The Announcement

Happy Canada Day all!

As promised it is the 1st of July and I have an announcement to make!

I am making my own superhero role-playing game.

That's right.

Staring my 40th birthday (July 3rd) in the face I knew this was my year to move.  The recent boom of superheroes once again also let me know the time was right.

Now there may be some who feel I am jumping on a bandwagon, but those who know me know that this has been coming for the past 20 years.

I have assembled a dynamic team of contributors/consultants who are helping me develop the system, including James O'Rance proposing a fantastic dice mechanic that just sings to me!

The name of the game, for now, is "Zenith Comics Presents: The Role-Playing Game!"  Now this could stay as the title or just be a working title.  Only time will tell, though to be sure it's hard to get a name that hasn't already been taken by one of the numerous amazing superhero rpgs already on the market... but I digress.

I have also assembled (notice a theme of assembling here?) a team of outstanding artists.  Some published, others on their way to being published, to design and create the "look" of the art.  These dudes know their stuff and I am very excited to see how it will all turn out!

And last (never start a sentence with "and"), but by no means least, I have a publishing partner which means this will see actual dead-tree status!  Right now we are talking digest sized and... wait for it.... BOXED SET!  Oh hell yeah!

Of course any of the above information could change at a moments notice, so don't hold my feet to the flames on any of it.  We shall do our best and try our hardest to bring you this fantastic (at least in our opinion) game!

What does this mean for Zenith Comics other project, Public Enemies?

Public Enemies continues on track and will be released towards the end of the summer for BASH (the hopefully ICONS and M&M3rd Edition... also once again trying to secure permission to make a V&V 2.1 version) and based on sales and demand, there may be more issues.

Though that said, every copy of "Zenith Comics Presents: Public Enemies" that is sold will add to the coffers for the role-playing game's production (a.k.a. art costs) so if you are inclined, feel free to pick up a copy and support this project!

Keep watching this space for news and updates as the project continues and I won't be so arrogant as to give a release date, since we all know those are slipperier than ... well... something really slippery!

Cheers!

System Mania!

So as those of you who have been following this blog know I plan to release villain roster books for BASH Ultimate Edition, ICONS and Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition.

I had hoped to do Villains & Vigilantes, Champions and a couple of others, but in the end they either never got back to my request, or I didn't like their licensing deals.

But...

You also know that I plan to post up Zenith Universe heroes for free on the website, so there need be no licensing issues as I believe it falls under the provisions of "fair use".  Please correct me if I am wrong on this one.

So what systems would you like to see heroes statted up in?  The above three are a given, plus V&V and Champions.  I was also thinking 4C and SAGA as well.

Any others?

Cheers!

Mighty Super Heroes Are Go!

Hey there,

So I am getting back on the horse. I want to take this moment to thank everyone once again for their kind support and their warm humanity with my recent batch of troubled times. It was very very appreciated.

Now as to what is this "Might Super Heroes" thing all about?

As you may notice to the right hand under the "What I am playing" section there is a mock-cover for the not really real Mighty Super Heroes RPG. What happend to BASH! UE? What's going on? Has the world gone crazy?

Well a note about BASH! UE. I still think it is a tremendous game and the first ever power builder I actually enjoyed. I will continue to move forward with my plans to publish roster books for it (and M&M and ICONS, but not HERO since they want a cut of sales for the privilege and the pie will already be super small after the online distributors take their slice) but I won't be running it at my table. Nothing against the game, I just can't fight my Marvel Super Heroes RPG roots. They go over 20 years deep and I just don't feel comfortable running my style of game in another system.

That said MSH (get it?) has a lot of problems, or old mentalities. So one of the things I am doing is updating the FASERIP engine to be more modern. This actually has a lot to do with other super hero games.

For example I am adding the "Callings" from the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (SAGA), the "Mental Malfunction" of BASH!, the "Wound Track" from Mutants & Masterminds and other things, some even my ideas too!

Not sure if you guys want to see this here yourselves, but I may post about it and will certainly put up characters with the stats from it.

I will not publish it ever. I might make up a pdf of it but only as a free download and never for cash. Might Super Heroes isn't about that, it is merely about the game I have loved for 20+ years getting a bit of a pimping.

Face front true believers, this is gonna be fun!

*The art used for the cover was taken from the internet and is used without permission. No offense intended.

Campaigns of 2010

As the new year is upon us and on the 16th of January the Ultimate Session of Book 1 of the New Dawn of the West (wow that's a mouthful) will be occurring, I have to think about what 2010 will mean roleplaying wise.

For certain I have Ultimate Guardians on the plate, as well as my ongoing Final Age playtest group. The main thing though is that the Fortknights, the group that has been playing New Dawn of the West, are my oldest and primary group. One player has been gaming with me since grade 9!

So Ultimate Guardians for sure. Superheroes is how this group came together, and super heroes is still their favorite game.

I am also thinking of a Star Trek campaign, but I can't decide what flavour yet. I know for sure I will make a SAGA version of Star Trek though, using cards and such. It just seems like a natural mix to me.

I like TOS, but my "Trek Sweet Spot" is Star Trek 2 - 4 with cherry pickings from everything after. Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock and Voyage Home are the sweetest Trek trilogy ever and frankly my view of what Star Trek should be. Very FASA Trek I know.

That said there was a lot I liked about the new Star Trek (Abrams-Trek) and a lot I really really didn't. It is funny how when I walked out of the theatre I was simply blown away by that movie. Every subsequent review I have disliked it more and more. I find giant plots holes or logic-fails in the story (1 super nova is going to destroy the whole galaxy? WTF?) and like it less and less. I really hated the bridge and the "utility" look of the engineering. Arrgggh! I just reminded myself of more stuff I didn't like! Peh! Enough of that.

And don't even get me started on TNG.

So yeah TOS or Movie Gen? That is the question.

After Trek I need a third choice. One that works with a group of 6 players. Cyberpunk, while fun as hell, is not realy good longterm stuff for me. I kill characters far too easily and often for that to happen.

Horror rpging has never gone well with my groups. Smaller ones yes, but big groups no.

Western Horror might be fun though, some seriously toned down Deadlands could be a hoot.

Any suggestions?

25th Anniversary!

So with 2010 right around the corner, I realized something. This is going to be my 25th anniversary of roleplaying! I started way back in 1985 as a freshmen in high school and never looked back int he quarter century since.

Wow.

Unlike most people I didn't start with D&D but actually with FASA's Star Trek game. I quickly moved on to Villains & Vigilantes and then dabbled a bit in D&D.

Fantasy rping always took a back seat to Star Trek or Superheroes, that's just the way it was up until 1989. Then I discovered a game that made all others moot for me, it came in a minimalist black box and cost my $18 at Captain Quebec (uFLGS) and it was called Cyberpunk.

I ran Cyberpunk for years (both 2013 and 2020) and was considered quite a lethal referee. I still am. I have always warned players that all other games I run for them to have fun and explore the world... Cyberpunk I run for me. And I like shootouts, double-crosses and non-stop action. All of these things lead to very high PC bodycounts in Cyberpunk and I am quite fine with that.

The other two themes I have ran to death are Superheroes and Star Trek.

I was the only person in my circle of gamers who held onto MSH Classic (FASERIP) after everyone else had moved on to Mutants & Masterminds. I just never got into all that book keeping. Wasn't for me. MSH was elegant, fast and I could eyeball a threat/power level in seconds. I didn't need to then perform a bunch of caculations based on that eyeballing, all I needed to do was add some ranks and Bob's your uncle.

I have run homegrown campaigns, Marvel Universe campaings, DC Universe campaigns and a weird folded Universe that lasted a bloody longtime as well.

Star Trek is another game I have ran in almost every incarnation, though not the one that came before FASA Trek. I have run Next Gen Campaigns, Movie Gen Campagins, Post-Gen Campaigns and even my own Ultimate Universe version of Star Trek. I have run Prime Directive using the original rules and D6. I know my Trek, but surprisingly only became a fan after I start RPGing it. That is why the FASA Universe will always be in step with how I see Star Trek and as such Movie Gen being Trek to me.

So with my 25th Anniversary of gaming looming I plan to spend 2010 revisiting these awesome genres (as well as continuing work on Final Age) and really have some old school fun with myself. The only difference is that I will use SAGA instead of FASERIP for my supers. I don't know what I will use for Trek and I will use my melange of 2013/2020 rules for Cyberpunk.

It's gonna be a good year for gaming!

Villains, Mutants and Champions!

Okay I accept that is a less than inspired title.

Still, made you look ;)

Well recently I took a break from working on my post-apocalyptic-savage-fantasy setting and let my mind wander into superheroes territory. Now any of you who follow my blog, Earth Alpha, know that I have been reading all kinds of superhero games recently and just not been finding what makes me happy or clicks for what I want.

• MSH Classic (FASERIP) - Been running this exclusively since about 1989. So very very tired of it. It lacks the excitement and such. My players know every maneuver, power, etc... Also it is a rather black and white system that is a touch too simple for me.

• MSH SAGA - Again, plyed it quite a bit and while I like it, it lacks a certain "WOW" factor that I am seeking. Love the card based resolution, but I lost my cards a long time ago and my my my but they are expensive to replace from the used rpg market.

• BASH Ultimate Edition - A very, very good game. The Ultimate Edition nearly won me over. The production value is top shelf and the presentation vastly improved over the basic edition (which I have openly stated I did not like). My only issue is, like FASERIP it is too simple and in itself, one of its primary design philosophies doesn't work for me. It isn't granular enough.

• V&V - I love Villains & Vigilantes, I really, really do... but she is old and she shows her age. Though she does have some of the stuff I really like in a supers game. The characters grow in ability not powers. The powers are pretty much predefined. There is room to wiggle. But oh my the system is clunky.

• M&M/Champions - I respect the hell out of Mutants & Masterminds and Champions, they are complete games that work very very well. I just can't stand games that fiddly. I hate building my powers (give me a power called Gravity Control and tell me what it does instead of me building a set of effects with the trappings of Gravity control) so those systems never work for me as a player or a gm.

• SW/D6 - Both of these have produced some fantastic super power books/supplements, specifically D6 Powers Revised and the Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion. But neither one has really captured me as a system. SW in particular never feels when I read it like it would work for a long term campaign.

• DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes - I tried this game back in the day, and while I think the AP system is wonderful in its own way, it just doesn't do it for me. I know that there are legions of fans for it, but not for me.

• The Rest - GURPS Supers, Heroes Unlimited, Squadron UK/Golden Heroes, Truth & Justice, Supercrew, etc... most of these are either really awkward games, or just systems I don't really like. Not to disparage though, I think Supercrew and T&J are very innovative games, just lacking the variety of crunch I prefer.

I was beginning to lose hope.

So given that I recently was doing some game design and such, I started looking at the SIEGE style of gaming (Castles & Crusades/StarSIEGE)and that lead me to some places I hadn't thought of yet. I found a thread about "Super SIEGE" on the Troll Lord Games forums that didn't seem to be going anywhere except "Wait for Vigilance" which, while it sounds very interesting, supers by gaslight isn't my cup-of-tea. So I started reading the vast amount of d20 superhero games that came out that weren't M&M.

As a side note, I find it rather sad that once M&M tore up the market most other d20 super-games kind of went to the wayside or were abandoned. A testament to the power of M&M to be sure, but I find M&M offers only one style of superhero gaming in the d20 pool, and that one is closely based on Champions.

As I read along, and reread V&V I started to see that a lot of what V&V is was essentially the first d20 Superhero game. Well after a fashion of course.

So what do I want out of a superhero game?

For starters no bloody point builds. Either random, or pick. Random I am starting to like, because it forces a level of creativity that has long been missing in modern gaming. Pick I like because it helps with concept. A mix or the two, or a random, drop and pick, reroll, something... I don't know.

I am also good with a d20/C&C based system. I used to think levels and classes didn't work for supers, but now I am seeing it in a different light and liking what I see. Classes work (Scrapper, Brick, Blaster, etc...) and if someone has more than one, well that's a dual-class or a multi-class.

I have read and am reading now a glut of d20 based super games that were all seemingly developed before M&M killed the market by its sheer presence, and I find most of them all try to do what I don't like, point builds. They also all use Feats, which normally I am against, but more and more I see myself coming around on.

So I don't know where this will all go, and I am not sure what it will all entail, but I know this... it's gonna be an interesting ride.

Excelsior!

Super Hunt Continues: MSHAG - SAGA!

So after finishing V&V and having spent some time amoung the online community I find that while it brings back lots and lots of fond memories for me, it isn't the system I want. Much like BASH Ultimate Edition (another excellent game) it does everything it should, it just doesn't allow for the kind of on-the-fly reffing I need to do in a superheroes game. So, like BASH, well done, thumbs up, but moving on.

This brings me to an oldie but a goodie, Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game, or Marvel-SAGA as it is known online.

I am reading it as we speak and will get back to you on this one.

Stay tuned true believers!