Oddities and experiments

Illustration by Scott LeMien

Here’s the ninth post in my series about Intruder, an anti-hero or villain protagonist created by me and Scott LeMien. I’m in the middle of applying or expressing its concepts in terms of historical superhero role-playing games’ rules.

A fearful symmetry is born

Now it’s time to check out Intruder as he might be expressed across the comics/games/games/comics via licensing.

In the Eighties

Now we’re taking Intruder into the role-playing games of the Eighties proper, that is, culturally. There’s a certain fun for me in making this character with these games, considering that his whole existence is a modern critique of the future interpretation of this era.

What medium and idiom hath wrought

Now for my next trick, which is to express or interpret Intruder via the concepts and mechanics across many role-playing games. It’s not a trivial comparison, as he’s based on very situational and preparatory concepts: “did it thirty minutes ago,” “crazy prepared,” “knew all about that,” “investigated and surveilled it all better than you did,” “stole your power,” and that potential mud-stomper of all dramatic conflict-of-interest, mind control. So it’s not just about whether he wields gravity or lightning powers, or how many guys he can take out with one zap. How does role-playing logic deal with this kind of content across games, or rather, what different forms of logic are employed across them?

Rough and ready

Intruder is 14 (now 15 + cover) pages of fun between me and Scott LeMien. It pleases me and that’s all it’s for. Rest assured, the horror and blasphemy to follow in the next paragraphs shall not singe a hair upon the wisdom of comics creation that everyone knows. (As for the many how-to’s and about-comics accounts that do correspond to what I’m saying, shhhh!)

Forms and features

Let’s talk about making the characters for Intruder. I have an agenda with this topic. It is to shoot, chase down, finish off, hang up, and gut the typical discussions, usually framed as traumatic controversy, over who “really” created this or that famous comics character.

“I Am I”

Here are the 14 pages we did for Intruder! The prior post, Intruder alert, told you about the very beginning of this collaboration between me and Scott LeMien, and this one is about the very end. After this, I’ll show you the guts about how it was done.

Intruder alert

I spent quite a bit of 2019 with this guy, and this is the start of a series of posts all about it. Briefly: he’s called Intruder, his given name is Jay LeBeau, he is a joint creation by me and artist Scott LeMien, and we did a twelve-page comics story strictly for fun. The first two posts here will present the beginning of the process and the end, and then I’ll natter on through a bunch more about hows and whys and whatnots. For something done on a non-commercial whim, it prompts a remarkable number of thoughts through several different media.

Metaltürk

My pick for the most banal possible phrase to lead with in any writing about comics: “I have always loved the interplay between words and pictures.” However, right now I’m struggling to lead with anything else, because this post is simply about pictures that have emerged from playing (words).

Dark Matter: inspiration and fun

More comics, creativity, and role-playing intersection – it’s a fine day. This is about Abby Baldwin’s own graphic novel Dark Matter, serving as the conceptual jumping-off point for role-playing my alpha version of Champions Now with her dad Robert. Here’s my conversation with Robert about all sorts of concepts and angles on it.

For quick reference on the project, I’ve done my own playtesting with the alpha version, as shown in my videos about the Defiants, and several other groups are giving my feedback (e.g. this post) about doing that too. I’m now moving into Beta testing with several groups at once, and receiving feedback from others too.

Killing rules, or does it

Designers of superhero role-playing games have suffered far more agonies over whether, why, who will and who won’t, how-to, do-or-don’t, and what-have-I-done, regarding killing, than any fictional superhero ever did.

Knowing your Unnhh from your Arrghh

I do like it when creative comics talk and role-playing design talk can use the same words. Let’s narrow it down to one of my three current supers design projects, Champions Now, and talk about the fights. There are three interrelated points: what happens and knowing why; the damage, pain, hurtin’, including the two famous gutturals in the post title; and why the characters are even there and fighting at all.