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?

On and on and on

All about some role-playing history and that funny “story” word this time.

Best with badness

Jeff Dee, Crisis at Crusader Citadel

Not too surprising that I’m taking a whole post to discuss mid-80s role-playing super-villainy, is it?

Kill, kill, kill

Art by John Hotchkiss

I jumped back into role-playing with gusto in late 1985, armed with Champions 3rd edition and a handful of enthusiastic friends. Before too long I was meeting lots of others playing the game, in person and through The Clobberin’ Times, and I got a good look at how plenty of people expected to play their heroes. How was it? Easy. In a word, they were killing all over the place.

Dynamic mechanics

I said I’d be getting to actual comics during all this role-playing talk, didn’t I? Here we go.

Exhumed, still lovely my dear

Ah, boxes and boxes of trans-Atlantic stuff, you have at last yielded your layered secrets unto me, into my hands!

Elementary

As I heft the pile of issues and drift into a reverie, to see how Elementals fits in my mind, it emerges as a brilliant disaster. But I want to apply some historical perspective on why I might see it that way, maybe to consider it differently.

Vee and Vee

Give that Villains & Vigilantes cover the credit as the superhero RPG that really knew who needed to be the central visual character on there. Purple and green bad guys forever!