to consciousness.

IW has 37 hit points and CW still has 40.

Panel Four
CW rolls 9 this time and IW 10. IW decides to activate her invisibility power. Catwoman, noticing that her foe has disappeared, decides to make a run for it. She climbs the wall (a heroic feat, which, with her 19 Dexterity and feat bonus of +6, she can’t fail). Normal climb speed is 30 yards per page (or 3 yards per panel), and we’ll say the vent CW is heading for is about that high off the ground, meaning she makes it to the vent opening on this round and begins crawling through it.

IW has 37 hit points and CW still has 40.

Panel Five
CW rolls a 16 for initiative, IW 6. CW climbs into the vent. Frustrated, but happy that the vault was not breached, IW heads for an elevator to see if she can catch CW on the roof and continue the fight there.

—

So, the rules are still pretty rough, but I think they’re workable. I think I might lower the attack bonus progression, since Defense Class in Mystery Men! is generally not going to keep pace with attack bonuses the way AC in d20 games kept pace with attack bonuses. I think this makes special attacks too easy to pull off. For that matter, I might change the “knocking out” special attack to a stun for 1 panel special attack. I still need to run some tests with lower powered heroes and something with epic heroes to see how things work at those levels.

—

Art by Bruce Timm – originally two separate pieces that I combined.

Deviant Friday – Paul Harmon Edition

/ jstater / 2 Comments

Okay, I guess I’m not done posting this month/year after all. Today’s deviant is Paul Harmon, aka dogmeatsausage. A few different encounters in NOD were inspired by his work – enjoy the last Deviant Friday of 2010!

 

Bats

 

 

I remember the first time I saw that bat dude on the right – immediately decided he lived somewhere in the Klarkash Mts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thundarr was my introduction to the post-apocalyptic world concept – still love it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elder

 

Just for fun, some OMAC stats for Mystery Men! using 10 dice for ability scores and 25,000 XP for powers.
 OMAC
4th level adventurer
Str 8/+2, Dex 7/+2, Con 8/+2, Int 3/+0, Wis 7/+2, Cha 2/+0
HP 32, DC 16, Move 100, Save 13, XP 3200
Powers
Limited – Super Constitution (12/+3), Super Dexterity (11/+3), Super Strength (12/+3)
Single-Use – Armor, Correspond (Brother Eye), Energy Bolt, Endure Elements, Fly, Haste, Heroism I, Jump, Regenerate, Stoneskin

And Now – Our Special Guest Villain

/ jstater / 6 Comments

A couple posts ago I statted up Invisible Woman using the alpha release rules (such as they are) for Mystery Men! Now, to show how the powers can be used to build an essentially non-powered character (and to give some attention to the other big name in comics), I decided to apply some stats to Catwoman.

Even though, for all intents and purposes, Catwoman has no super powers, it is fairly obvious that her abilities far exceed that of a normal human being, even within the fantasy universe of comic books. The powers in the game are really meant to represent results – i.e. what a character can do – not freakish abilities that are handed out by atomic blasts, radioactive animals or sharing some DNA with the gods. In that sense, Catwoman should definitely have some powers.

Ability Scores
While Sue Richards is a “normal person”, ability-wise, with extraordinary powers to make her a super hero, Catwoman is almost the opposite. Catwoman has, above all, impressive dexterity – acrobatics, sneaking about, slinging that whip, etc. Naturally, she has a high charisma as well – you can thank the primarily male audience of comic books for that – and probably a good intelligence and wisdom as well. If there are any stats we can “ignore”, they’re probably strength and constitution. So, we have 14 dice to distribute among our ability scores, we’ll put 1 each in Strength and Constitution, 2 each in Charisma, Intelligence and Wisdom and the remainder, 6, in Dexterity:

Strength: 5 (+1)
Dexterity: 25 (+8)
Constitution: 3 (+0)
Intelligence: 8 (+2)
Wisdom: 6 (+1)
Charisma: 10 (+3)

Wow – rolled extremely well for Dexterity. If I was doing a straight conversion of the character, I probably wouldn’t have gone that high with Dexterity, but since I’m randomizing this, we’ll go with 25.

Powers
Selina Kyle is an adventurer. Because she’s a major character and a long-time villain, and because I’m going to pit her against Invisible Woman to demonstrate the combat rules, I’m giving her 50,000 XP to spend on powers and levels. Normally, I would give her Super Dexterity (re-named from Cat’s Grace), but since her ability score roll was so good, I don’t need to. Her powers (and costs) are as follows:

Alarm (limitless) – 1000 XP
Catfall (limitless) – 1000 XP
Find Clue (limitless) – 1000 XP
Moment of Prescience (single use) – 7500 XP

The new incarnation wears goggles, which we’re going to invest with the Darkvision power (limitless) for 1,500 XP. Catwoman also carries a whip (ranged weapon, 10′ range, 1d6 damage). She wears leather armor.

The total XP cost of Catwoman’s powers would be 12,000 XP, leaving her 38,000 XP to put towards her level, making her a 16th level villain.

Our finished Catwoman conversion looks like this:

CATWOMAN
Name: Selina Kyle
Class: Adventurer
Level: 16
Hit Points: 65
Armor Class: 20 (+8 Dex, +2 Armor)
Saving Throw: 7
Attack Bonus: +16

Abilities: Str 5 (+1), Dex 25 (+8), Con 3 (+0), Int 8 (+2), Wis 6 (+1), Cha 10 (+3)

Powers: Limitless – Alarm, Feather Fall, Find Clue; 1/issue* – Moment of Prescience.

* At the moment, I’m doing time in Mystery Men! in terms of panels (about 1 minute), pages (10 minutes) and issues (1 day). One commenter last time didn’t care for this, and I’ll admit it’s cutesy (kinda like calling a referee a Dungeon Master), but I kinda like it. I’m not married to the concept, though, so I’d love to hear what others think of it.

So – next time around I’ll run a little scenario in which Catwoman has broken into the Baxter Building to steal a cat statuette taken from the tomb of the Living Mummy. Sue Richards hears the alarm and goes to investigate …

Catwoman is the property of D.C Comics and the application of Mystery Men! stats and use of images of the character in this blog post is not intended to threaten or infringe on their copyright or intellectual property. Top image is Julie Newman as Catwoman from the greatest TV show ever made, and the bottom image is by Darwyn Cooke.

Mystery Men! Update

/ jstater / 5 Comments

Now that PARS FORTUNA, NOD 6 and Hexcrawl Classic #2 are off my plate, I have some breathing room to work on Mystery Men! The alpha document now has magic-user spells from level 1 to 5 converted into powers. The character creation section is about 80% complete and most other rules sections are outlined. While I’ve been writing out the powers, I’ve become very itchy to write up some heroes, especially heroes that everybody knows and loves to give people an idea of how the game works. With that in mind, I give you a brief conversion of the first lady of the Marvel Universe – Invisible Woman into Mystery Men! stats.

Ability Scores
So, first things first, we need to work on ability scores. For the most part Sue Richards is a normal person, ability-wise, with extraordinary powers. For that reason, I’m going to assign two dice to every ability except Wisdom and Charisma, which get three dice each to represent her beauty and common sense Rolling the dice, we get the following stats:

Strength: 5 (+1)
Dexterity: 5 (+1)
Constitution: 8 (+2)
Intelligence: 10 (+3)
Wisdom: 14 (+4)
Charisma: 11 (+3)

Powers
Sue is going to be an adventurer rather than scientist or sorcerer. Because she’s a major character and a long-time hero, we’re going to give her 50,000 XP to spend on powers and levels. Her powers (and costs) are as follows:

Force Missile (limitless) = 1,000 XP
Force Sphere (limited) = 6,000 XP
Shield (limitless) = 1,000 XP
Wall of Force (limited) = 9,000 XP
Invisibility II (limitless) = 10,000 XP
Invisibility Sphere (limited) = 3,600 XP

In addition, her costume (designed by Reed) is invested with two powers, Armor and Endure Elements. This costs an additional 200 XP.

The total XP cost of Sue’s powers would be 30,800, leaving her 19,200 XP, making her an 11th level hero.

Our finished Invisible Woman conversion looks like this:

INVISIBLE WOMAN

Name: Sue Richards
Class: Adventurer
Level: 11
Hit Points: 62
Armor Class: 15 (+1 Dex, +4 Armor)
Saving Throw: 9
Attack Bonus: +11

Abilities: Str 5 (+1), Dex 5 (+1), Con 8 (+2), Int 10 (+3), Wis 14 (+4), Cha 11 (+3)

Powers: Limitless – Force Missile, Invisibility II, Shield; 1/page* – Force Sphere, Invisibility Sphere, Wall of Force.

* At the moment, I’m doing time in Mystery Men! in terms of panels (about 1 minute), pages (10 minutes) and issues (1 day).

Invisible Woman is the property of Marvel Entertainment and the application of Mystery Men! stats and use of images of the character in this blog post is not intended to threaten or infringe on their copyright or intellectual property.

Election Day!

/ jstater

Today is Election Day in the Land of Nod – in particular, the deadline for Golden Age patrons of the Mystery Men! project to get their votes in for which heroes are to be illustrated for the game. To pique interest in this monumental election, I present the current front runners …

 

Captain Triumph
Black Fury
Wildfire
Magic Agent
Miss Victory
Phantom Lady
Swiftarrow

If you’re a Golden Age patron and you haven’t voted yet, get to it – especially if your favorite isn’t on that list above! At midnight (Pacific time) the polls will close and I’ll send the official commission to Joel Carroll.

Mystery Men! on Kickstarter – Final

/ jstater

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1931648155/mystery-men-a-rules-lite-comic-book-hero-game/widget/card.js

Yes – the Kickstarter patronage project for Mystery Men! is finito! It’s been a fun experience running this, and I must say that Kickstarter is a really well organized, easy to use system for this kind of thing. So, today is the last chance to be involved at the $10 Silver Age level or $20 Golden Age level. Thanks again to everyone who has checked it out, and especially to everyone who has joined in. I can’t wait to commission the art!

—

By the by – I’ll be posting some new Western Venatia stuff tonight (if you’re into that sort of thing).

Mystery Men! Update – The Final Countdown

/ jstater / 2 Comments

 

The last year has been a fun one for me, filled with new experiences – blogging, publishing, being published and running a patronage project. Well, the last of those experiences is in its final hours – 33 hours as I write this. I again want to thank everyone who has signed on as a Silver Age or Golden Age patron, including our three newest Golden Agers, Doc Grognard, Brian Blakley and Johnny Splendor. The project is now funded up to $290, which should net us some nice art for Mystery Men! I’m also happy to announce that Pierre Villeneuve, who draws golden age heroes for the Flashback Universe, has opened his library to the project as well. Of course, if you’d like to slip into the project under the wire, you can still go HERE to become a patron.

Once the Kickstarter project is officially closed tomorrow I will be sending out ballots on which heroes are to be illustrated by Joel Carroll (that’s one of his pieces at the top of the post). When all the ballots are in and the money is sent to me (Kickstarter says that the money transfer takes a couple weeks) I will make the official commission with Joel and then dive head first into the Mystery Men! rules.

For the last update, I now give you the final batch of heroes seeking an illustration. I call this final batch “Everybody Else”, because it includes, well, everybody who didn’t fit into a category I already posted but was so awesome (read “bizarre”) that I had to post them.

 

Okay, I love the Venture Brothers and Tick franchises, and definitely have a soft spot for goofy hero concepts and names. Barry Kuda takes the cake! Honestly, he’s Aquaman with a sillier name, and for this, I love him.

 

Carol is orphaned after an attack on her parents. An eagle carries her to the Dawn Land, where she is raised by wolves and eventually becomes the leader of the pack.

 

Mekano is a robot invented by young scientist Bill Foster. He is stolen by the Nazis, but beats the crap out of them and returns to his creator to be used a tool of justice. Every comic book game needs at least one kick-ass robot.

 

Minimidget and his sidekick and girlfriend, Ritty, are the victim of a shrink ray. They fight crime using miniature cars and airplanes, and Minimidget uses a tiny sword and rides a rabbit named Bucky. The toy line just creates itself!

 

Brett Carson has super strength and two sidekicks, Kid Muscles and Miss Muscles, and frankly was just so creepy I had to put him in the mix.

 

I think part of the beauty of the Golden Age of comics is that it was a Golden Age – there was so much demand for comic books that just about any idea, no matter how odd, might make it into print. Hence – the Purple Zombie, controlled by one of his creators, Dr. Hale, he is used to fight crime.

 

The Red Panther protects the people of Africa (a large area to protect) from those who would prey on them. Getting his costume from a tribal chief, it is the skin of a mythical red panther, and by wearing it he becomes the panther’s representative on Earth.

[Correction – I originally thought he was the son of a tribal chief, and thus an African hero. From looking at a couple comics, it now appears he is a white guy doing the Tarzan bit. Somewhat disappointing, but I think he could easily be re-created as an African hero).

 

A taxi driver (real name unknown), he gains the power of the Silver Streak after being hypnotized by a swami who is into building race cars. Oh yeah, he also has a secret fluid in his blood that lets him defy gravity. The Venture Bros. have nothing on the Golden Age of comics.

 

 

Jon Dart, newspaper editor, fights crime as Swiftarrow. I like this guys dark look and the fact that he uses a crossbow instead of the traditional bow.