There are times that I shouldn’t be allowed to indulge in listening to music. In particular, songs that encourage me to design characters for games I’m unlikely to play, but in the off chance that other Capes players actually stumble by my blog and because I really, really need to get back into the rhythm of writing …

Edwin Maelraith

Love-Struck Mastermind

Abilities

Powers

• 1: Minions!
• 3: Global Conspiracy
• 2: Big Bad Lieutennant of the Hour

Styles

• 2: Friends in High Places
• 4: “I did it all for her/you!”
• 3: Untouchable
• 1: Voice of God

Attitudes

• 5: Obsessed
• 4: Love-Struck
• 2: Driven
• 3: Resigned
• 1: Controlled

Drives

• 4: Obsession
• 2: Pride
• 1: Power
• 1: Despair
• 1: Fear

Background

Middle management in one of the smaller global conspiracies is actually a pretty nice gig, if you’re in your mid-twenties and fresh out of Yale with an MBA. Nice office, important work, knock off the books of a small African nation this week, organize the contacts with the insiders in Gotham’s corrupt police network the next. Almost no chance there’ll be some costumed do-gooder busting through the skylight. Edwin Maelraith was pretty comfortable at having risen to his level of incompetence thanks to the Peter Principle and a very marginal level of personal motivation. He had a number of researchers and a small office of desk drones under his purview and he saw no reason at all to work any harder for ULER. In fact, he had no idea what ULER was even supposed to stand for, and really couldn’t find much reason to care.

That is, until he met Amber-Lynn Sprayberry, the daughter of one of the researchers under him. It should have been a no-brainer, right? She was beautiful, honey-blonde hair to her shoulders, funny, cute, late teens and very much interested in her father’s work. Really, he should have been a shoe-in for her to fall for, marry, and raise 2.5 kids with in a small suburban apartment with a dog and a conspiracy-mandated tap on every phone.

But he just couldn’t seem to catch her eye. Part of the problem was that he was just too comfortable. In an organization filled with dashing figures with ambitions and not a little insanity, he was an accountant, a little bit of a people-person and just a touch bland. In fact, he didn’t work his way up to his place in ULER by planning a bank robbery and getting away with it, or running a small criminal group that stole a plasma-laser. He just consistently, calmly, even blandly made sure his division kept turning a neat profit, didn’t stand out too much, and kept the folks under him in the hierarchy happy. Dr. Sprayberry enjoyed working for Edwin more than any of his predecessors; not once had Edwin attempted to abscond with a piece of technical gadgetry or accidently leaned on something and blew up the lab. The budget was even balanced!

Edwin tried everything he could think of to try and woo Amber-Lynn. Flowers? Nice dinners? Charming conversation? Nothing. Oh, it wasn’t that she was unkind to him; she was always unfailingly pleasant and seemed to find Edwin if not titilating, a “good friend.”

Trapped in the Friend Zone, Edwin despaired. Until he saw Amber-Lynn hanging on the arm of one of his superiors in the organization at the Christmas party (with a Titanic theme) that Edwin had planned! It was at that moment the future of ULER as an organization was set.

Edwin Maelraith had decided to get promoted.

Do you know what happens when you give a man with solid middle management skills a burning, searing obsessive motivation to succeed for the love of a woman? In twenty years, he rises to the very top, runs the whole show with the comfortable disinterest of an expert accountant, and … he’s still a guy with an MBA from Yale who might be one of the most powerful 100 men on Earth (though he’d be the first to tell you he’s among the bottom of that list), and wears white shirts and sensible slacks. He just happens to order hits on powerful-yet-obscure people, run three small African nations, and launder the entire national income of Guam.

And he’s still trying to catch Amber-Lynn’s eye and hold it.

Dr. Amber-Lynn Sprayberry

(Mad?) Conspiracy Scientist

Obsession Exemplar for Edwin Maelraith.

Issue

“I need Amber-Lynn to love me, but she’s just not that into me.”

Free Conflict

Event: Edwin and Amber-Lynn share an intimate moment.

Abilities

Attributes

• 3: (Mad?) Science
• 2: Analyze
• 1: Research

Styles

• 3: “That can’t be right!”
• 1: Examine Sample
• 2: Miss the subtext
• 4: Smile lights up the room

Attitudes

• 5: Shocked
• 4: Self-Involved
• 2: Curious
• 1: Confused
• 3: Jaded

Drives

• 5: Undifferentiated

Background

Ever since she was in high school, her father’s boss, Edwin Maelraith has been trying to take her out. Most girls would be a little put out at his increasing fixation on them, going from nice dinners and lovely movies to promises of the ownership of Australia and a ring made from the largest diamond in the world, stolen from the core of the orbiting super-laser. Truth is, Amber-Lynn enjoys the attention and has no intention of putting Edwin off, but she’s just not that into him.

Doctor Sprayberry the elder died while she was finishing up grad studies at MIT and it was a natural transition for her to take his place in ULER — scratch that, Maelstrom — in the R&D department that Maelright used to run before he started moving up.

Still cute, perky, and a little bit scatter-brained in her thirties, Dr. Amber-Lynn Sprayberry only vaguely gets that she’s the reason the Maelstrom organization moves on some of its more audacious plans. But she’s flattered. And Edwin’s precious. Such a good friend.

Since hearing point5b talk about last night’s D&D romp through the night with bruceb and crew, and having the opportunity to look at chargen with a bit of time, it occured to me exactly what kind of character I should create.

Evil, of course, as the “sane” side of the darker sort in the new hierarchy. Too stable and, indeed, lawful to be considered Chaotic Evil but certainly not interested in either playing by others’ rules nor simply distangling himself from such, rather favouring the end of destroying any order which is not his own. Certainly not neutral, then.

Halfling life being what it is, the type of halfler who’d take up the chain mail and skills of a cold combatant have to be rather few, and fewer yet are the number who’d take up swords and go mercenary amongst the tall folk because of his need to lead men, to command their respect, and to have they depend on so-much-smaller he.

And once he had — oh, once he had — how he enjoyed it. Not a thug but a commander of thugs. Not a cutpurse, but they knew who could orchestrate the best hits. Not an assassin, but he’d paid a few. And all that as part of the city guard itself, a step or two up off the street beat and largely kept so close rather than promoted away by the fact he knows the place too well to be let off so easy. He’s not a dirty guard because he loves the city that all these wheels within wheels he spends so much time musing over, he loves the place they spin.

Broody and foul-tempered, most of the folks on his streets thought he was one of the rogues, rather than one of the arms bringing them in by the wheelbarrow full, for the cells and the cheap burials. See him on the street, wearing dirty leather and with a knife on each hip, either nearly as big as he is, you might be forgiven the thought. See him stomping down the street at the head of two lines of men, all in chain mail, them same daggers polished and blacked and just waiting for the blooding, that’s a different thing. And when the battle was joined and throats needed slittin’, there was always one little guard with a throat screaming up without a mouth under gentle ministrations too busy ordering the other guards into the semblance of a bunch of fighting men, with snarls and shouts and not the odd punch right to the cods, too busy by far to show the smile.

(Character stats publically viewable at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=agbmznmcjr6_62dgpsp9dw)

Passed on by entirely too many people. And the results are somewhat surprising …

I Am A: Chaotic Evil Elf Sorcerer (5th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-13
Constitution-9
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-20
Charisma-15

Alignment:
Chaotic Evil A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him. Chaotic evil is sometimes called demonic because demons are the epitome of chaotic evil. Chaotic evil is the best alignment you can be because combines self-interest and pure freedom. However, chaotic evil can be a dangerous alignment because it represents the destruction not only of beauty and life but also of the order on which beauty and life depend.

Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

If you heard Operation BSU tonight, you know I was off, rambling around a convention called MACE with Kay, where we played in a new tactical RPG called WEGS. The game’s fun, irreverent, and a little bit off-beat … but it’s essentially percentile-based in order to get interesting performance from nestling a 2d10 percentile mechanic up with a 2d6 tens-are-high random difficulty system at a number of places. I find that kind of thing, coupled with the need to do multiplications of d6 x Stat for damage a little awkward.

Plus, I like a little more Narrativist stance going on in my games these days. (and if you’re wondering, WEGS is unabashedly and happily Gamist if you buy into the whole Ron Edwards GNS Theory thing. I don’t, but in this case, it makes a decent enough term. I actually prefer the term “tactical” for reasons maybe I’ll go into at a later time.

Regardless, there’s an excellent alternative take on the concept of “old school” fantasy called Donjon, with scary amounts of Narrativism combined with an established up-front stated need for the GM to play like a bastard in an aggressive oppositional, if whimsical, style.

So, that said, it rather begged for me to do up Kay’s character and mine in Donjon:

Crobbity the Gnobbit is what, in milder, more modern, times, might be considered a sociopath. In these dark days of iron and fire, however — no, really, she’s still considered a sociopath. They just don’t have the big, fluffy word for it yet.

Being born Gnobbit grants one a certain speed and grace, the same kind rabid ferrets exemplify when they are about to go buzz-saw up your pants-leg. Gnobbits, and Crobbity in particular, have refined that capability to a terrifying degree, being able to slide underneath almost any attacker and place pointy things in uncomfortable places with strange regularity. As usual with folks who spend a lot of time getting underfoot, Crobbity has an affinity for talking very fast and hiding in dark places.

Rezzy is not entirely unusual amongst Gobblins, a race well known for their psychological fluidity, switching between the roles of scholar and economist with the speed of a swallow’s wing, but even his kindred look askance at associating with a Gnobbit. Still, it’s a partnership that works out well enough, despite the trouble his little companion gets into. Regularly. Like, hourly. It’s a good thing Rezzy’s comfortable with the tenets of elemental magic and has a pleasant smile for a Gobblin.

Blame Eric the .5b for making me think of how to translate the Mage setting into Capes characters. Damn you, Eric.

Time to break out the latest incarnation of the Vrai line.

Alison Vrai is the descendant of a long, long line of House Tytalus magi. Unfortunately for the House, her tastes ran neither to leadership nor to direct conflict with others. As a result, she hovers at the fringe of the House's involvement with magic, which suits her just fine. Appearing to be in her late 30's, Alison has been an active mage since the late 20's. She always dresses more for comfort than for show, tending toward well-worn sweats and flannel shirts.

Sorcerously, Alison has spent her academic life exploring the mutability of perception and illusion in general. Her grasp of transformation is near the top of her field.

William Albacastle looks about 45 and is 38. He's been confined to a wheelchair for the entirety of his adult life. Luckily, he discovered an affinity for constructing complex electronics when he was three and by the time he'd finished elementary school, had designed and built a complex waldo system to aid his failing muscles. Albacastle was offered a full scholarship to MIT's online degree program by an organization called "The Brotherhood of the Virtual" which eventually recruited him at graduation into the Virtual Adepts. Albacastle worked with the VA for several years but eventually became disenchanted by their fixation on the mystical experience of technology while he believed less and less in any supernatural agency not explicable by rational science. His recruitment by the Technocracy's Iteration X was a welcome change.

Albacastle has no patience for those who lack mental agility, engage in willful foolishness, or in any way measure up to what he considers a worthy being -- ie. doesn't aspire to be more like him. He considers his wasted body an annoyance and a burden to be ignored at the best of times. His powered wheelchair contains an interface rig for his omnipresent set of drones and waldoes.

[21:59] point5b: http://i11.tinypic.com/4pmxyeg.jpg
[21:59] point5b: And the excellent comment:
[22:00] point5b: Jesus plays SHADOWRUN??

Guess that makes sense, you need patience to count all those d6's.
"Okay, this is a simple run. You go in, locate the poor and downtrodden and unload some hope and salvation at them. If you run into any crippled or blind, heal the bastards without thinking twice. The means of exctraction are as usual: martyrs death while spreading the gospel of the lord to the unbelievers. See you in heaven."

[22:00] exopilot: [laugh] OK, Old Testament as Shadowrun. There's a Nobilis game waiting to happen.

Or, at need, Capes ...

I've already done God, Jesus, and Lucifer in Capes, which is undoubtedly going to send me right to Hell. I'm horribly, horribly tempted to go pull Nobilis off my shelf and start statting out God as an Imperator, and Jesus, The Holy Ghost and Lucifer as Powers thereof. (This is, technically, wholly at odds with the original Nobilis setting write-up, but since I'm responsible for injecting a dose of yaoi romanticism between God and Lucifer in there, I feel comfortable further mangling things horribly.)

Jesus as Shadowrunner, though ... This could be fun.

Joshua Christi
Son of God and Ass-Kicker

You know, it was a lot more straightforward in the New Testament. Things were simple. No Aztechnology, no magic reawakened in the world, no two-guns-akimbo street sammies running hither and yon without giving two-farts-in-a-whirlwind about the Message of God. Honestly, Joshua had no real inclination to even come back. A few more centuries and the bone-headed morons on Earth might get some of their heads on straight.

No such luck.

Instead, Josh gets sent back to the world with nothing but the fact he's doing the Will of God and His Son, a charming affinity with summoning the spirits and powers of the air, a Holy Writ for the angels -- who are feeling kind of pissed and ignored, anyway -- and a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder from the last time he dropped in. All that and a Desert Eagle in each fist.

The Son of God is back. And, boy, is he pissed.

Well, Hell, the last issue of Superdrunks was a fair hit. I might as well write up the Exemplars ...

Jimmy Ho
Child Kung-Fu Prodigy

Jimmy was just a dirty street kid in Hong Kong when the Drunken Master found him. Honestly, not much has changed about him, except DM has sunk a couple years into teaching Jimmy some of the most incomprehensible martial arts known to man. For his part, Jimmy's remained the prank-loving hard-charging kid he always was, albeit now with a Hell of a left hook.

Jenny Spark grew up the next house over from Billy Burner; their families had known each other for years even before they were born. It really wasn't much of a surprise when Billy fell for Jenny's girl-next-door charm in elementary school and they dated through High School. The only reason their relationship was broken off was that Jenny found a position working on her uncle's pit crew and, eventually, as the primary racer on the circuit. Jenny's racing often ends up taking her to places which coincide with trouble Billy has to deal with -- much to his discomfort.

The universe is a perverse place, perverse enough that it requires an Avatar of some inherent concepts. One of those concepts is alcohol. Avatars aren't always extant, but their presence strengthens the concept that they're linked to even as it provides a point of vulnerability. Tres is not Alcohol's Avatar yet, but destiny is gathering itself around him. Almo sees it as her duty to usher him through the inevitable trials which little the path to ascention.

John Fayetteville
Third Lord of Fayetteville

Fayetteville's family immigrated to the States not long after the state of Georgia was established and immediately invested heavily in cotton production, securing a lifestyle that provided them the luxury of clinging to aristocratic traditions and dual-citizenships for the next two hundred years. Luckily, John has inherited all the best traits of the family, an open, friendly attitude and a tendency to be able to get by on his looks -- and no reluctance to do so. He still has a few old-school beliefs about privilege and law that gives some friction with his friend, the Black Swan.

Thanks to Eric the .5b for this reference to something well-related to the subject, how to self-induce an alcohol coma.

Next ish, villainy!

I've been sitting on this idea for too long. Unfortunately, it was originally inspired by my buddy and fellow intern, Chris Swan, over on MySpace, but ...

The Superdrunks
Defenders of the Liquid in Life

Not every super-team can be the Avengers. Nor can they be the Legion of Substitute Superheroes. Sometimes the best they can hope to be is the Superdrunks, who may not be the most impressive bunch of guys, but they know how to have a good time.

Drunken Master
Master of Drunken Boxing

The Drunken Master is leader of the Superdrunks, generally because he's the only one sober at any given time. DM's powers originate from a self-induced state of hypnosis which mimics drunkenness without the actual toxic effects of alcohol, lending him preternatural dexterity, a truly incomprehensible gait, and inhuman resilience. Unfortunately, he also tends to speak in philosophical Oriental jibberish, making it difficult to always know his intent.

DM's kung-fu action is mighty indeed, his inner center allowing him to put his fists in the most vulnerable areas with strange joint-aching strikes, to roll on the ground in unpredictable directions, to waver on his feet in the most elusive ways, and pop up behind a threat before they know what's happened. He instinctively seems to know, simply by looking at it, where something or someone is most precariously balanced. Like many older men, his taste for young women is marginally unhealthy.

Billy Burner
Alcohol-Burning Cyborg

Born to a family of NASCAR enthusiasts, young Billy dreamed of being pit crew for Dale Earnhardt. When his genius with all things mechanical came out with his first high-torque engine designed in elementary school, his place in the record books was all but assured and Billy went off to Metro State University with the desire to build the fastest, loudest, most powerful funny-car of all time. Unfortunately, an accident in his senior year -- possibly sabotage -- cut his education short and put him on an entirely different road.

When the experimental engine Billy had on the block exploded, his body was thrown through a nearby brick wall. Mortally broken, Burner barely made it into a suit he had designed previously to keep drivers alive in the event of deadly crashes. When he came back to consciousness, Billy discovered that most of his body was useless and without significant hardware support, he was nothing but dead flesh. Turning his mind to the immediate threat, Billy replaced bits of his body with machinery, making himself into the very icon of speed he'd always wanted, all smooth curves and brightly-colored metal. Inside, he's still a young man who wants to be normal -- but not so much he'd give up his alcohol-fueled jetpack!

Animists believe that everything in the universe has an animating spirit or guiding intelligence. Perhaps it was their collective desire, or maybe they're on to an essential truth; Almo does not know. What Almo does know is that she can remember the last ten thousand years -- sometimes, hazily. To suggest she spent the whole time being "drunk" is somewhat of an understatement. The naive understanding would be that she came into being with the first deliberate fermenting and has been pleasantly buzzed ever since.

Almo appears to be a young Hispanic girl of sixteen years or so, perpetually inebriated to lesser or greater degree. She never quite understood humanity outside religious rituals and bars, and often confuses life in general for a drunken brawl or party. She's everyone's drunk little sister, which can be a little strange when she really lets loose as an empowered ancient manifestation of physical truth. When she wills it, almost anything can burst into flames as if it were doused in pure alcohol.

Black Swan
The Immortal Drunk

It's said that God looks out for drunks and little children. What happens when you become aware of this seeming immortality? What if you found a way to permanently induce a state of chemical inebriation on yourself? For the Black Swan, you decide that the world needs a saviour -- even if that saviour is pretty well in the bag and a bit unstable on his feet.

Having used his background in chemistry to alter his neuropeptides, Black Swan is almost entirely unstoppable, when not weaving unsteadily and peering through bleary eyes. When in the midst of combat against the evil in the world, he usually finds himself untouched amidst a pile of rubble and debris.

Well ... Hell. If I have to be awake during the time the evil daystar is up, and I'm going to be up before it's up, I might as well use the time to do something creative.

This morning's project:

Convert Heroes into Primetime Adventures.

Heroes

Premise: A seemingly random selection of average people receive superpowers.

Season Length: 9 episodes.

Setting Conventions: Prime-time TV, with all the FCC regulation that entails, but a liberal hand with some gore.

Tone: Fairly serious, with issues of drug abuse, criminal operations, and child abandonment up-front.

The Cast

Isaac Mendez

Paints the Future, Heroin Addict, Simone Deveaux (love-triangle love interest)

Issue: Addiction (Heroin). Isaac believes he can only paint the future while high. He'd like to get clean, but feels like he's part of something bigger now.

Personal Set: Isaac's Loft Painting Studio

Hiro Nakamura

Bends Time and Space, Ando Masahashi (Japanese sariman sidekick and sane-person), Charlie Andrews (dead love-interest, brain-scooped by Sylar)

Issue: Heroism. Hiro really wants to be the comic ideal of the superhero. Unfortunately, the grit of reality keeps getting in the way.

Claire Bennet

Ultra-Healing, Ben (confidant and friend, AV geek), Mr Bennet (adoptive father and secretly involved in an organization devoted to mysterious ends)

Issue: Self-Worth. Claire fears that if people find out she's "different," they'll think she's a freak.

Personal Set: The High School.

Nathan Petrelli

Supersonic Flight, Politician, Linderman (crime boss)

Issue: Denial. Nathan is totally devoted to denying that he's different or heroic in any way.

Peter Petrelli

Power Sponge, Nurse, Simone Deveaux (love-triangle love interest)

Issue: Meaning. Peter wants to be more than just the "little brother" of the Mayor or Governor, he wants to do something important.

Niki Sanders

Superhuman Strength, Micah Sanders (Niki's son), "Jessica" (Niki's alter-ego, the more violent and vicious of the two)

Issue: Atonement. Niki's trying to make up for being a bad mother in her mind, trying to give Micah a decent life, and trying to deal with a sociopath in her head.

DL Sanders

Matter-Phasing, Criminal, Micah Sanders (son)

Issue: Atonement. DL wants to make it up to Micah that he got arrested and "disapeared" into the federal prison system.

Micah Sanders

Technopathy, Niki Sanders (mother), DL Hawkins (father)

Issue: Self-Worth. Micah's not exactly sure what he contributes to his life yet; he's just a kid. What next?

Matt Parkman

Telepathy, Cop, Audrey Hanson (FBI agent and sometime partner)

Issue: Self-Worth. Is he crazy? Is he useful? Is he, like Peter Parker before him, simply the universe's butt-boy?

Nemises

Mr Bennet

Secret Operative, Claire Bennet (daughter), Linderman (crime boss)

Syler

Telekinesis, Power Absorbtion, Mr Bennet (captor)

Just to throw some more stuff in the pool, here's a This Present Darkness-inspired set of Heroes.

"Reese"

Inhuman Gun-Skills, Doctor, John Q Public (personal nemesis)

Issue: Anger. Reese is trying to get revenge for all the abused women she's treated as a doctor over the years.

Personal Set: The ER where she works.

Alex Voynich

Blasphemous Transformation, Mythos Occultist, Haley Savage (Doc Savage's great-granddaughter, expert on ancient ruins, and annoying kid-sister)

Issue: Quest. Alex is looking for a secret method of removing his occult curse.

Personal Set: Any ancient occult ruin, anywhere.

Eric Thompson

Alien Physiology, Computer Programmer, John Doughman (imprisoned rogue superscientist)

Issue: Denial. Eric wants nothing more than to live a normal life.

You can blame She That Is Wicked for this one; I take no real responsibility.

Name

Jason Mullins
Mullet Man

Background

Jason Mullins was just a normal, everyday redneck, living in a trailer-home in rural north Georgia, drinking entirely too much Pabst Blue Ribbon and watching NASCAR whenever he could catch the time between working hard for his uncle's house framing company.

But that was before the rock fell.

Jason was the first on the crash site of the supposed "meteor," and so it was only he who saw the Grey crawl from the wreckage. Being a hospitable sort, Jason helped the dying creature free of the crater and, in gratitude, the alien creature passed it's life-force into the stunned good ol' boy. That power was somewhat incompatible with the human biology, however, in that Greys simply don't have hair. Instead, Jason's hair took on the powers of a Grey's intestinal cillia, becoming highly extensible, flexible, and able to act as additional grasping limbs. In addition, Jason's natural knowledges and abilities were magnified. He became a better race driver than Dale Ernheart (may he rest in peace), a better wrestler than the Undertaker, and the fastest redneck alive!

Jason was never the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but his simple-man ways and honest belief that life can be better for everyone if "we just sit right down and have a beer together" makes him one of the most hopeful and comfortable hypermen for the common man to sit down with.

When "in costume," Mullet Man wears a worn brown duster over a white strappy t-shirt, worn blue jeans, and worn brown boots. Embroidered on the back of the duster is a glow-in-the-dark stylized Grey head which is typically half covered by his mullet.

What, you thought you'd get out of here without a Capes version?

Name: Ryo Shinta
Sorcerous Vampire

Abilities	Styles	Attitudes
Lure of Flames (5)	Detonations! (3)	Ironic (1)
Arcane Lore (4)	Asian Occult (1)	Bitter (3)
Inhuman Speed (1)	"This problem? You need enough dynamite to cure AIDS." (2)	Cynical (4)
Resilience of Dead Flesh (2)		Disappointed (2)
Mental Focus (3)

Drives: Obsession 1, Truth 4, Power 2, Justice 1, Duty 1

The interesting thing about trying to do White Wolf-esque vampires in Capes is just how hard it is. There are a lot of little fiddly bits that the WW systems have embedded as assumptions that you have to pare down to just essentials when you make the transition. "Is the character's struggle against the Beast important? How about their secondary and tertiary Disciplines? What do they care about enough to be Styles?" Tough stuff.

In a way, a Wushu conversion is easier because it pares things right down to a few core images and abilities and a weakness. That's it. Twelve things? Far harder, because it's both more and less detailed. A lot of things fit into Wushu Traits while Capes is a lot more circumscribed as to what makes a difference in a Scene, mechanically.

Well, yes, AIT's system bites the wax tadpole. So, what other options are there?

Oh, c'mon, you just asked me for different system options! Are you crazy?

Let's start with Wushu, since it's the easiest system to design in, bar none.

Ryo Shinta
Occult Librarian (4), Vampire: Mental (3), Geomancy: Lure of Flames (5), Traditional Vampiric Weaknesses: Can't cross running water, stakes put them in torpor, vulnerable to fire and holy might, etc. (1)

Occult Librarian represents all the things the bookish occultist might need, including contacts for books, knowledge of obscure magical beasts and a certain amount of income from their licit or illicit trade.

Vampire: Mental gives one the general abilities of the vampire (strength, speed, etc) with a focus on the mental powers of such beasts, including entrancement, knowledge of more obscure things that they, in fact, lived through, inhuman ruthlessness, etc.

Geomancy: Lure of Flames is the particular field of sorcerous knowledge that Ryo has specialized in. The applications range from lighting a match with a fingertip to conjuring massive sheaths of fire which burn nothing of him.

Traditional Vampiric Weaknesses neatly packages up all the useful means for finding and tracking vampires. Whenever trying to oppose one of them or if one is brought to bear against him, the relevant Traits becomes 1.

And there you go; not only is the system itself more succinct, but its immensely more flexible for casting off all the burdensome crap that bogs larger systems down. Coupled with Wushu's "whatever you say goes" attitude toward Player power, you can have characters which do all the cool, big things of the most cinematic of the vampire stories and still be useful.

Example Conflict:

Ryo is surrounded by a group of cops who've stumbled into his feeding, after being on the run from the city's Scourge after a minor misunderstanding. The GM decides they represent a group of 8 point mooks; hardly a significant threat, more an excuse to show off.

"Ryo strikes a pose, fingers hooked and fangs bared (*), forcing the cops back a step, paling almost as white as his dead skin (*). With a sudden shout of power, his entire body bursts into a pillar of spinning blue flame (*), and he leaps toward the cops, arms spread, as if to embrace them (*). Two of the poor men stumble backwards over their own feet and start screaming (*), pissing their pants in terror (*)."

That's 6d total for this exchange. Ryo's player puts one die in Yin, trusting to his joss to succeed, and the other four in Yang for the attack. The GM decides that the bulk of the effect is sorcerous so the target number to roll at or under is 5. The Yin die succeeds, so the mooks don't take a point of Chi, and the five Yang dice come up with four successes. Looks like another round of conflict and the cops'll be taken care of.

Later Ryo and his Coterie stumble over a haunted house, filled with the screaming souls of hatred sneaking through a rift from the Underworld. Naturally, Ryo'd like to get a handle on this phenomenon.

"Flipping through an ancient text called 'Flesh-Renders Bite The Thumb' (*) and which is well-known in the occult circles for its findings in this matter (*), he finds a section on the social order of the Underworld (*), illustrated by strange diagrams which appear to be sketched in human blood (*)."

Since things aren't hugely stressed yet, Ryo's player only generates 4d for the check, planning to use it for dice in a pool to call up later. As it's entirely in the domain of the occult librarian, his target's 4. Two successes get banked from the research for him to pull up later in a tight spot.

To use Wushu as the core in a LARP, you'd really need a different system than d6 to convey the random vector. A 36 card deck made up of the numbers 1 - 6 repeated 6 times would probably be random enough to do. Shuffle, cut, and draw a card off for every detail of your embellishment during one turn of the Scene. Mooks get no cards, just are assumed that they do one success in damage every turn that needs to be defended. Burning a point of Chi lets you ignore one success of a test. Run out of Chi, and you go down (out of the Scene) when another test goes against you. Rebuild Chi by one point every Scene / an hour. Start with three Chi.

Ta da! Next, I'll have to go through a different system.

So, after attending AIT with folks last night, it became obvious thart I needed to create a character that actually had some hooks that other folks would actually need to know about and find use for. That required actually coming up with a real character background, which I just can't play a character without. The irony was that Ki needed a decent character to get involved with, too ... and then the twisted idea to be an Embraced brother and sister who run an occult library/bookstore came up, and it just got weird from there ...

( Ryo and Eko Shinta )

Background

In 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the temporary internment of Japanese living in the United States. Similar camps were authorized in Canada by the government of the day. As a result, 120,000 Japasnese and Japanese-descended citizens were rounded-up into one of ten "relocation centers."

Ruby and Nicholas Shinta were a newlywed couple whose parents had come to America only a decade before. They were placed in the California relocation center together, and began to try and piece together what would become of their lives.

That consideration was ruptured when Ruby was raped by a gaijin guard in the spring of 1943. When they discovered that the violence would have issue, they were devastated. By the time of Ryo's birth in '44, they were adamant that their child would be steeped in the culture of their homeland and not assimilated as their parents had intended them to be.

Ryo's gaijin appearance and physical deformity were both hard shocks, insult to injury, for his beleaguered parents. They remained insistent that he be culturally Japanese, but their Asian distaste for the crippled and their hardness of heart at his white appearance made it impossible for them to truly love him. While the boy possessed a brilliant wit and devotion to learning, his parents kept him locked in small rooms, away from the eyes of their neighbors, bent over the accounting for their small laundry in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the Shintas were working at expanding their family. A brother and a sister followed, and as they grew older, they too took their parents' attitude toward the now bitter but unhumbled Ryo. Their taunts and petty cruelties hardened the boy and honed his distaste for humanity in general to a fine, keen edge.

It was his second sister, Eko, who came thereafter, who provided for both their escapes.

Eko was born sickly and weak, and the Shintas despaired of her ever finding her feet. Always small, she became hardy with amazing swiftness and was the true monkey of the family, often found climbing on the bookshelves or even on the rooftops. She seldom spoke, and when she did, it seemed as if she was deliberately leaving her listeners to make their own decisions about what she'd actually said, but unlike her older siblings, she did not antagonize her eldest brother but accorded him the respect her parents told her he was owed, though they, apparently, felt it was unnecessary from their perspective.

Eko had a taste for fine things, things her parents' position could sorely provide. Her quick fingers and sharp tongue won her way into places she had no reason to be and out again with pretty baubles. Or books.

It was the books which made the way for Ryo's departure. Once he was eighteen, and having read certain texts which his sister had mysteriously acquired from the better part of the city, a man came knocking at the Shinta door. Old, wizened, with wisps of white hair scattered across his bald pate, the man gave no name but the Shintas knelt with the deepest respect. He had come, he said, for the boy. When they pushed their second son forward to the man, he curled his lip distastefully and called out for the clever child. Eko ran to the back to fetch out Ryo, who emerged with a small bag of things and a couple of ratty books. The old man smiled, nodded, and they left together.

Eko was not to stay much longer herself. Laundry had no call for her and there was a wide world of things outside to be had, so at sixteen she left the family household and never looked back. The next years on the street were harrowing and difficult, but there were people whom she knew who appreciated other peoples' things as much as she did, and they were willing to look after her good interests to some degree. It was there that she learned the axiom that was to change her life to unlife:

Crime is an art drawn in the most delicate hand.

Eko's life of crime ended abruptly upon her capture in the midst of a daring caper, having broken into a Toreador haven in search of a previously uncatalogued Faberge egg. Facing the inhabitant, the leech was entranced by the gracefulness of Eko's movements and the cunning of her plans, which the vampire had followed for some time and even had commissioned the current theft. Eko's life ended at the age of twenty, but her capabilities were only augmented by her new found existence.

It wasn't until the late 60's that Eko met her brother again. He had been taken to the home of an even older geomancer than the man who'd come to the door seeking him and apprenticed to the wizened elder then and there. And then followed years of back-breaking work and study, during which he learned many arcane secrets. The ultimate secret, of course, was that the old master was older than he appeared and subsisted on the blood of the weak, a life which he was finally ready to initiate the boy-now-man into. Thus did Ryo enter the Chantry of the Tremere.

It didn't take long for Ryo and Eko to learn that cooperation between them both was far more useful than working separately. Ryo's knowledge of the obscenities lurking in the back of the world combined well with Eko's ability to steal the icons of that obscenity. They built a small library of works of occult significance, but were forced to abandon it when the Kuei-Jin influence in San Francisco increased to the point they actively sought the Thaumaturges in the city for destruction.

The pair moved to Houston briefly, finally deciding on their cover story. They would set up a small import/export bookstore/library to cater to their fellow undead occultists, and use it as a front to acquire, study, and sell stolen memorabilia of the dark places of the world. Where better to set up such an enterprise than Atlanta?

Yes, a half-Japanese cripple as a neonate Tremere, and his sneaky, thief-girl sister Toreador. If that doesn't hurt your brain, we just aren't trying hard enough to do psychic damage to you.

But of course, the above begs the question ... why do systems based on MET suck quite as hard as they do? Though the new system where you carry 11 cards (1 - 10, plus an Ace) sounds actually quite usable to me given that I can't exactly throw much except rock. But I digress.

LARP systems are pretty much inherently hard to design. You don't want too much baggage in the way of record-keeping because you end up with folks' hands too full of stuff to actually play. On the other hand, you don't want them to feel like the mechanics don't give a skilled character an advantage over the unskilled, so there needs to be a bit of crunch. But that introduces the issue of power-curve between established and new characters, and few game designers for LARPs have the cojones to introduce a system that deliberately doesn't introduce mechanical character growth.

I get the damned oddest spam.

Universal Psychic Guild is a world wide organization devoted to making
your life happier and more successful. "Voted the Number 1 Psychic
web site in the world" The Universal Psychic Guild's guarantee: If
you are not happy with your psychic reading, if you did not receive
accurate answers, if you did not receive an answer to any of your
questions, we will give you your money back as well as a FREE psychic
reading. That's right your money back PLUS a FREE psychic reading.
Try our online Psychic Reading now at
http://www.psychicguild.com/readings_email.php

OK, so ... you want me to contact an entire guild of professional psychics (possibly led by the Soverign, David Bowie), and if I'm not happy with the answers I get, you'll give me my money back plus a free psychic reading from the psychic guild that already left me unhappy.

As one can say about pretty much every psychic scam, "Didn't they see that one coming?"

That said ... I feel a perverse inspiration.

Name: The Guild of Psychics

Description:

Composed of dozens of psychic mediums worldwide, the Guild of Psychics act as a clearinghouse for insider information on the Average Joe. Using their thousands of contacts, they map the demographics of developed nations in immense detail, turning it into the most potent tool for advertising and political manipulation on Earth. Oh, yes, and they can see the future. Sometimes. Kind of.

Italicized entries are Powers.

In the original version, our intrepid gamers, Alice, Bob, and Connie were using Capes to run an opening scene from Battlestar Galactica. They discovered that Capes' architecture actually leads to the opening scene being, well, like the opening scene for a TV ep. This is good. Moreover, it established the fact that a system originally conceived to model the narrative of super heroes could cover space combat quite neatly.

Now it's time to try the latest weapon in the RPG arsenal here at Squid's Redoubt, Universalis, which paints itself with the following:

Universalis is:

The game where every player is the Game Master

The game where players can create and populate the world as they desire as they play

The game where everything that happens, happens because a player wanted it to happen

The game where suspense comes from the actions of other players, not from a random roll.

The game whose plot evolves as you play with no random tables, rail-roading, or scenario books

The game which requires absolutely no set up or preparation time

The game where it doesn’t matter if all of the players show up on time or at all

Begin play with only sheets of blank paper, pencils, ten-sided dice, tokens, and plenty of imagination.

None of which I actually disagree with, after a couple of readings. Like Capes, Universalis is predicated on players engaging each other with conflicts rather than with some overall imposed story guide or GM directing things. Unlike Capes, the whole system is about starting from ground-scratch and building up the Tenets of the setting (things like where and when it occurs, big things like cities or continents, the overall massive shape of things, plus issues like genre, and even bits like "Turn off your stinkin' cell-phones, you goddamn Neanderthals" get created then by expending in-game currency (Coins). Universalis also shifts things in a rather more elemental way than it might at first appear by moving the focus from Debt which you accrue by acting to a Coin cost to specify a Fact; the move of the attention of resource control from after the fact to before makes you think about the cost more directly, I'm wagering.

Regardless, let's go on to our feature presentation.

( Battlestar Universalis )</u></font></a></span>

City of Villains / NCsoft decided to reactivate a number of accounts this weekend for folks who'd been with them in the past, in part to pimp their new Veteran Awards and also to try and push the recent content additions.

I was reminded by the cruel vagaries of fate that there was something else CoX had going for it:

It supports my Ageia PhysX card.

In the interests of giving things a fair shake, I created a brand new character to dink with (even given all my previous characters were still connected to the account), and given recent experiences what came out was disturbing:

Corporate Genius. Created in the dank laboratories of Squid Inks Inc, Corporate Genius was forged to be the perfect Project Manager. Genetically altered to command both the forces of gravity and psionic might, CG is the absolutely refined weapon by which to push around employees. Literally.

No, I'm not burning off built-up anger. Ignore the perfectly tailored business casual look and immense throbbing orange brain of evil.

I was reminded why I don't enjoy playing CoX as much as my other MMORPG options, though. In World of Warcraft or Guild Wars (or even Auto Assault), you regularly see new and exciting effects which you pull off. WoW has you changing weapons and armour regularly. Guild Wars gives you a whole chunk of skills regularly and the combos are challenging, plus custom armour and dye. Auto Assault lets you change out cars, repaint them, and equip new weapons to your heart's content.

CoX? You get new powers every even level. You can't swap out powers, you're pretty much stuck with what you have. You can add Enhancements to change the specific stats of the power a bit, but none of them change the appearance of the power at all, and there's no real way to change your character appearance save the odd and occasional "bonus power" you get for some missions, or a limited number of "costume respecs" in which you pay for some changes, but not until your character has a lot of XP under their belt.

It's kind of like reading a story where the protagonist doesn't actually find the situation changing in the first half the book. Its not that it's dull, per se, it's just that you go the first six or so levels looking forward to each new power and faintly annoyed by the crappy Enhancements, then things start bogging and you have no options to tinker with. Or at least that's me.

I may dink around more this weekend, but definitely no re-subscription.

Yes, it's true.

I've headed back into Guild Wars.

Last night I got a wild hair (and when youdon't have to pay a monthly fee, you can get wild hairs) and decided to go ahead and create a brand new character in GW, a Ritualist that pretty much only dropped Spirits (which is what Ritualists do, drop Spirits), and that's about it. Everything she does is designed to augment the ability to drop Spirits. The only thing I took Monk for was to get Smiting Prayers, for Enchantments on myself that make directly attacking me a bad decision.

Luckily, Starchild seemed to have a wild hair too, and so we created brand new charas for the Factions starting area, and hustled off.

Now, we were both Ritualists with the intention of going different directions on our secondaries. Starchild wanted to go Ritualist / Necromancer, to take advantage of the Ritualist ability to boost the HP of summoned creatures with an Attribute(Spawning).

In about 4 hours, both is us hit level 9. That's out of a max of 20 levels, almost half-way there.

Some people might not like the fact they can get things rolling that fast, but for me its great. Missions unlock more and more Skills as you go, and because you can juggle as many Attribute points as you like anytime you're in a non-exploration area, you can totally change your build at any time. Tired of being a Spirit-summing-based Ritualist? Dump the points from Communing into Channeling, and become a kind of scary near-Elementalist tossing out the nasty. Switch out the Skills on your bar and voila, you're off into another set of Skills which feed into one another as cleverly as you can discover how.

And soon ... Nightfall, with two more Classes.

Source: Heather

Source interest: belly dancing

I've been meaning to use octaNe for something for quite a while. I love it when a plan comes together. The best part of octaNe is coming up with fun skills and descriptors for stats. Possibly of equal fun is it's in the rules that you describe your character with only three details, the rest can be filled in as you go in play.

Mmm, minimalist design.

Igora Massive

Description: Built like a brick shithouse, with cold green eyes that stare right through you, and hips that just won't quit.

Role: Bad-ass Mofo'

Mode: Psychotronic

Stamping Grounds: The Wasteland, Lost Vegas

Styles: Daring (2), Charm (1)

Gear: Golden sword (major), veils and clinky skimpy outfits

Skills: Pretty Face, Mad Kung-Fu Skillz, Gunning Down Poor Bastards, Pure Goddamn Coolness, Shake It Like a Polaroid Picture (Belly Dance), Acrobatic Like a Jumping Snake, Could Seduce a Priest

Background: She left the village in the wastes with little more than some shiny panties, a big golden sword (sometimes carried on her head), and good genes, but now she's looking for action in Lost Vegas and God-forbid you get in this girl's way! She'll give you a hard fuckin', and seldom in the way you were looking forward to!

Source: Theodora

Source Interest: drag queens

I'm running out of simple RPGs, here. Seriously, it gets harder to do one of these every time. Next system: Risus, the Anything RPG.

Yes, I'm going to Hell with the PC contingent for this one.

Ralph "Randi" Humbert
Vampire Drag Queen

Tall, redheaded, and just a bit on the lanky side, Randi has made a name for herself on the drag queen circuit, belting out old favourites from musical theatre with more gusto than the old broads had, themselves. Less known is that Randi uses these same tours as a mobile feeding platform, sating her terrible thirst for blood on the fag hags and cruisers in the audience. Randi isn't gay, but she's certainly not above playing the part for a juicy young morsel.

Drag Queen (4), Vampire (3), Singer (3)

Hook: Randi's just finished her rousing Lisa Minelli set when Victor Van Helsing, great great grandson of the legendary Van Helsing comes in the caberet's door. And Victor's wearing the same dress!

Source: The Guy That Wrote This

Source interest: tarot

Because it's obscure ... this is a character for Don't Rest Your Head. Because this isn't something I've blurbed before, let me reference a bit from its website:

You can't sleep. It started like that for all of us, back when we were garden variety insomniacs. Maybe you had nightmares (God knows we all do now), or maybe you just had problems that wouldn't let you sleep. Hell, maybe you were just over-caffienated. But then something clicked.

That was when you took a long walk down the streets of the Mad City, stopped being a Sleeper, and started being Awake. But that click you heard wasn't from the secret world snapping into place. It was the sound of the Nightmares flicking off the safety and pointing a gun at your head.

They can smell you. The Paper Boys are closing in, and you'd better pray you don't become a headline. You're chum in the water, my friend, and it's time you got ready for it... before the clock chimes thirteen again. Now that you're one of us, there's just one simple rule left that must dominate your life.

Stay Awake. Don't Rest Your Head.

Don't Rest Your Head is a sleek, dangerous little game, where your players are all insomniac protagonists with superpowers, fighting -- and using -- exhaustion and madness to stay alive, and awake for just one more night, in a reality gone way wrong called the Mad City. It features its own system, and is contained entirely within one book.

My name is Vykos Allen.

And I am a con man on the run.

What's been keeping you awake?

I've been running a successful series of scams on little old ladies and vulnerable young ones, and taking whatever I want of them whenever I can. But its starting to get to me, and there are a few people after me, looking for blood. Hard to sleep looking over your shoulder.

What just happened to you?

The husband of a woman I gave some sweet, sweet boning to after a seance where I "channeled" her dead kid shot me dead in the face with a shotgun. And I'm still here, unscratched.

What's on the surface?

People think I dress impeccably, with the finest Saville row suits and a charming little affected straight cane. The English accent's fake, but suckers lap it up. People look at me and think "money" and erudition. The tarot cards and crystal balls lead people to trust me.

What lies beneath?

I was born in the Bronx downhill from the ghetto, and learned Three Card Monty at the same age. I've been scamming since my teens, and I don't give a rat's about other people so much as my own sweet ass. Real knowledge of the mysteries of life give me a bigger boner than crying women, though; finding out the secrets of the universe would be the life.

What's your path?

What I really want is to be a true font of knowledge, but I don't admit it, even to myself. Finding out secrets is worth risking my life for, and the Truth about what it really all means is far better than money.

Responses:

Fight

Flight [] [] []

Talents:

Exhaustion Talent: Cold Reading People

Vykos is an expert at reading peoples' intent, their body language, and making incredibly astute guesses based on very little information, as well as vaguing up responses so they believe he's said more than he really did.

Madness Talent: Cartomancy

When the Mad City comes calling and Vykos is Awake, he really can tell the future, accurately, with the cards. Any cards, be it poker decks or Hallmark, just so long as they can be shuffled and pulled randomly.

Source: Stormy Weather

Source interest: "the fairness doctrine," serial killers

Premise:

The protagonists are members of The Fairness Doctrine, a secret ad hoc organization of serial killer survivors and the family of victims. Their self-appointed job is to hunt down and stop serial killers before the authorities can get there, engaging in thematically appropriate vigilante justice.

5 episode season, one pilot episode.

Setting Conventions:

Modern US eastern seaboard. Violence will be extremely graphic and occasionally gratuitous, while sex will be mainly off-screen. The seedy underbelly of suburban society should always be forefront, while the Authorities are portrayed as blue-collar heroes doing their jobs, just at odds with the needs and desires of the protagonists.

Tone:

Dark, gritty, and realistic. Dark humour is certainly applicable, but silly or cartoonish humour is not. Characters are generally average folk from all walks of life caught in bad situations.

The Cast:

Concept:

All the protagonists are people touched by serial killers in some way, either having survived an attack or having a family member / loved one killed by a serial killer.

The central protagonist starts as Bunny Ramiz, a PI whose sister was murdered by a killer called "Teeth."

---

Bunny Ramiz
Vengeful Detective

Issue: Vengeance on "Teeth" and, by extension, all serial killers, everywhere.

Traits:

Private Dick: Bunny is the epitome of the hard-bitten private dick. She knows bad people in bad places, knows how to dig up the dirt, and run a stake-out. With a phone call, she can wheedle info from the police or the local crime boss.

Trey Vander: Oldest friend of Bunny that she still stays in contact with, Trey bartends at a club called "The Barrier" in Virginia. Because FBI and other federal types frequent the club, Trey often has inside info.

Wolf Ramiz: Bunny's young nephew (14), Wolf was left to Bunny's custody after her sister's murder. Wolf considers himself "old enough" for pretty much anything, and Bunny has to ballance her quest for revenge against the need to be Wolf's guardian.

Personal Set:

An old, creased picture of her sister. Bunny pulls it out when she needs reassurance or focus.

Source: Max

Source interest: entropy

Source: Elephant Sack

Source Interest: steampunk

Iron Fist
Cybernetic Aristocrat

Wilhelm van Morgenstern was born to a wealthy Prussian family and given the best education a Prussian nobleman could hope to receive. By the time he was ten, he had mastered the forms of saber fencing his grandfather had nearly beaten into him since birth and his family's wealth was on the rise due to their investments in steam-weaponry. The Great War was looming on the horizon and the cunning could turn that to their advantage. Unfortunately for Wilhelm, an accident during a match against an older rival left him without a left arm, his dominant. The Morgenstern family could not be dishonoured by having a crippled son, so their fortune and technological contacts were pressed into forging a new left arm for him. Now given a powerful weapon and fueled by the desire to be seen as competent, Wilhelm devoted himself to representing his family's interest in the economic centers of Europe, while carving a swath through the fencing circles, fairly and not.

Drives

Source: Gen Lang

Source Interest: waifs

Kid Venture
Street-Smart Waif

Born on the street and raring to take a bite out of the Big Apple, Kid Venture got his start by hanging around with Doc Ravage and his crew of adventurers after his exposure to nuclear fall-out from the Trinity tests, as side-kick and scrappy youngster. After a few years, however, Venture decided that his personal bugaboo was crime on the streets and the men who made it happen. Barely 16, the Kid came back to New York and started assembling a group of savvy street-punks who shared his distaste for criminals.

Traits:

Street-Savvy 5

A child of the streets from the age of five, Kid Venture knows how to fight dirty, work the underworld, and understands who's the lynchpins in the grit.

Atomic Speedster 5

Fallout from Trinity gave Kid Venture the ability to move as fast as radiation! He often uses this power to dodge punches, zip across town, or other feats.

Fifth-Street Irregulars 3

The Fifth-Street Irregulars are an ad hoc bunch of street kids who Kid Venture can call on at need. They can provide muscle, eyes and ears, or just a wall of young flesh.

Investigation 3

Venture knows how to shake down adults for their spare info, put it together, and make solid deductions.

"Just a Kid" 1

If you con't know him, odds are you don't respect him.

Since I didn't actually get to run My Life With Master at D*C, I thought I might post a few of the characters as I envisioned they might be and some notes that were floating around my head.

Skullcrusher Mountain

Inspiration

Skullcrusher Mountain

Welcome to my secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain
I hope that you’ve enjoyed your stay so far
I see you’ve met my assistant Scarface
His appearance is quite disturbing
But I assure you he’s harmless enough
He’s a sweetheart, calls me master
And he has a way of finding pretty things and bringing them to me

( Read more... )</u></font></a></span>

Master

Antoine Marsepain M.D. (Brain / Feeder)

Description and Background:

Antoine Marsepain graduated from the university of medicine in Antwerp near the top of his class, his reputation amongst the teachers and students was sterling, and no one had a bad word to say of the young man. That was, until the accident he suffered when a young woman of his acquaintance struck him violently as he attempted to rape her. She persisted with her untoward response until Antoine was driven out into the street, where he was run down by a handsome carriage. Dragging himself out of the muck of the gutter, he nearly bled to death and his limbs were set awkwardly by a near-quack in a neighboring hovel, leaving him with twisted, spindly limbs, a gaunt, pale, and hollowed visage that never really recovered, the inability to move about without pain, and a burning desire to be accepted by women everywhere as their protector and saviour, just before using and consuming them for his momentary gratification.

Wants:

The approval of the "beautiful people," as a member of their elite and a desirable sexual partner.

Needs:

A supply of beautiful sexual trophies, protectors, gifts, flatterers.

The Outsiders:

A coterie of the beautiful and the rich. Their main interests are always themselves and occasionally whether or not someone is worthy of being considered one of them. In behaviour they are barbaric while offering the trappings of the most refined and effete.

Fear: 5

Reason: 4

Minions

Scarface

Description:

A hulking, man-ape of a being, Scarface was cast out of the village below Skullcrusher after accidentally killing a girl with a hug, and his face was beaten and cut savagely by the expulsive mob. Antoine found him outside the castle atop the mountain and nursed the poor thing back to health, earning Scarface's eternal gratitude. Of course, Antoine's primary interest lies in using Scarface to acquire beautiful women and girls to impress himself upon.

Self-Loathing: 3

Weariness: 0

More Than Human:

Inhuman strength and physical power, except against men.

Less Than Human:

Hideously ugly and repulsive, except when seen with a child.

Connections:

Infatuated with the sister of the girl he accidentally killed.

Often feeds a stray dog that wanders in the forest.

Half-Pony, Half-Monkey Monster

Description:

Constructed by Antoine as a gift for a potential paramour, the HPHMM is a terrifying stitched-together thing that barely seems coherent, yet manages to hang together. Not quite self-aware enough to despise it's existence, it nevertheless manages to want some degree of acceptance or, at least, to be put out of others' misery with all speed. Antoine sometimes uses the HPHMM as either a threat or "reward" when courting.

Self-Loathing: 0

Weariness: 3

More Than Human:

Invisible to sight, except when standing on or under stone.

Less Than Human:

Obviously an abomination in the eyes of Man and God, except at night.

Connections:

A blind child in the village which thinks it's just a horse and sometimes feeds it apples.

An old man who wanders in the forest by the stone stables.

Wolfram

Description:

Four-feet tall, hunched, and covered with light grey fur, Wolfram is one of the few experiments that Antoine has engaged in that turned out to not end up in the basement of the castle, screaming in constant pain. Electrifying wolf and human tissue together in a crucible, he managed to create a fetal mass which he implanted into the womb of one of the pretty things Scarface brought in. Having ripped it's way out of the girl's belly, Antoine doted on the feral thing until it was old enough to run on it's own, whereupon Antoine turned him out to the snows. Wolfram now leads the wolf packs on the mountain at the Master's cruel bidding.

Self-Loathing: 2

Weariness: 1

More Than Human:

Faster than the eye can follow, save when in an urban environment.

Less Than Human:

Cannot communicate, except as an animal might.

Connections:

The forest-dog, which believes Wolfram to be it's pack alpha.

The village harlot, Ella, who feeds him scraps.

Ilsa

Description:

Not every woman that Antoine has abducted and abused has died under his tender ministrations, or been used in experiments, or gone insane under the strain. Alright, yes, they have; Ilsa is a representative of the last group. Her mind broken open and ravaged just as her body was, Ilsa became slavishly devoted to Antoine, willing to accept the most perverse abasements just to continue being near him. Antoine, of course, considers nothing less his due and Ilsa's ongoing devotion is never acknowledged or commented upon even in its hideous excess. Still beautiful, despite her madness, Ilsa lives in the castle and breathes at Antoine's command.

Self-Loathing: 1

Weariness: 2

More Than Human:

Incredible, radiant beauty, except when she speaks.

Less Than Human:

Emotionless, except when expressing an extreme.

Connections:

Her father, who still lives in the village.

The mayor's son, who is a beautiful blonde Adonnis.

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to run MLWM at some point. It has a lot of potential to be exceedingly rewarding for my twisted nature.

Lifted from the Dark Conspiracy ML, in a post by Lee Williams (no relation):

Yoinked from the Delta Green list:

"The gun nut in your group says he wants to carry a shotgun and a pistol under a
trench coat. Referee disallows the idea, thinking there's no way to do that.

Then the gun nut shows you this...."

http://www.andrewsleather.com/firepower.htm

Cool no?

I just love stuff like this. In fact, if I were more of a costuming geek, I'd feel compelled to buy something like this, just for the cool combination with the inevitable sweep of the black trenchcoat.

I'm such a geek.