seneschal

Very cool, and applicable to multiple types of campaigns. Had to hunt for the broo-alikes but they were there. I've picked up a couple Bones minis at my local game stores and they're well done and much more affordable than metal minis.

A postscript on Cathy Lee Crosby. In 1975, while Linda Carter was starring as Wonder Woman, Crosby played another immortal heroine from ancient Greek myth. She was a villainous Helen of Troy in an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, "The Youth Killer." Seems she maintained her eternal beauty by siphoning off the youth of healthy specimens located by her computer dating service, causing her unwitting sacrifices to Hecate to die of extreme old age in a matter of minutes. Evil, yes. But she looked terrific in that white Grecian dress. And she had that same knowing air of assurance she'd had as Wonder Woman. Too bad. She bested Ricardo Montalban only to be defeated by Darrin McGavin.

More info on the Diana Prince series: http://www.fanzing.com/mag/fanzing37/feature7.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching_%28comics%29 And the source material for my write-up: Wonder Woman 1974 Pt 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT8QJbTWlXs Wonder Woman 1974 Pt 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amIxivB3QT0 Wonder Woman 1974 Pt 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo8AMnRt3P0 Wonder Woman 1974 Pt 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UECuEoin4A Wonder Woman 1974 Pt 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0FqPdLdGAI You can judge for yourself how cool or how lame the Crosby version was. And compare it with the mod late Sixties version of Wonder Woman. Since this was just a pilot, a pitch demo, who knows what might have happened with a series? Different lead actress, better special effects, more developed plots. True, the 1974 Wonder Woman pilot didn't measure up to the Linda Carter series, but it was at least as good as the 1977 Spider-Man live action show, which did get a green light. Ah, the Seventies! Anyone up for write-ups of the TV versions of Hulk, Spider-Man, Linda Carter Wonder Woman, Dr. Strange, or Captain America? Or The Man From Atlantis, the Six-Million-Dollar Man, the Bionic Woman, M.A.N.T.I.S., Automan, Street Hawk, Manimal, Gemni Man, the Invisible Man (both of them), or NightMan?

The BASIC bestiary from the downloads section is especially good for "mundane" animals. Basic Creatures is essentially an older version of the material found in the back of the Big Gold Book. Also, there have been quite a few critter write-ups posted on these very forums.

My understanding is that the network got permission to make a Wonder Woman movie but wasn't allowed to use the character's usual costume. Why? Dunno. Also, as stated in the write-up, the depiction was based on the de-powered Diana Prince of the late '60s and early '70s, in which Wonder Woman took up with a kung-fu master and re-learned hand-to-hand combat after her sister Amazons and their magic island vanished from the Earth. (The island came back about a year later, and so did Wonder Woman's powers and costume.) I remember reading some of those issues as a small kid, with Diana running around in a dress instead of a costume, delivering karate chops and carrying a gun. Still, it was a fun write-up to do. Figuring out how to portray Wonder Woman's gadgets in BRP terms was a challenge. And I felt that her skills weren't good enough before I added the Super Skills power.

FYI, I did a write-up of the Cathy Lee Crosby version of Wonder Woman here: http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/3423-Superworld-Build-These-Heroes-Contest/page2 But no one seems to have noticed.

Aw, don't let an article honoring employees who'd performed community service discourage you. Wal-Mart's house organ depicted the honorees in costume but no powers or origins were described. We're awash in BRP fantasy and horror material. We desperately need your superhero monograph.

I think you're on the right track. With hollow bones, etc., the wing men's SIZ would be based on weight rather than wingspan or height. I'd probably lower their CON a bit, too, since they are inherently more fragile than someone with a more solid bone structure. I don't think you need special rules for variable SIZ. It's just that, like an open umbrella, they simply won't fit certain places regardless of what their characteristic is. Other related mutations might be enhanced vision (they're literally eagle-eyed) and perhaps prehensile feet (to assist in perching). Their specialized feet might in turn reduce their ground movement from the usual 10 to 8, despite the length of stride a 7-foot person would have -- unless you figure the stride and the feet cancel each other out. Another approach might be to keep the 14-foot wingspan but make the wing men only 4- to 5-feet tall. Thus they'd have tiny bodies like a pteranodon but outrageously long arms.

Uk, the Mexican Cyclops Mexican filmmakers (and apparently audiences) love the Universal Monsters. The national cinema had been influenced by U.S. horror imports starting with the Spanish-language version of Tod Browning’s Dracula in 1931, a film which in many respects improved upon the English language version shot at the same time. Mexican fantasy and science fiction movies have featured vampires ever since, and Mexican cinematographers also created their own versions of the Wolf Man, the Frankenstein monster, and the Mummy. One U.S. monster they apparently couldn’t duplicate was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. So instead they created a substitute to fill out the monster pantheon: Uk the Cyclops. The choice may have been influenced by a little-known U.S. science fiction movie, The Cyclops (1957), which was set in Mexico. Forget ancient Greek mythology. This Cyclops is an alien space creature imported by would-be invaders for nefarious purposes. The muscular 7.5-foot humanoid has a domed head with large pointed ears that flap, a single eye on a stalk like a snail’s, a Cookie Monster-like muzzle filled with sharp fangs, rough armored hide capable of deflecting revolver shots, and large three-fingered claws. A mane runs from the top of Uk’s head down its back. The Cyclops is sentient and can speak fluent Spanish but prefers to let its claws do the talking. Uk is strong enough to uproot and lift large trees. Despite its talons and formidable dental equipment, it absorbs its prey’s tissues by unknown means, leaving the intact skeleton standing in the victim’s last living attitude and position. In combat Uk will pick out the biggest, strongest-looking opponent to attack first as the most worthy adversary. Uk was introduced in The Ship of Monsters (1960) and returned in Santo and Blue Demon Against the Monsters (1970). In the first film it was electrocuted during a grand brawl with a robot. In the second it was supposedly destroyed when the mad scientist’s laboratory blew up. But we all know cinematic monsters only stay dead until the next movie. STR 70 CON 18 SIZ 23 INT 10 POW 12 DEX 11 Move: 10 Hit Points: 21 (41 CON + SIZ option) Damage Bonus: +5D6 Armor: 20/5 (kinetic, heat) Attacks: Bite 40%, 1D10 + DB; Claw 50%, 1D6 + DB; Grapple 55%, 1D3 + DB Skills: Climb 40%, Dodge 22%, Language (Spanish) 50%, Listen 65%, Spot 45%, Throw 45%, Track 35%

Thanks for the link. I'd kind of doped out the gist of the mission on my own, but the subtitles are nice to have. I had my kids, who are taking Spanish I, watch the movie with me to see how much of their vocabulary they could pick out. They enjoyed the film but subtitles would have helped make the cowboy's energetic rants more sensible. My son had the same reaction I did -- Beta was the space vixen he preferred ... until she sprouted fangs and decided to have farmer for lunch.

Not related to the Walmart heroes, but ... Wonder Woman 1974 I admit up front that Linda Carter owned the role of DC’s Wonder Woman. However, one year before the iconic television series debuted, another network (there were only three then) aired a pilot superheroine movie that got decent ratings but was not pursued. Cathy Lee Crosby played the title role. As a teenager, I agreed with the film’s many critics that this wasn’t the Wonder Woman I was familiar with from the comics. Crosby was blonde, her character wasn’t strong enough to shove aside cars and stop tanks, and her star-spangled costume (while absolutely more practical) in no way resembled Diana’s form-fitting swimsuit, er, uniform. Having re-watched the 1974 Wonder Woman twice as an adult, however, I’m having second thoughts. I wish Crosby’s version had had a chance to develop. Her proto-Wonder Woman, while possessing no obvious powers, was far more super than she might at first appear. Diana Prince still had the secret Amazonian origin, golden belt, bracelets, and invisible plane. She still worked as secretary/special agent for Steve Trevor, head of an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency. She could still slap around a group of thugs without breaking a sweat. She still stuck to her Amazonian principles while surrounded by a male-dominated culture. And her depiction was based on the Wonder Woman comics of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, in which the character lost her powers and had to rely on fighting skill alone. In that regard, Crosby, a former tennis champion, made sense. She looked fit and athletic, even when wearing dresses that accentuated her curves. Carter’s Wonder Woman kicked butt. Crosby’s version didn’t often have to because she was always three to five steps ahead of everyone around her, bad guys or good. She knew what people were going to say before they said it and often anticipated what they were going to do before they did it. Carter’s heroine could deflect bullets with her magic bracelets. Crosby’s would determine where the villains would likely place a sniper and clobber him from behind before he could ever fire a shot. Carter’s Wonder Woman could smash her way out of deathtraps, since the bad guys always underestimated her powers. Crosby’s Wonder Woman, utterly unflappable, could think her way out of a deathtrap in mere minutes. Carter’s version would leap 15 feet into the air to avoid an onrushing automobile, then during its second pass would grab its rear bumper as she landed. Crosby’s iteration would leap 8 to 10 feet into the dubious safety of a shop awning to avoid a careening auto, then slap a tracking device on its roof during its second pass. (Note to villains: If you miss her the first time, just keep going.) There were other differences. Carter’s Wonder Woman scrupulously kept her secret identity, even when the series shifted its setting from the Forties to the Seventies in its second season. The identity of Crosby’s heroine was a sort of open secret, known to Steve Trevor and to the bad guys (who, for once, figured it out). Carter’s character seemed afraid to use her direct might against opponents, choosing to toss them or lasso them instead. Crosby’s had no compunctions about delivering savage jabs, kicks and chops to her foes, taking them down fast and hard. Other than the ability to deflect bullets, Carter’s series paid only lip service to her exotic warrior heritage. Crosby’s heroine was able to snatch a hurtling spear out of the air and send it back at its thrower. Carter’s Wonder Woman defeated many foes but rarely had a recurring villain. The 1974 teleplay set the title character up with an archrival – an outlawed Amazon who fled to man’s world seeking fame and (ill-gotten) fortune, a sort of anti-Wonder Woman. Carter projected intense earnestness. Crosby seemed to be quietly laughing at all the male idiots surrounding her. Carter wore the traditional tiara, leotard, and high-heel boots. Crosby, not needing to conceal am alternate identity, wore current fashions but usually red, white, blue, or a combination of the three. In the field she wore a red, white, and blue long-sleeved, waist-length tunic, long blue pants, and sturdy blue boots with sensible heels. Powers and Abilities Crosby’s Wonder Woman had outrageous intuition and superb physical skills. No one could lay a glove on her in hand-to-hand combat. She was an expert with a spear, both as a handheld and a thrown weapon. Wonder Woman’s golden belt concealed a long reel of tough cord. Her bracelets were multi-function gadgets, serving as grapnel, tracking device and sensor, and a timed explosive. STR 17 CON 17 SIZ 11 INT 21 POW 17 DEX 18 APP 16 Move: 10 Hit Points: 14 (28 CON + SIZ option) Damage Bonus: +1D4 Armor: None Attacks: Brawl 53%, 1D3 + DB; Grapple 53%, 1D3 + DB; Spear 43%, 1D6+1 + 1/2 DB; Quarterstaff 53%, 1D8 + DB Skills: Bargain 47%, Climb 58%, Dodge 64%, Drive (Motorcycle) 48%, Fast Talk 33%, Hide 38%, Insight 46%, Jump 53%, Listen 53%, Martial Arts (Amazonian Combat Technique) 50%, Parry 43%/53%, Pilot (Invisible Plane) 29%, Research 53%, Sense 48%, Spot 53%, Stealth 45%, Swim 53%, Throw 53%, Track 45% Powers: Bracelet Explosive – Energy Projection (Kinetic) 3d6 damage, one use per day, 3 power points (20 points); Special – Doesn’t require Projection skill but must be physically placed at desired detonation site Bracelet Tracer – Super Skill, Tracking +60% (6 points) Defense, -75% vs. all incoming attacks (15 points) Extra Energy, +20 power points, total 37 (2 points) Golden Girdle Grapnel – Wall Walking, one power point per combat round (10 points) Super Skills – Insight +40% (4 points); Spear +40% (4 points) and Parry with Spear +20% (2 points) Unarmed Combat, 3 levels, +6 points damage for Brawl and Grapple, -15% chance to be hit, +15% to Brawl and Grapple, +6 Armor during successful unarmed Parry, (60 points) Failings: Accountable to a U.S. intelligence agency, often, +3 power points Personal enemy, Ahnjayla, renegade Amazon, +2 power points Notes: Wonder Woman had 118 character points for powers based on stats plus 5 more for failings, total 123; 500 skill points plus 210 personal skill points based on INT. Profession: Spy.

I'd say your write-up has them down pat.

No problemo. Who watches a football game, boxing match, Miss American Pageant, or a Godzilla movie for the snappy dialogue? In the same way, Mexican cinema is all about action, emotion,and attractive women in form-fitting garb. When El Santo or Blue Demon start slapping around zombies, who cares what the finer details of Doktor Muerte's plot were? In Ship of Monsters, a duo of nubile explorers is sent to Earth from a space matriarchy (Venus? Mars? Does it matter?) to find males to bring home so their cosmic civilization can continue. Along the way they pick up specimens of dangerous alien species they plan to use to coerce cooperation if the masculine population doesn't prove cooperative. The first man they encounter is a boastful singing cowboy, who explains that he can't leave the planet because he has to care for a boy (Son? Nephew? Orphan? Does it matter?) One of the space babes gets jealous when the cowboy demonstrates a liking for the other. She traps her companion in their rocketship, deactivates their robot, then releases the monsters they've collected. She reveals that she is a monster herself and wants to set up a queendom of her own. The creatures are agreeable. ("You eat all the small children. You devour all the women. You eat all the animals. And you gobble up all the men!"). The cowhand realizes something is up when one of the monsters attacks his herd. Kidnapped, he seduces the space vampiress with a romantic song in order to seize the gadget that will free the other explorer. He and the boy find the rocketship, release the other space babe, and proceed to battle the monsters. As Stan Lee might say, "'Nuff said."

The Ship of Monsters (1960) Sexy space women in search of virile Earth mates land their rocket ship in the middle of a Mexican singing Western. If they don't get the volunteers they want, they'll unleash a quartet of monsters capable of devouring all terrestrial life. Unfortunately, their first "recruit" -- a boastful cowhand with a penchant for verse and falling off his dancing horse -- turns them down. Guess who Earth is now depending on to save it? The space babes look good (females always pilot spacecraft in evening dress, don't they?), and so do the monsters: an evil brain, a spider-thing, a cyclops, and a talking saber-toothed skeleton. The sci-fi gear is cool in a 1950s sort of way, sort of Rocketship X-M meets Things to Come. All you Atomic Age Cthulhu and Astounding Adventures fans take note!

As is, the site is great on a computer but hard to read on an Internet-capable phone. Also, triple-tap typing makes replying to forums on a mobile device a pain. Not sure if that's something you can control from your end, though.

Plus, if you research the people and customs of any given era or location you'll find real people doing crazier things than you could ever dream up on your own. The scenarios just sort of write themselves after that. For example, in the "early West" period of 1815 through, say, 1830-ish, the United States and Great Britain nearly went to war a couple more times. Warships and tensions on the Great Lakes, skullduggery going on along the border with Canada, would-be Canadian liberators fleeing to the U.S. and trying to recruit help for an independence movement, naval ventures all over the globe, Russia telling the U.S. and Great Britain to keep their noses out of the Northwestern Coast. What nearly happened (but didn't) could fuel a campaign.

Although I'd like to see Aztec/Inca/Maya/Olmec sourcebooks, another role-playing challenge is that the Aztecs, at least, weren't nice people. The Aztec Empire was so oppressive that conquered rival nations flocked to the Spanish Conquistadors as the kinder, gentler alternative.

Or you could "borrow" worlds from other campaigns you've already planned but perhaps not run such as Varun or Pharos IV. If your players are familiar with those settings, simply change the names.

More childhood memories: Not as polished as Hanna-Barbera's cartoons, Terrytoons' The Mighty Heroes (1966) still delivered superhero fun with a team of dedicated, if not always competent, crime fighters: Strong Man, auto mechanic; Tornado Man, meteorologist; Rope Man, U.S. Navy sailor; Cuckoo Man, pet shop owner; and Diaper Man, underage but definitely not a sidekick. Their powers were straightforward and easy to model in BRP. All could fly. Indeed, Cuckoo Man could do little else. Strong Man was the team powerhouse, but tiny Diaper Man was nearly as strong and his baby bottle (with its elastic nipple) doubled as a ranged weapon. Tornado Man was naturally the master of powerful winds. Rope Man could snare and entangle villains at a distance with his extremely long and flexible body. Together they protected the city of Goodhaven from a colorful assortment of malefactors.

Darn. I saw the term "spirit magic" and immediately envisioned rival athletic teams, cheerleaders, and mascots lobbing spells at one another!

Instead of infinite locations, let's say the gate leads to a small number (3-5) of harsh but habitable environments -- desert Duat, chilly Thule, and one to three others. Make 'em as exotic as you want. Here's the kicker: each time a group of explorers passes through from Earth, they can't be sure which location they'll arrive at. Duat colonists might get back to Porta as expected, or they might not. Since the number of options is limited, the Pegasos Society will have had an opportunity to do at least preliminary scouting and setup at each site. There will be at least rude shelter, some tools and provisions cached, wherever they arrive. Also, each of these "worlds" is actually the same location on the same distant planet, but at different epochs in its history. So archeologists (or even ordinary workmen digging for water near Porta) might unearth the remains of the Society's encampment on one of those "other worlds." A player-character colonist or explorer might discover his own home, tools, documents ... thousands or millions of years later.

<see crew rooster? They've got a rooster on the crew? Seriously, though. It sounds like a fun campaign. They encountered a what?

"Besides, for many members of the society the Pegasos Society is basically an information net- work that provides them with cutting edge information about new developments in science and technology, and they are willing to pay for these informations and do not care that much that the informations were originally aquired to support the settlement on Duat." You're scaring me, rust. Now I think I'll have to cancel my subscription to National Geographic.

The gate will close in 1940, eh? Since you'd mentioned "advanced" technology and exploring by airplane, I'd assumed the campaign was set in the 21st Century. If all this is happening in the 1920s, it is entirely possible that Nathan Kohn's prophecy will come true when the German army invades France in May 1940. Society members might be willing to destroy the gate themselves to prevent it from falling into the enemy's hands. In the meantime, since Pegasos agents operating on Earth are primarily Duat born, they might defy the leadership and begin to smuggle technical books and papers into the colony using all the espionage techniques that will become common twenty years hence. Sneaking in raw materials and tools would be tougher, but they could at least begin to assemble their own library of useful information on the Porta side of the gate. All on the quiet, of course. "The Governor must never know of this." Colonists would also redouble their efforts at exploration and mapping in a desperate search for foodstuffs, fuel sources and minerals. If the Earthmen aren't going to back them up, they've got to help themselves. The rift and its accompanying resentment might eventually lead to a rebellion of some sort. One thing that's been bothering me is the motivation of the Pegasos Society in sinking all this effort and treasure into exploring and developing a "useless" world. It's all very well for a group of wealthy eccentrics in the early 1800s to spend their fortunes on science for science's sake, out of sheer curiosity. By the 1920s, however, a different generation of leaders has taken charge, folks who have to figure out new sources of funding for the venture and who will naturally begin to expect some sort of return on their investment. The settlers have a motive for continuing the project, of course. Their homes and families are at stake. The secretive, elitist Society members on Earth, however, are a different matter. What do they hope to get out of maintaining the gate? The neat-o factor has had plenty of time to wear off, and all they've found so far is rock, sand, and desert soil that responds well to irrigation. The Duat-born would likely delve even deeper into the occult than the Society's founders, seeking some means of creating their own alternative gate. Their urgent quest for forbidden knowledge would inevitably bring them into conflict with player-character adventurers. Even if the Kohn prophecy never existed, it is inevitable that there would be a gradual falling out between the settlers and the Pegasos Society on Earth. The original colonists were Society members with close friends and relatives running the gate. Their children and grandchildren, however, are less likely to have those ties and may begin to resent their dependance upon and governance by strangers on another planet. I would be willing to bet the colony population figures and exploration data posted earlier in the thread are only what the Society knows. Colonists ultimately will begin to build illegal homesteads and communities away from Porta, wherever they can find water. Sure, they're dead if the well fails or the first crop doesn't come in. But settlers in Oklahoma and Nebraska faced the same perils. And so far, they don't have to worry about unfriendly natives, predatory animals, or pests (other than what they may have accidentally brought with them). Once these outposts are established, explorations won't have to begin from Porta; they'll start wherever the settlers are. That "known lands" radius around the original colony is no longer a neat circle, although the bosses in Scotland won't know it. And settlers in remote areas are less willing (and perhaps unable) to report births, deaths, and discoveries to the Governor's office. Once the colonial population reaches a certain size and degree of self-sufficiency, the Duatians are out of the Society's control, although neither of them may realize it for some time.

It occurs to me that human activities often have unintended consequences. If the Porta settlers have been attempting agriculture for approximately 200 years, it is inevitable that some of their crops and livestock -- and even Earth germs, spores, etc., accidentally transported -- would have "escaped" and had a chance to go wild in the new environment. Now, the region near the Duat colony is scarce in ready sources of food and water for Earth organisms. On the other hand, there's hardly any competition for what resources there are, and there are no known diseases or predators to harm escapees. So, what if any Earth plants and animals have been able to "go native" near the colony? Who needs alien monsters when renegade hogs or cattle are determined to help themselves to the colony's hard-earned food and water supplies?