You're a wonder...

Wonder Woman!

Today I saw Wonder Woman's new costume and I have to admit, I like it. I am not a huge fan of WW and I have long thought her costume was 1) busy and 2) impractical. I think this new outfit looks stylish.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Photo's origin is from here as well as J. Michael Straczynski's plans for Wonder Woman. It sounds intriguing enough for me to pick up issue #600.

Update to Avengers game

It seems based on the messages I've read that Mongon is out. Looks like Chris sent him a private e-mail and Mongon got revamped. So I will concede that perhaps I did not give Chris enough credit. Perhaps he read all the other comments other players made about Mongon and began to realize how unworkable the character was.

And perhaps if I had actually stuck around and voiced those concerns rather than bitching and moaning here I might be playing that game.

I considered trying to jump in, but that would entail me either 1) erasing my posts here (if that is even possible; I never considered having to erase anything before) in case Chris read them, 2) editing the hell out of my old post or 3) saying to the guy "Yeah, you were the subject on my blog, I was a bit of a tool towards you but that's okay if I still play your game, right?"

Uh, yeah...

Short of legal action, I won't delete my posts. I have to stand by what I write, good or bad. I believed in what I said at the time and based on what I saw. I will say I am glad Mongon is gone for Chris' sake and I wish him great success with his game.

This week I saw an ad for a new PBEM involving Marvel’s Avengers, Called Avengers Uprising. Based loosely on the plots arising from The Heroic Age, the game was to focus on both established Marvel characters as well as new ones. I was excited when I saw the game and based on the rules presented to me I thought I would be able to enjoy this game.
Then a guy named Calvin submitted this character, Mongon:

Residency: Interdimensional traveller.
Internetal plain home: areacode 315
Name: "Mongon" Calvin Merlini
Alias: Mongon/ Matrix of the Dead/ Jack Jester/
Code name: Mongon
Gender: male
Age: looks 18 but well over 1,000
Affiliation:(Hero,Villain,or Other)Friends to the Fantastic four, member to one of the X-teams [X-Squad...different rpg], Dr. Strange

Appearance:
Hair: electric blue , hair cut is normal cut
Eyes: yellow glowing without contacts
with contacts hazel
Skin: light blue
Height: 5'6"
Physique: slender muscular
Other:(Scars,Tattoos,etc.)
Costume:(Appearance in costume)Navy blue trenchcoat with patches from places, dimensions, etc 's he's visited! Under it he keeps his original X-men suit as it once belonged to the team back in the 60's. Footwear is none other the black converse and fingerless gloves for his hands.

Equipment/Tools:(Any Weapons,Tools, or Magicial Armament at his/her disposal) One of Merlin's Staff's, cellphone, and a miniture stargate

Personality: Happy go lucky

Skill/Powers: over the years Mongon has developed many abilities due to his internetal abilities as well as his magic ones.

Internetal

Traveling: Can turn into electricity go into the internetal plain and travel through phones, wires, cellphone waves, and television waves.

Communications: Can travel inside computers and dirrectly communicate with other program and negotiate what he needs. This can lead to rigging slot machines for money/ peeking at security camera's/ or my favorite "switching a Sentinel's objective" hehehehe

Home: Has a internetal home that he has linked to his cellphone and at any point he can dial home to relax.

Magical Abilities

The weird and yet cool thing about magic is where ever you go it's there to learn and similars spells can be diverse as well as slightly different with twists in different lands.

Also unlike mutant powers, spells can backfire for good and for bad! For these two reasons Im not listing the spells what I will say is this "In different places will spark his memory and unlock things he might had known 500 years ago."

The Freak power

Portholes: His internetals and magic abilities clashed together in a chatoic manner opening portholes to different dimensions. These holes would suck him up alone and close leaving him stranded in the strangest places.

This would happen anywhere from 20 days to 20 years and always at random! However recently the ancient egyptians had given him a small coin like stargate that has helped him gain the ability to come and go as he pleases.

Strengths: Age- due to being on the internetal plains and being the son of Merlin and Morrigan he doesnt age

Illness- Cannot get sick due to human virus's but can die to a computer virus!!!

Vulnerabilties: Computer virus's, spell miscalculations, and the freak power.

Secrets: can sing and can play over 500 different musical instruments.

Background: After living over a 1,000 years its hard to write up his whole origin here. To shorten it.

Calvin was adopted into a home but as he got older he became obsessed with video games until he was sucked into the internetal plains after usng an illegal password.

On the internetal plains he found out there way of life was in chains as a monopolistic Artifical Intelligence program known as the SKULL wanted world domination and figured it could start it out by dominating the computers the human's made. Anyone who was deemed a threat was sucked into the internetal plains and forced to work for him..or her!

He quickly joined in the rebellion and using the computer knowledge he had of video games and java codes he smoked out the SKULL. The SKULL challenged him to a dual one on one. The challlenge contested of 6 computer games. Before going out to fight he go a kiss for good luck from the beautiful program known as Jeannie. Little did he know she was the Game Geannie! Taking it out all 6 games he had freed the internetal plains from domination!!!!

When asked for his name he gave them his last name... Mongon! From then on there he was known as Mongon! He was freed to return home but given an internetal key to come back any time. Before he could leave on his own the freak power began and he was sucked into a different dimension.

He landed in professor xaviers school for gifted youngsters. His skin and hair was now blue and his eyes were glowing yellow. He landed in the right place to help. When Xavier disovered a bit of magic in his abilities he sent him to Dr. Strange for help...but before he could go Excalibur had come to visit the school and with them was Merlin.

It was there Merlin came out and explained that Mongon was his son and took him to his magical home to meet his mother Morrigan Aensland the Succubi Queen. He also met his sister. He trained with his family as they taught him what they mostly knew.

Upon coming back to the school he found Juggernaut there using magical attacks. Quickly Mongon jumped in and countered some of the spells and set up a few of his own! This action spooked Juggernaut as noone had revally used magic back on him... possibly ever! He took a mad dash for it running over sabertooth!

Over the years Mongon has visited many other dimensions, seen other cultures and has even had the luck to live very different lives and learn many things. It's time he return back to the marvel universe where he once got his spark.
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There's always going to be weird questions on Mongon but thats what makes it fun. He's a character who's been used for 13 years now so things are always changing.

I will post up of his past in the future.

For the record, Calvin might be the nicest guy in the world. But when it comes to creating characters he is totally out of control. What we have here is a classic case of Mary Sue-dom. His character is a thousand years old, giving him maybe thirty times more life times worth of experiences than other players (add to that he looks eighteen, so he can easily flirt with the ladies and his potential enemies would under estimate him, not realizing they were dealing with a veteran). His powers are all over the map and he wrote up his origin so that he is friends with the X-Men and Fantastic Four both. He makes himself the son of Merlin, then defeats the Juggernaut. But as bad as this character is, what makes it worse it there was a GM who green lit it.

The GM, Chris, let Calvin run this character. Why? Good question. Perhaps Chris is an inexperienced GM and has no idea how to say “no”. Perhaps Chris and Calvin are friends in real life and he wants to be nice. Perhaps Chris has poor judgment. Certainly one aspect of poor judgment is to no adhere to your own rules. One of Chris’ is:

Also no power is invincible to get around, these are young heroes not experience meaning you won't be tossing airplanes at each other like baseballs anytime soon or at least not in the beginning :p

Hmmm. So why is he letting someone play a character who is an experienced hero, a former X-Man?

Here is something that was amusing, in a sad way. When I asked him for clarification regarding powers he had this to say:

As far as the original character are concerned most if not all will not be as Strong as Thor believe me when I say thats a recipe for Godmodding. But that doesn't mean they themselves won't be significantly powerful in their own right, its hard for me too really give a scale you can focus around since most Comic character seem to be all over the place as power is concerned but let say they could take on a guy like the Rhino by themselves just fine but they need some help against the Juggernaut.

And yet Mongon defeated The Juggernaut single handedly.

If you are going to be a GM consistency is key. Do not tell one player one thing then contradict yourself with another. Do not create rules and then ignore them. Do not be afraid to tell a player “no” when it comes to a character submission.

NOTE: Calvin posted a more complete bio of Mongon here and it is even worse, where he makes himself a member of the West Coast Avengers and a student of Doctor Strange. You know who this reminds me of? Sentry. Sentry, for those of you who do not know, is a Marvel Comics character created by Paul Jenkins who was forcibly retconned into Marvel history so he was known and loved by everyone. He was everyone's friend, the only guy who could calm The Hulk. Heck, he even took Rogue's virginity because he was the only guy who could touch her.

The more I look at Mongon, the gladder I am I dodged this bullet...

Freak Angels

Superboyprime at Scans Daily posted a link to Warren Ellis' Freak Angels. Freak Angels is an online free comic I have been following for a few months now. I just thought I would mention it. This week would be an excellent time to jump on, although to really enjoy the story I would highly recommend starting at the beginning.

Frank Frazetta, RIP

When I was very young, my Dad would sometimes take me to work with him. He worked for the advertising firm Campbell and Ewald (you may have heard of them in the news recently, they lost the Chevrolet account) as a graphic artist. Going to work with my Dad was an awesome experience. He had every single color imaginable in magic markers and colored pencils. It was my first exposure to a Xerox machine and I would spend all day making dozens of copies of my drawings and sitting in some corner of his office coloring all day long.

In his office my Dad had some choice art framed on the walls. He had a print from Erte of the alphabet, and he had two works from artist Frank Frazetta. It was my first exposure to the man’s art and both were very dark and almost disturbing. One was of a demonic centaur-type creature with a nude woman riding on his back (for a kid in single digit years this was probably my first exposure to a nude woman. If you are wondering how Dad could get away with hanging such a thing on his office wall, well, all I can say is the seventies was a very different time).

The second print was The Death Dealer, a menacing figure whose face was hidden in the dark depths of his helm, eyes glowing a demonic red, sitting astride a war horse, his huge axe dripping gore. This, to me, was awesome stuff. Of course it was far, far cooler than the nude chick.

A couple years later I found my Dad’s collection of Conan paperbacks, and on them were the works of Mister Frazetta. I have Frank Frazetta (and my Dad) to thank for my first forays into fantasy literature. While kids these days first cut their teeth on Harry Potter and his adventures reciting bad Latin, I was reading the tales of a brooding Cimmerian as he cut a bloody swath across the page.

I am not exaggerating when I say when Frank Frazetta died part of my childhood died with him.

Thank you, Mister Frazetta, for haunting my imagination with your dark imagery, and for your in part inspiring me to enter the realms of Robert E. Howard. You are much appreciated and you will be missed.

If you wish to see some of Frazetta's work, head over to this link.

Making your pitch, setting your tone

One important aspect of your game is the tone. Is it a light hearted comedy? Four colored comic book action? Batman style gritty realism? Generating a tone and adhering to it are both very important, and equally important is conveying to potential players up front what that tone will be.

Personally, I think the worst tone possible is a depressing, post-apocalyptic setting, or one in which the players are up against unwinnable odds, or playing in some other environment that is horrifically depressing. The best example of this that I can think of are the White Wolf games Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, etc. In them you play characters who are either in terrible situations (i.e. undead) or are fighting against opponents that cannot be beaten. In Mage, for example, your primary opponent is The Technocracy. The Technocracy rules the world behind the scenes, there is no beating them. Nothing you can do in the long run can overwhelm The Technocracy because they employ a kind of magic called Science that is powered upon a fundamental belief that science works. The more people who believe in Science, the more powerful it is. So guess what, mage; you live in a world that cannot possibly be changed in any meaningful way.

If you play Werewolf do you think you are going to be able to defeat The Wyrm? Think again. Vampire? Well, Vampire has a sort of cult following all its own. At least it did when I was in college when LARPers took it over and got to dress up in black and role play the undead making and breaking political alliances. Vampire might be the one exception in the White Wolf series because instead of their being an obvious major villain, the players themselves were villains (you know, for being undead blood suckers).

The point is, though, that when players are confronted with a world where they are pitted against an unbeatable foe, it can be pretty daunting. It is like my dislike of X-Men games. With X-Men games the opponent is the Federal government, mutant hunting agencies, racist groups, mutant terrorists, etc. There is no winning here. Your character is trapped in a nightmare world and the best they can hope for is to have a mattress to sleep on underground somewhere, hiding from hoards of racists bastards out to kill them because they are prettier than they are (ninety nine out of a hundred mutants are beautiful. It is the rare player willing to run the sort of freak of nature that would cause riots).

Your game does not always have to maintain the same tone. Perhaps you want to run a series of adventures with a humorous bent, or you wish to introduce more romantic elements. The tone is in part inspired by the players themselves as you strive to keep them entertained. For example, a player may wish his character to form a romantic bond with an NPC, if so then role play that out with them. Even if your game is not romance based it certainly does not hurt to have a romantic element to it, provided it is done in a tasteful manner and adheres to the rating system you and your players are comfortable with (I have always gone for a PG-13 rating in my games, although when it comes to gory elements I have slipped into "R" territory. But when it comes to sex, fading to black works best for both myself and my players). Sometimes a game needs to be shaken up a bit to keep it fresh, keep players interested. Do not be afraid to change up the tone a bit if you or your players are getting bored. Just bear in mind that if your players signed up for one sort of game and you start delivering another they may quit on you. Discuss dramatic changes with your players before you initiate them.

What about humor, you may ask? Funny is hard, and I cannot imagine any game that can be long sustained on it. All the same, I think a little humor never hurts. Some of Star Trek's greatest moments were funny ones (The Trouble With Tribbles, Trials and Tribbleations are just two examples). Just don't be surprised if your jokes fall flat, and do not take it personally if your players do not find them funny.

So when you design your game, think long and hard about the world you are creating. Do you really want to deliver an environment in which your PCs can have no impact whatsoever? A world where they are against unstoppable forces? A place where they are at best government stooges, at worst outlaw vigilantes with a price on their heads? Consider carefully what you deliver. My game has lasted over eight years in part because the tone I have provided is at times gritty, other times humorous. A place where sometimes the heroes do come across larger than life and make a difference in the world.

Just a note...

Kate Bush is on the cover of the June issue of Britain's Uncut magazine. A substantial part of the article is focused on Kate's fifth album, Hounds of Love, as it's 25th anniversary approaches.

And Jesus Christ I suddenly feel old.

Hounds of Love is my favorite album, edging out Styx's Pieces of Eight, Rob Zombie's Hillbilly Deluxe, Garbage's debut album, Billy Squire's Don't Say No, Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes and the soundtrack to Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan (I am not necessarily huge fans of these artists. I just think those are some awesome albums, with a terrific collection of songs), I keep coming back to it. It is comprised of two parts. Side A contains four marketable hit songs: Running Up That Hill, Hounds of Love, The Big Sky and Cloudbusting, along with Mother Stands For Comfort. Side B is called The Ninth Wave, essentially a concept album chronicling the tale of a woman stranded, floating in the ocean, drifting in and out of consciousness. The album showed that Kate had learned from the errors made on her fourth album, that to succeed as an artist you must make compromises between the sometimes hard to understand, possibly even unapproachable art that only hardcore fans might appreciate with the demands of the market that allow an artist to thrive. Hounds Of Love's hit singles are by no means bad songs (I love all four) but in recording them along with her concept album Kate showed a very clear understanding of the market and the realities by which she had to live.

Also of note, at the time Kate was recording the fourth album The Dreaming she had to rent time from various studios, which meant she could not always record when she felt like it. Deciding that lack of freedom curtailed her creative energies, she invested in building her own studio, which allowed her near complete freedom. In the end Hounds of Love is a stronger album than The Dreaming, both commercially and creatively (some Kate Bush fans argue The Dreaming is the better album. I respectfully disagree.).

Creatively, I think Hounds of Love is Kate's high water mark, creatively. I still love her later albums (The Sensual World, The Red Shoes, Aerial) but Hounds is better than all three. If you are interested in getting to know Kate's work, I suggest you start with The Whole Story, her greatest hits album, or Hounds. And if you are damn lucky (like me), purchase the Hounds of Love EMI 100th anniversary edition with all the extra B sides.