19th Level

High Rock Press currently has a Kickstarter going for Darren Watts's  Golden Age Champions . You should go support it. It needs about $5000 more over the next two weeks to reach its $20,000 goal.  I'll offer my own reward... Assuming no hiccups in my regular gaming, I'll run a Golden Age Champions campaign and write about the experience. It should make for interesting reading as while I've read a number of Hero products and played in a few games in college, I've never run a Hero game. Champion Complete  peels away many layers of complexity from the 5th and 6th edition Hero games - fine games, but games whose crunchiness really started loading up. My impression is that while Champions Complete  is based on the 6th edition of Hero, it seems to be closer to the 4th edition in complexity (the version I played a few times). I've got some Golden Age maps of Port Henry to break out - the Earth-38 version of Port Henry of course. High Rock Press did a gre...

Unearthly Adventure Comics #255 had a cover date of June of 1958 and appeared on newsstands in April of that year. It returned to the science fiction tropes of issue #251, giving the first hints as to the cosmos around Earth. Cast of Characters Robert Builder/The Atomizer - Reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, nuclear man granted powers by Trinity nuclear test. Susan Samiel - Widowed reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, sorceress. Specializes in binding magic. US-Polaris 1 - Robot space probe invented by Jack Parsons. Altered by aliens and now possessing telekinetic abilities.  Capsule Summary Note - several elements of this are inspired or taken from Fainting Goat Games' The Great Game  Icons supplement.  Robert, Susan, and US-Polaris 1 were setting up the Unwanted's headquarters, located in an underground bunker built by the US government several years ago as part of an abandoned plan for a military base. It had been purchased by ...

Unearthly Adventure Comics #254 had a cover date of May of 1958 and appeared on newsstands in March of that year. It featured the return of Thor to the comic for the first time since 1947's issue #125 featured him returning to the city in an attempt to defeat it with an army of dark elves. Cast of Characters Robert Builder/The Atomizer - Reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, nuclear man granted powers by Trinity nuclear test. Susan Samiel - Widowed reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, sorceress. Specializes in binding magic. US-Polaris 1 - Robot space probe invented by Jack Parsons. Altered by aliens and now possessing telekinetic abilities.  Y uyu - High Priest of Osiris in the 19th Dynasty. Granted immortality and superior abilities by a mystical Ankh, as well as the ability to summon minions. Capsule Summary Robert and Susan were covering the release of Mario Genco from Port Henry Federal Penitentiary. A gangster active in the 1920s and 30...

With a cover-date of April 1958 and on newsstands in February of 1958, Unearthly Adventure Comics #253 concluded the tale of the Unwanted's first battle against the evil Tempus Khan. With some hand waving, the Cardiff Giant and Atomizer were not present in this issue. Yuyu, an ancient Egyptian priest of Osiris was and was "retconned" to have always been part of the team, supposedly due to the acts of the heroes in the previous issue. With his addition, the first lineup of the Unwanted was established, though not all of them were featured in every issue. Though the comic had intended to be more science based, three of the heroes had magical origins and two had scientific. Based on the adventure of the same name written by Steve Kenson. Some text taken from that adventure.  Images from that adventure as well, illustrated by Dan Houser. Adapted for the Port Henry Campaign. Cast of Characters Susan Samiel - Widowed reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, ...

With a cover-date of March 1958 and on newsstands in January of 1958, Unearthly Adventure Comics #252 continued the tales of the Unwanted (as some of the less welcoming newspapers of Port Henry had come to describe them). As with their first tale it had a high science fiction concept, introducing concepts such as time travel and paradoxes to the title. Based on the adventure of the same name written by Steve Kenson. Some text taken from that adventure. Adapted for the Port Henry Campaign. Cast of Characters Robert Builder/The Atomizer - Reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, nuclear man granted powers by Trinity nuclear test. Susan Samiel - Widowed reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, sorceress. Specializes in binding magic. Heiro Silver Wave/The Cardiff Giant - immortal child of a Delaware Indians and Greek Titan. Able to grow in size and drain energy. US-Polaris 1 - Robot space probe invented by Jack Parsons. Altered by aliens and now possessing telekineti...

With a cover-date of February 1958 and on newsstands in December of 1957, Unearthly Adventure Comics #251 is regarded as that title's first Silver Age entry. Generally considered to have been written in reaction to the recent Sputnik space launch, it featured exciting new characters such as a robot space probe and an atomic man. As a reminder to the mystical tales it was best known for in the 30s and 40s it also featured a mystical sorceress and an immortal descendant of Greek Titans. Cast of Characters Robert Builder/The Atomizer - Reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, nuclear man granted powers by Trinity nuclear test. Susan Samiel - Widowed reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, sorceress. Specializes in binding magic. Heiro Silver Wave/The Cardiff Giant - immortal child of a Delaware Indians and Greek Titan. Able to grow in size and drain energy. US-Polaris 1 - Robot space probe invented by Jack Parsons. Altered by aliens and now possessing telekinetic...

One of the temptations when making a city for long-term use in an RPG is making it "perfect". I don't mean getting every detail (though that is another temptation) but rather to optimize every aspect of it - awesome public transport, carefully thought out highways, etc. Real cities are awfully imperfect. Off the top of my head, here are some issues major cities have had to deal with (with a focus on the cities I'm most familiar with, Boston and New York City). In Boston, whenever winds exceeded 45 miles per hour, giant windows would fall off the Hancock tower. The London Underground tubes are too small to accommodate air-conditioned trains. In New York City, the Second and Third Avenue Elevated lines were torn down in the the 1940s and 1950s in preparation for the 2nd Avenue Subway. Decades later, the very first part of that subway is due to open this year (2016) - a very small part. Also in New York City, while subway service along the length of Manhattan...

"We'll leave as soon as you're ready. Docking bay 94." - Han Solo "To ensure you make it to your gate in time, please plan to arrive at least 2 hours before your flight." - TSA It occurs to me that the Evil Galactic Empire isn't too horrible when it comes to port security. Though when one things about it, in the United States airline security was very minimal until the 1970s, which brought metal detectors into use. Again in the 1980s security increased with the Lockerbie bombings, requiring that the only baggage that could be checked in was baggage that accompanied a passenger. Between playing Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu game set during Prohibition, and setting up Port Henry for our superhero game (with its international airport and harbor) there's been cause for consideration about spaceport/seaport/airport security. I noticed it is most prevalent with Star Wars, largely because our heroes are doing things the Evil Galactic Empire doe...

The most amusing thing is it's actually still under development. The version I'm working on actually has rerouted some of the lines and given some thought to peak hours service. And I'll need to come up with street names. This probably isn't something that'll actually get any use in our campaign, it's more a function that I'm (1) having fun making a fictional city; (2) have a bit of break between game sessions; (3) love maps; and (4) had a career ambition of being a subway motorman once upon a time. One of my favorite things was going on trips to all sorts of interesting places with my grandfather on the New York City subway. I thought it was so amazing how we could walk a few blocks on Avenue W, take a right onto East 16th Street, a left onto Neck Road and we'd be at the subway station which could take us anywhere in the city. On our walks to the station my grandfather would tell me all sorts of interesting things - bits of what the city used to ...

We had our first game set in Port Henry last night - not a ton of details about the city played a large part as a lot of the game was taking Icons for a spin for the first time. However, our heroes did stop a vile communist villain from destroying the Port Henry Nuclear Power Plant from going kaboom and that's a good thing. Unearthly Adventure Comics #251 is in the record books. I have been getting a better idea of the city with an eye towards adventure opportunities. You can see the marked up map above, a bit different from the previous version. Some highlights: I pushed the map further east to add some additional islands. One is going to be home to one or more amusement parks, another will be a prison. There's probably room for a monument on one of the islands. I'm contemplating Port Henry being consolidated from multiple cities, a pattern often observed in cities. New York consolidated its five boroughs at the end of the 19th century, Chicago incorporated Hyde...

"When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax." - Robert Moses The fact that I absolutely love maps probably explains why I'm in the process of building a map for Port Henry, home of our superhero game, with far more detail than is required. As a kid, the first things that got my attention in The Hobbit  were the excellent maps. I studied New York City subway maps so much that to this day when I visit New York and get asked for directions on the subway I can accurately send them on their way (I stay up to date - I really want to live long enough to see the 2nd Avenue Subway come fully into service). Our game is kicking off in late 1957, after the launch of Sputnik. This is the era of urban planners like Robert Moses. People with good attentions but rather married to the idea that the automobile is the answer (regardless of the question) and any problems with that answer can be solved by more lanes. I've kept that in...

Our Icons campaign has a home city that actually has a name. We worked through a few possible names and came up with Port Henry. Our city occupies where, in the real world, can be found New Jersey's Great Bay. Though it is indeed a decent sized bay, it averages about five feet depth. It is one of the nation's best preserved wetlands so I feel a little guilty virtually draining and dredging much of it. To be honest, we didn't quite know what Port Henry was named for, it just sounded neat. It brought to mind Henry Hudson, though cities tend not to be named after a person's first name. After some thinking I went with a fictional son of Patrick Henry, Founding Father and independent Virginia's first governor. Like many people of his era, did not see all of his children survive. We're going to create a fictional son of Patrick Henry, Thomas Henry, born in 1758. In the American Revolution, Thomas Henry served as an officer in General Washington's army. T...