Meet the Justice Federation: Halcon

Eduardo Graywolf, born of mixed Native American/Mexican-American parentage, doesn’t speak often (and never of himself) which makes his words carry more weight on the occasions when he decides to open up a bit. The source of his metahuman abilities is unknown; Eduardo attributes his powers to “the blessings of the Great Spirit”.

Meet the Justice Federation: Ishtar

In the late 1990’s, a new heroine appeared in Calvert, Maryland; a woman who not only fought against criminals, but also against the “mad dog” amoral street vigilante “heroes” who had been dominating the costumed crusader scene for the previous decade. Purported to be the ancient Babylonian goddess of love and war, the woman called herself Ishtar.

Meet the Justice Federation: Doc Falcon

While the Crimson Guardian is the Justice Federation’s commander out in the field, the real brains behind the operation belong to Dr. Everett Falcone, a.k.a. Doc Falcon. While not a founding member of the Justice Federation, Doc has proven his mettle in a crisis so often that even Ishtar defers to his judgement.

Meet the Justice Federation: Bluestreak (redux)

Talk about an eleventh hour save! Mere days before the twins moved out of the house for their freshman year of college, we were able to play one last session of Villains & Vigilantes, thereby bringing the campaign to a logical stopping point. There are still loose ends a-plenty, but we did get to finish the “Jack Victory Returns!” scenario which had been hanging fire half-completed for more than a year.

Sixteen adventure seeds for World War II era supers campaigns

Late yesterday I was looking at the search terms people used to find this blog, and one of them instantly caught my eye:

Back from vacation

I’ve returned from my vacation, which came just in the nick of time. As a writer/editor by trade, I’d reached a point at which I was really sick and tired of the writing process and very much needed a break. It was tough enough to meet my paid professional commitments; as for the “hobby” stuff, I couldn’t even think about this blog without wanting to throw up.

It’s been a hectic last two weeks.

Hideouts & Hoodlums encounter charts; Steel & Glory update

I left out a house rule for Hideouts & Hoodlums in my last blog post: player characters don’t die until they reach -10 H.P. As I said, I’m pretty anti-”PC mortality”.

The new issue of The Trophy Case, the quarterly H&H newsletter, came out the other day; you can get your free copy at RPGNow. I found this item from the newsletter kind of curious:

House rules for the Hideouts & Hoodlums RPG

I don’t get around to posting much anymore. I do so much writing in my full-time job that I haven’t felt much like writing in my spare time lately. I’ll bite the bullet today, though, to post up something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while: my “house” rules for the Hideouts & Hoodlums superhero roleplaying game.

DC Comics reboot, old-school supers RPGing, etc.

I’m sorry about the relative infrequency of my posts, but I’m running as hard as I can just to stay stationary lately. I never realized that writing a blog would make me so “popular” (lulz), but I’ve been asked to be a “guest blogger” on another site, contribute to two gaming companies’ “house” publications (and I haven’t had time to even reply to any of these folks yet), plus I still need to write an intro and some notes for my Steel & Glory project, and all of that’s in addition to my daily professional writing and editing responsibilities.

More about that “hypothetical question”

I remember kicking back with a particular issue of Conan the Barbarian around thirty or thirty-five years ago (in the glory days when Roy Thomas was writing it); I don’t recall the exact issue number. But I do remember a brilliant little bit of business which Roy included in the story.

For everybody running WWII superhero campaigns…

…and especially for Scott Casper of Hideouts & Hoodlums fame (who I’m sure will appreciate this):

A decent primer on solo RPGing

I haven’t read the whole thing yet (just skimmed it this evening), but this PDF download appears to be a pretty fair primer on solo role playing gaming:

A hypothetical question about a superhero RPG

Today I’m going to ask a hypothetical question which I’m sure will make a reader or two uncomfortable.

Old-school Superhero RPG Bonanza

For those of us who are too busy, too tired, or just plain too unmotivated to try to learn and absorb the megalithic rulesets of many present-day superhero roleplaying games (yeah, Hero System and Mutants & Masterminds, I’m looking at you here), or the baroque complexities of the procedures contained in the recent crop of “storytelling” RPGs (in my opinion, Capes should be retitled WTF? Supers), there are plenty of excellent alternatives available. And, in most cases, the price is right: free or dang near so.

Meet the Justice Federation: Bluestreak

Today we’re kicking off the Villains & Vigilantes profiles of the world’s greatest superhero team: The Justice Federation! Based in Justice Tower (the former Crusader Citadel) in Calvert, Maryland’s Inner Harbor, the Justice Federation has been keeping the world safe for more than a decade. We’ll begin the profiles with one of the Federation’s founding members, wisecracking speedster Bluestreak.

Villains & Vigilantes – Bridging the gap between the 1980’s and the 21st Century

The status of our Silver City Villains & Vigilantes campaign is somewhat in doubt. The kids and I haven’t played the game in over a year and, with the twins heading off to college in just over three months, it’s not terribly likely that we’ll be able to tie up all the loose plot threads even if we went back to playing regularly.

Our problem is an embarrassment of riches. I’m a lifelong game collector and it seems like a new game catches somebody’s eye practically every week; there’s just not enough time to play everything we’d like to play.

The best TV episode about RPGs

So what was it? The old D&D cartoon? Thundarr the Barbarian?

Pulp Gamemastering essentials

April Fool’s Day on the Intrawebs really sucks. On this day each year you have to sift through mounds of stupid crap to get to a small portion of worthwhile stuff. I suppose one could argue that such is the case every day, but it’s especially true each April 1.

So please allow me to try to present something at least marginally useful on this day: a list of “essentials” for gamemasters who wish to run roleplaying games set during the heyday of the pulps, the period from (roughly) 1931 through 1946 or 1947.

Hot Elf Chick welcomes you to the Big Blog o’Fun!

Best of all, she’s not just nude…

The Trophy Case #3 is out!

Yesterday saw the release of the new issue of the Hideouts & Hoodlums RPG’s quarterly magazine The Trophy Case. I’m pretty excited about it, and not just because I wrote about 30% of it (heh) but because there’s some major kickass stuff packed into its pages.

OSG Girlfight (no hot elf chicks)

I spent about ninety minutes trying to read a few OSG blogs that I haven’t yet looked at, and it seems like three-quarters of the ones I read don’t consist of much more than some kind of bizarre retro-gaming girlfight.

Weighing “Print & Play” in the balance

Once again, Scott Casper has popped in with a comment and started my mental wheels a-spinning. In a comment to my previous post (on Avalon Games’ Steel & Glory series of mini-boardgames), Scott said:

The flower girl

Tibet…

The sky was a blinding blue, but the only thing Jed noticed was the depths of Wei’s impossibly dark eyes. They stood together on a rock ledge high above the green flowered valley hidden among the Himalayan peaks. It was a landscape painted from an artist’s dream, but all Jed could see was Wei.

Pulp novel roundup

As I said today on my Facebook page, I’ve been reading a lot of old pulp adventure novels lately – and I do mean a lot: I’ve read six in the last week.

The funniest thing you’ll read today

No, not this post.