Character Creation Challenge 15c: ICONS Assembled

Character Creation Challenge 2022

15c: ICONS Assembled Edition

12c: Guardsman, team leader and shield

13c: Compass, pulse of the city

14c: The Beat, sonic strike rapper

Spearpoint

Eric Dalton

Special agent with an alien weapon

A government agent and former Marine with years of experience in a superhuman-response agency. Armed with an alien weapon recovered from an attack which can fire energy bolts as well as adapt for use as a spear, staff or paired sticks in hand-to-hand combat. Agent Dalton is a newcomer to New Orleans and not tied to the empowering effect, assigned as the team’s federal liaison and tactical expert.

Josh Duhamel

Inspiration: Hawkeye (early MCU) and Black Axe (Marvel UK)

Quantum Leap

A new Quantum Leap series gets a pilot order.

I have a lot of nostalgia for Quantum Leap, which arrived here in early 1990 with a primetime slot on BBC Two. It was mostly a sweet, kind show about trying to do right by people.

Will a sequel work? So much of the show depended on Sam and Al. There are many series formats like it but few shows with its charm.

Could you RPG it? Sure. PCs jumping into a new situation every session or so is easy and quite common. But a group of more than a couple players would need a format change as it would have to explain multiple time travellers working together, and probably encourage larger problems with less talking around them. It also has a much more limited playing field than the likes of Doctor Who, even before considering how much it stayed in the USA as shown on this map.

(Probably don’t change it as much as the 2002 attempt at a revival of The Time Tunnel, where it became about a team who went on missions and returned to the present. Which is a very game-friendly premise, as it’s basically Time Stargate, but at some point a reboot becomes a different thing.)

Having an insubstantial observer PC might be tricky too, though it could be interesting for a player who wants to try. But with the right group, a heartwarming upbeat low-key adventure can be a lot of fun.

Onyx Path News

Onyx Path News returns with tenth anniversary news, including a virtual convention aiming for June.

Character Creation Challenge 14c: ICONS Assembled

Character Creation Challenge 2022

14c: ICONS Assembled Edition

12c: Guardsman, team leader and shield

13c: Compass, pulse of the city

The Beat

Olan Rydell

Sonic strike rapper

A new generation old-school rapper making a name in the city’s busy music scene when the mayor’s office put out a call to form an official team. Empowered with a sonic blast activated by his voice, he’s here mostly for the publicity but he does want to help.

Gary Carr
Usually wearing a New Orleans Saints cap backwards

Inspiration: Static Shock.

Character Creation Challenge 13c: ICONS Assembled

Character Creation Challenge 2022

13c: ICONS Assembled Edition

12c: Guardsman, team leader and shield

Compass

Octavia Harris

pulse of the city

A history student gifted with a city-sense that allows her to find anyone in the city, predict and influence things, know just when and where to send emergency services, perfectly time a truck backing up to hit a killer robot.

Amandla Stenberg
Possibly with a 90s jacket-over-costume style

Inspiration: Jack Hawksmoor, StormWatch.

Character Creation Challenge 12c: ICONS Assembled

Character Creation Challenge 2022

12c: ICONS Assembled Edition

ICONS is a pretty light 2D6-based superhero RPG influenced by the original Marvel Super Heroes. Using the second Assembled Edition as the first edition PDF isn’t available separately.

It defaults to random character generation, though it has a points-based option. I created a character randomly last time, and this time I have an idea for a team, so using points to make them.

45 points each, 1 point per for Attributes, Powers and Specialties, Extras 1 per point of the base power, Limits countering that cost.

The New Orleans Stars, the city’s official superhero team. Running with the Fifty States Initiative idea from Marvel with carefully selected people being empowered among others.

Team Qualities

First Response Team

Like We Practiced

Public Identities

Starting with their team leader:

Guardsman

Laurence Dupre

Team leader and shield

A New Orleans native, former Navy officer and Coast Guard captain given an energy absorption power, so he can shrug off lasers as well as bullets. Strong, authoritative and fatherly.

Dennis Haysbert
Picture him in a dark blue Arrowverse style suit

Inspiration: Superman as of Superman & Lois.

The Book Of Boba Fett 1.03

The Book Of Boba Fett

1.03: The Streets Of Mos Espa

The cyberpunk Mods are a weird little clash of styles, with Sophie Thatcher in particular being very punk, though I appreciate their commitment to the bit that they came complete with extra mirrors on their hover-scooters.

And I also appreciate the chase’s dedication to destroying as many fruit carts as possible. And replacing the pane of glass somebody drives through with Ralph McQuarrie’s painting of Jabba.

I don’t want to do casting-based guesswork but I imagine we'll see Stephen Root again as he makes a great villain.

This must be what going mad feels like.

The balance of present and flashback sequences still feels off. The entire Previously On was from the present sequence, which as over a minute out of about fifteen...

I want to know what’s in the burrito. This is entirely down to not having had a burrito in months.

Kolchak

The Night Stalker premiered fifty years ago tonight, adapted from The Kolchak Papers and introducing Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak, a cynical reporter really not equipped to hunt vampires. The film was a classic, and the follow-up The Night Strangler worked, and the character still gets enough love to get a lineup like this for an anniversary anthology, while the series that followed was an inspiration for later supernatural investigations like The X Files, while also showing that a serious take on the monster-of-the-week genre with someone who keeps accidentally stumbling across the supernatural while looking for something else isn’t really sustainable.

New Paramore incoming

A new Paramore album, and to quote Hayley Williams:

“Our output has always been all over the place and with this project, it’s not that different. We’re still in the thick of it but some things have remained consistent from the start: 1. More emphasis back on the guitar, and 2. Zac should go as Animal as he wants with drum takes.”

Update: Reposting this may have solved the mystery of my vanishing After Laughter T-shirt. So that’s nice.

Final Destination 6

Final Destination 6 from the director of Spider-Man: No Way Home and a writer from Ready Or Not and Scream (2022). More than a decade after 5, and more than twenty years after the first.

Huh, okay, could be fun.

I say this as the GM of a play-by-post of it that included the phrase “runaway gravestone” which I’m still quite proud of.

Character Creation Challenge 11b: Vampire: The Masquerade

Character Creation Challenge 2022

11b: Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

7b: Paris, Toreador club promoter

8b: Shane, Brujah street teamer

9b: Mercy, Caitiff wait staff

10b: Jonah, ghoul security

Alice

Clan: none, dhampir (designed as Thin-Blood)

Concept: teenage runaway

Violet Brinson

Alice is alive. Her mother was close to it, closer than vampires are supposed to be. And someone hunted her down for this. They didn’t get along so she was out that night, and when she saw the house burned out she ran, and didn’t look back. She knew just enough about Anarchs to contact one in the city, who sent her to the relative safety of the club. It’s alright for now...

Scream

Scream (2022), which is Scream 5, comes out this weekend. Not a fan of that confusing definitive naming for sequels trend. But anyway. Final trailer discussion at Tor.

Neve Campbell as Sidney in Scream. Not 5.

This led to rewatching the series, including the solid (apart from the OTT Greek theatre stuff) 2 and 4 and my absolute least favourite 3 - with the commentary which is pretty interesting, explaining what went sideways.

See also this helpful and spoilericious guide at Empire. Or this Previously On recap video.

And I also just discovered that the TV series had a disconnected reboot, Scream: Resurrection (see, nice clear subtitling) on a different channel and with an entirely different cast, and the classic mask and voice after the original two-season run had a different design. It’s on Amazon here, not Netflix, to further explain the not knowing it existed. The first series starts badly but the mystery... more or less works.

There hasn’t been much game activity for the series. There have been no board games, surprisingly, despite Clue being an easy basis, a betrayal mechanic would work and so would a Werewolves style murderous deduction game. Ghostface masks not required but come on.

Even though the new film does have an official cereal.

And if you need a Ghostface miniature, there are plenty of cultists and wraiths that would work. HorrorClix never made an official one.

But this Studio Miniatures release looks familiar. Edit: now sold by Hayland Terrain.

(Also edit: sadly, Black Site sells their 35mm scale killer in one pack with other villains, separate from the Survivors set.)

In video games a phone game where you play Ghostface, and the inevitable appearance in Dead By Daylight and a much less inevitable appearance in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. The new film has Survive Scream House on browsers. (I didn’t!)

Scream is a slasher and a comedy deconstruction but also a mystery, so could be played though probably in a Dread kind of way.

Or Dead Of Night, or Shriek or Slasher Flick, or EPOCH, or the now-archive-only and at times crass Squeam minigames.

Maybe They Came From but the characters evoke the meta references on screen?

The sequels and TV series suggest a longer option with more investigation, maybe for something GUMSHOE-ish like Fear Itself with a cut-down skill list and possible teen options like Bubblegumshoe, by upping the number of suspects and NPC victims.

Followers like I Know What You Did Last Summer (which also got a series) and Urban Legend could provide extra models to work from.

Add monsters for more variety of threats to your genre-savvy young heroes and you get The Faculty... and of course also Buffy.

(Compare Scream creator Kevin Williamson’s own show Dawson’s Creek where the genre-savvy young heroes hardly ever faced serial killers.)

For the record, my favourite scary movie is The Haunting.

Character Creation Challenge 10b: Vampire: The Masquerade

Character Creation Challenge 2022

10b: Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

7b: Paris, Toreador club promoter

8b: Shane, Brujah street teamer

9b: Mercy, Caitiff wait staff

Jonah

Clan: none, ghoul (Brujah blood)

Concept: club security

Full rules for mortals and ghouls are included in the free V5 Companion available on the World Of Darkness homepage. You could also make a character as standard and stop when you get to the vampire-specific steps, but the ghoul rules in particular would be helpful.

M-Production stock photo, model not named

Ghouls are living beings given a taste of vampire blood and its power. It stalls the aging process and gives them a little access to their other powers. But it’s addictive, easily burned through, and can affect their emotional and mental wellbeing too. So a ghoul who isn’t servile can make vampires nervous.

Jonah doesn’t answer to any of the coterie directly. His blood comes from Shane’s sire, a more experienced Anarch strategist. And Brujah blood sometimes makes for more free-willed ghouls than most. He’s been assigned to help with the club, and the vampires around are useful, not figures of worship.

Nocturne 1.11

Vampire: The Masquerade - Nocturne

1.11

After a few weeks in and out of character, a relatively low-key Christmas season for the vampires of Baltimore. Thoughtful gifts, villainous subtext being entirely missed, some hugs, a montage of what significant SPCs did over the holidays, and Bruno the Hecata seeing eye dog receiving a ghost squeaky toy.

Character Creation Challenge 9b: Vampire: The Masquerade

Character Creation Challenge 2022

9b: Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

7b: Paris, Toreador club promoter

8b: Shane, Brujah street teamer

Mercy

Clan: Caitiff

Concept: wait staff

Tasya Teles

(Idea borrowed from Judith, but much less sunny.)

Mercy was a diner waitress, and a little too good at listening to sob stories for her own good. Her sire was a Caitiff himself, as far as she can tell.

She works with the coterie because the club is a good base, and because they keep the hunting around it to the bare minimum unlike the Camarilla.

David Bowie at 75

David Bowie was born, under another name, 75 years ago today. The great chameleon of rock and pop, literally a roleplayer.

Carrying on my little tradition of song title plot gooks at the Who blog.

Character Creation Challenge 8b: Vampire: The Masquerade

Character Creation Challenge 2022

8b: Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

7b: Paris, Toreador club promoter

Shane

Clan: Brujah

Concept: student street teamer

Amadeus Serafini

Shane was used to student protests, raves, and the like before jumping in to help someone and taking a beating from security left him close to death.

He runs with the Anarchs by default, like his sire and his sire’s sire, but he’s seen the Camarilla reach out and dismissed their offers.

Character Creation Challenge 7b: Vampire: The Masquerade

Character Creation Challenge 2022

7b: Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

(quickstart, website)

Last year I created a V5 character with an idea for a chronicle about the silent partners of an alternative club, then for RPGaDay I came up with a month’s worth of plot hooks for it and sketched in a group of characters to give them to.

So this is an adaptation of the 2021 character to slightly emphasise the coterie and shared domain, with full sheets for the others to follow over the week.

It’s a straightforward process but has quite a few steps involved, which I explained in more detail in 2021.

I’m keeping with the core book character types, with the exception of a ghoul (a human empowered by vampire blood) using the rules from the free Companion.

With a full coterie, I can add Chronicle Tenets. For simplicity, use the rulebook’s Code of Justice.

Never kill the innocent

Be your own, never submit

Without a cause, you are nothing

Paris

Clan: Toreador

Concept: club promoter

Julia Almendra

Paris was already a skilled events promoter at university and starting to make a name for herself when she was Embraced for her potential.

She threw in with the Anarchs as the Camarilla seems to view all human sources of joy as ways to hunt. She hopes there really is a better way. If not, her sire’s older childe on the other side will be delighted to say he told her so.

Hunting monsters for pay

A thought spurred by In The Heart Of The Sea, Moby-Dick presents whaling like a monster hunt. Whalers didn’t stay heroic figures like cowboys due to society turning on whaling, the industrial version in particular now generally regarded as monstrous. I suppose the reverse now would be stopping industrial dragon slaughter.

Character Creation Challenge 6a: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Character Creation Challenge 2022

6a: Buffy The Vampire Slayer (revised edition)

1a: Shelly The Vampire Slayer

2a: Caitlin the seer

3a: Ty the newsie

4a: Madison the one-woman society page

5a: Willis the tech support

Adding a second Hero for my 500th Buffy post on this blog here...

Having created a very classic Hero, one powered White Hat and three regular types, I figured I should show a bit more of the variety of the system. There are rules for revenant-style thinking zombies in Monster Smackdown, but for walking through walls I had to DIY something. (Part of a tradition for ghost PCs going back to my first Buffy PBP as Director.)

And I got a “Ha!” for Madison’s quote, which was nice.

Jerome Phineas “Jer” Endicott

Type: Hero, ghost

Description: Timelessly stylish, fortunately.

Example quote: “I died protecting the college once already, so it’s not as if I have anything pressing.”

Zain Hussain

Fenmore College has a long history of fairly odd occurrences, and nobody knows this better than Jerome Endicott, because he died fighting an ancient demon in 1912. His spirit remained, however, connected to the archives of the student magazine that preceded the Sentinel. And now a long-dead evil threatens to return, and he has awakened as well, able to touch and affect the world again.

Which is probably not a harbinger of an apocalyptic threat.

Right?