Rich McGee

"Behold, the power of... Marvolo the Strange!"
 
Micah Stevens shook his head as he took the stage.  A man of his intelligence and schooling, reduced to doing tricks as a stage magician!  Sure, he had always had a knack for sleight of hand and a flair for the dramatic, but he really wished he could have turned his PhD in Sociology into a teaching position, or indeed any paying job at all, instead of being reduced to... this.  Performing legerdemain for drunk, bored gamblers at a second-string casino outside Providence.  It was enough to drive a man to drink.
 
He was halfway through his mind-reading trick when the door burst open and a half dozen VIPER agents rushed in followed by... oh, my God, is that Rhode Island Red?!  People were already scrambling for cover as the man-rooster did his famous Crow of Justice, causing one VIPER agent to run screaming to escape through the stage door.  Unfortunately, he tripped on the stage stairs and face-planted, causing his blaster rifle to go off while pointed at the stage magician.  Stevens was sure he was going to die, but his hands moved instinctively, creating a magical shield that deflected the photonic energy.  "What the..."  Stevens said as he stumbled backward.  As the agent got to his feet and moved toward the stage magician, Stevens' hands again seemed to move of their own accord, casting another spell that caused mystic bands to encircle the Goon in Green, wrapping him tight.
 
Once all the VIPER agents were dealt with and the police were called, Rhode Island Red walked up to shake Stevens' hand.  "Marvolo, is it?  Good work taking on that agent.  It's always good to have another superhero on the job."  Stevens pondered his situation.  Somehow, he was able to cast honest-to-God magic (though damned if he knew how he had done it).  Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (and reasoning that several dozen people had seen him cast magic), he told the press that he was Marvolo, the newest superhero to protect Providence, RI.  (He was sure there had to be some way he could turn this into a profitable venture.)
 
Through trial and error (mostly error), Marvolo has learned he can cast a handful of spells.  Most of his successes are instinctive (borne of desperation) rather than the result of practice, though he's trying to replicate some of his "oh-shit" spells (with varying degrees of success).  A mis-cast levitation spell caused his cape to animate, giving him an ally of sorts (though Marvolo isn't sure the cape is always on his side).  The wands and staff he carries and the "mystic amulet" at his neck are mostly props, though one of his wands is secretly a high-tech taser.   He supplements his spells with smoke bombs, flash bombs, and other covert tech trinkets.  And hopes desperately that he can pull off this "junior superhero" gig without losing his head... literally.

I'm sorry but they just screamed D+D and I'm a Champs guy. Not the Champsguy obviously.
 
So to try this again this is one of the earliest commissions from the Storn thread that is still available.
 

 
 

 

This is a cute game.  I refuse to do the obvious, and that snout's more gator than croc anyway, so:
 
Florida Man - The product of a botched supersoldier program using retroviral treatments to empower "volunteers" with animalistic capabilities, Florida Man is largely amnesiac about his previous life (much like fellow test subject the Mighty Bullfrog).  He's acted a shades-of-gray hero or antihero (and occasionally a villainous dupe) over the last few years as he seeks to learn more about himself and the scientists who transformed him.  As you might expect, he has superhuman strength and durability, his jaws that can bite through a steel I-beam, and can hold his breath for absurd periods of time, see in the dark, and manage some remarkable short-term bursts of speed for a brick archetype.  His blood also contains powerful antiviral and antibiotic properties and for unknown reasons doesn't trigger immune responses in most humans, making transfusions a viable cure for many infections as well as promoting regenerative healing - with only the smallest risk of passing along his "condition" and creating a new gator-human hybrid with scrambled memories.  Honest, it's probably perfectly safe.  Don't ask about She-Gator.
 
Florida Man is quick to take offense when mistaken for anything even vaguely Egyptian, and insists he's a US citizen who was born in Tampa (he thinks...) despite lack of proper ID.  Other things that annoy him are luggage jokes, asking him if he eats his meat raw ("Gross, I don't even like sushi."), and people assuming he's an idiot.  His altered physique still hasn't managed to completely obliterate that Floridian accent, although he hisses more than he used to.  He does not, in fact, like biting people at all ("You all taste terrible.  What, do you think I don't have taste buds?") and usually sticks to chomping inanimate objects as a show of force.  Cold temperatures (below freezing) make him increasingly torpid, and he'll eventually lapse into complete inactivity if exposed for long enough.  He also doesn't like salt water much, although he's not as sensitive to it as actual alligators are.
 
Those are loose swimming trunks he's wearing, not some weird foreign skirt, and lots of supers wear utility belts.  How else is he supposed to keep his phone dry?  The boots are custom jobs designed to handle his mass and amphibian lifestyle, and the weighted wristbands add a little something extra to his punches.  He might bundle up in the largest trenchcoat he can find if trying to go incognito or if it's cold out, which works about as badly as you'd expect.  If he's working with technically-minded allies they'll usually try to find him a holo-projector disguise gadget and/or some kind of personal heating field as needed, but he tends to break such things pretty quickly during brawls.

The Mutilator
 
Tracy Ramey wanted only one thing in life--to hurt severely everybody he thought had hurt him, and that was a very long list.  He designed a fighting suit with stingers in the gauntlets and boots, charged with painful, debilitating venom.  He wanted to call himself Killer Wasp, but he could never get the wings to work.  Then he learned about the red velvet wasp, a species without wings--and while he admired it for its viciousness, there was no way he was going to call himself Red Velvet anything.
 
Then, after further research, he learned it was of the insect family Mutillidae--and that gave him his new name.  The perfect name.
 
As The Mutilator, Ramey loves to fight and hurt people, and he's good at it as well, much to the regret of heroes and law enforcement officers who make the mistake of underestimating him.  His utility belt carries extra venom cartridges for his stingers, as well as any other equipment he finds necessary.  The helmet, in addition to protecting his head from harm,  contains a set of infra-red lenses that allow him to see in the dark, and he is in the process of designing a new helmet incorporating a limited air supply--just the thing to protect him from the effects of the venom gas bombs he has just designed.

The dark and edgy Klikita Klak, reknowned and feared plastic cyborg.
 
Years ago, when a large enough group of comic book collectors had decided they could stand no more, they rounded up all the Rob Liefeld comics they could afford and burned them in the largest crucible hung in the old abandoned foundry, murmuring curses and shouting confusing-yet-clearly-hateful things as they did so.....
 
Fifteen years later, the old foundry was purchased and converted to store front and mini-amusement park by a european company famous for its line of construction toys.  If only that down-on-her-luck cat burglar hadn't decided to find and loot the safe.  If only those comic book collectors hadn't quoted random bits of movie gibberish, accidentally invoking an ancient curse...  if only she hadn't fallen into that cursed vat of rejected Bionicle parts.....
 
 
 
 

This isn’t a shot at you but....Why not?  Isn’t Marvel’s current Capt. Britain a Muslim woman?  A love of country and the morals to be a hero aren’t or at least shouldn’t be based on race.  Besides Great Britain outlawed slavery long before the U.S. and we have no claim to be free of racism.
    My only point with the character is that I believe they have Aslan misspelled. At least according to C.S. Lewis.

edit; 2 hours later  After checking the Marvel Database I find that I am incorrect about the existence of a female, Muslim Capt. Britain. 

[footage of late 19th / early 20th century train chugging down the tracks, but the engine looks higher tech than one would expect]
 
[interior of engine, with similar high-tech look; train engineer is adjusting dials and flipping switches, while speaking into a speaking tube connected to what looks like an early radio transmitter]
 
"BPS arm switches on, here comes the throttle."  The engineer pushes a lever forward, and the engine noticeably increases in speed; he pulls a release lever, and the rest of the rail cars disconnect and the engine pulls quickly away from them.  "We have separation.  Coming forward with the side-stick."  He pulls another lever, and the engine increases in speed yet again.
 
Suddenly, there's a loud BANG! and the engine shakes violently on the tracks as various dials spike into the red.  The engineer looks worried, but is maintaining his composure as he flips switches and adjusts dials.  "We've got a blowout, Amber-3.  Throttle's out, I can't hold the track."  The speeding engine rocks on the tracks, the wheels squealing in protest.  Minor explosions on other parts of the engine send parts flying.  "Ground-comm, I can't hold it.  She's breaking up, she's breaking up!"
 
[footage of train engine derailing and crashing through the trees]
 
[switch scene to early 20th century operating room]
 
(announcer voiceover)  "Steven Astor, engineer.  A man barely alive."
 
[blueprints and diagrams of intricate mechanisms]
 
(Nicola Tesla voiceover)  "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him.  We have the technology.  We have the capability to make the world's first Electro-Magnetic man.
 
[more footage of operating room, plus engineers assembling robotic limbs]
 
(Nicola Tesla voiceover)  "Steven Astor will be that man.  Better than he was before.  Better.  Stronger.  Faster."
 
[footage of Astor, his robotic limbs shiny as he runs down a dirt road, passing Model-T cars as if they're standing still]
 
Astor, aka Steamborg, is the $60,000 Man.

Well it has been over a year now and no entries so how about this instead. What can you tell me about him ?

My players usually add a codicil to that:
 
"When considering the availability of improvised projectiles, remember that people are things."
 
That was during the Aberrant session where I panicked and threw a lava villain into the Atlantic Ocean from Madagascar.  Those rules could be a wee bit silly at times.
 "That is not an octopus' garden.  Not at all." - on sighting R'lyeh for the first time

The only case where I ported a character directly from other media into my Champions game was in my early "Seattle Sentinels" campaigns, in which the heroes' police xcontact was a captain named Dietrich. He was Lieutenant Dietrich from Barney Miller, promoted and moved to the other side of the country. At least, that's how I played him.
 
While I've read lots of comic books (mostly Bronze Age; the Iron Age '90s eventually bored me into quitting everything but Astro City), I have never ported characters directly from a comic book into my game, or copied a plot from anywhere. Types and tropes, yes, but I have tried to learn from rather than copy.
 
Like, my dimensional conqueror Skarn the Shaper happened because I knew my Dr. Strange-inspired "Keystone Konjurors" campaign needed a Big Bad filling the same role as the Dread Dormammu -- but I gave Skarn quite a different origin and personality. His home, the Congeries, is very much a "Dark Dimension" homage, though.
 
Also, I pulled various demons and other creatures from mythology and occult lore, but translating them into something gameable usually takes a fair bit of, shall we say, creative re-interpretation or extending of source material.
 
My vampires show a fair bit of resemblance to those in Vampire: the Masquerade, but that's fair because VtM draws a wide net through vampire pop culture. No background mythology about Caine (the Bible guy but spelled with a final E to be more pretentious), Antediluvians, the Great Jyhad, blah blah blah. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and found it didn't fit.
 
Dean Shomshak

My players usually add a codicil to that:
 
"When considering the availability of improvised projectiles, remember that people are things."
 
That was during the Aberrant session where I panicked and threw a lava villain into the Atlantic Ocean from Madagascar.  Those rules could be a wee bit silly at times.
 "That is not an octopus' garden.  Not at all." - on sighting R'lyeh for the first time

"... the Submarine in Yellow."

"If you have super-strength, you always have a ranged attack. You can just throw things."
 
"With a high enough strength score, a Saturn V rocket becomes an improvised ranged attack." 

Long after-the-fact comment:
 
<sing> We all live in an eldritch horror's dream, eldritch horror's dream, eldritch horror's dream...

I've always been a four-color comics fan, specifically Bronze Age, so I've drawn mostly from mainstream comics of that stripe, DC and Marvel. Given the nature of RPG game tables I look to team books: Avengers, Justice League, Fantastic Four, Teen Titans, X-Men, Legion of Superheroes, et al. Animated series based on those have sometimes sparked ideas, although they tend to be derivative from what was done in print. But comics draw their own inspiration from just about every other form of fiction, so my reading of fantasy, science-fiction, pulp, gothic horror, mythology, and so on, often filters into my games.
 
The Champions game line has been very helpful to me, because a number of those books break down and spell out the common plots, themes, and tropes of the genre. The first edition of Aaron Allston's Strike Force was revelatory for me, as for so many other of the "first generation" gamers. I was also very fond of, and miss, all the "plot seeds" that were included for nearly all published characters under Champions Fifth Edition. They often gave me ideas I would likely not have thought of on my own, and inspired me to extrapolate from them.
 
I have a mind that likes to look for potential connections between elements in a fictional setting, even where none were intended, but could logically fit. Often seeing random A, I'm struck with how it could fit together with Random B, so I take flight from there.   That's one reason I like the Champions Universe so much. It's so deep and diverse, but assembled with an overview to make it internally consistent and coherent. So my obsessive little brain is always pulling out threads and tying them together. 😈

I've often thought about cribbing and modding some ideas from Amber Diceless for D&D-ish character generation.  Give everyone in the group (say) 100 currency points/quatloos/gamebucks/whatever for a budget, then put one stat at a time up for auction, each with a number of values (running intermittently from maybe 6 to 18) equal to the number of players and auction each value off.  Do that one attribute at a time in whatever order amuses you.  Highest final bid takes the highest attribute value on offer, and so on down the spread.
 
For extra spice don't offer the same value spread for each attribute - maybe there's no 18 at all for one attribute, or nothing below a 12 for another - but don't let anyone know what spread is available in advance.  Offer some other perks (an innate spell, noble heritage, extra HPs, etc.) at the end of the stat auction for people who have some leftover points, but don't let them know what they are or how many there are until each comes up to auction - just that there will be something else to spend on beyond stats at the end.
 
Not quite as evil as Amber, but watching the psychology of bidding is a game unto itself.  Way more fun than set arrays.  Be sure to emphasize that whatever's currently on auction is the MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN BID ON regardless of what it is.     

I've often thought about cribbing and modding some ideas from Amber Diceless for D&D-ish character generation.  Give everyone in the group (say) 100 currency points/quatloos/gamebucks/whatever for a budget, then put one stat at a time up for auction, each with a number of values (running intermittently from maybe 6 to 18) equal to the number of players and auction each value off.  Do that one attribute at a time in whatever order amuses you.  Highest final bid takes the highest attribute value on offer, and so on down the spread.
 
For extra spice don't offer the same value spread for each attribute - maybe there's no 18 at all for one attribute, or nothing below a 12 for another - but don't let anyone know what spread is available in advance.  Offer some other perks (an innate spell, noble heritage, extra HPs, etc.) at the end of the stat auction for people who have some leftover points, but don't let them know what they are or how many there are until each comes up to auction - just that there will be something else to spend on beyond stats at the end.
 
Not quite as evil as Amber, but watching the psychology of bidding is a game unto itself.  Way more fun than set arrays.  Be sure to emphasize that whatever's currently on auction is the MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN BID ON regardless of what it is.     

Oh dear.  You have my sympathies.
 
Although putting it in perspective, I think I might actually prefer the "modern" (dating back to 3.0 or 4e) trend of getting character builds online to the old TSR days.  Remember when people would show up with PCs they'd made at home and miraculously wound up with two or three 18s on straight 3d6 rolls?  Or ones from another GM's campaign with enough magical gear and special abilities to embarrass Monty Haul Himself, always notarized by their old GM that I'd never heard of before.  "Honest, I killed a bunch of orcs for that artifact."    

Oh good, I've been waiting forty years to get some use out of my TSR AD&D pencil sharpeners. 

The older I get the more convinced that it is the players that make the game rather than the system.  Yesterday a friend of my son came over. He wanted to play D&D. I pulled out my Basic Fantasy and he rolled up a character and chose a magic user. I pulled out a small map. Long story short, he had a blast! Well throwing a dagger at the kobold shaman and getting a 4 on the damage die and I only rolled too on the hit die did help set the tone.  My brother was visiting and and he rolled a natural 20. The best part was my son twice rolled a natural 1  and in another book I picked up has Critical Hits and Failures. He was dazed on the first rolled 1 and then trip and fallen prone the second time. I allow him to attack from prone at a disadvantage to hit and damage and he still killed that kobold! The short scenario was a rousing success. I feel that there were several factors involved. Good dice throws always help. And yes D&D is limited but I’m fairly comfortable now if just making rulings on the fly. But overall it’s the players that make or break a game. Oh and my son kept saying “let’s separate the party” to jibe my brother was priceless!

That's my approach as well, alongside the occasional "big convoluted conspiracy no one can fully stamp out" (eg VIPER) and "stays in the shadows" mastermind types.  Learned my lesson with D&D's Deities & Demigods way back when - if you give combat stats to an entity, it will eventually be beaten in combat because you gave it stats.  There's nothing wrong with foes who cannot be defeated in a conventional fight, not even a super-fight. and they do not need stats. 
 
Just use them wisely and if defeating them does become a plot necessity, offer the players at least a couple of ways to do so that don't involve a brawl.  Defeat can mean a lot of things, and what the heroes may see as a win for them is often just an unstoppable foe deciding they have better things to do.  Save the "monomaniacal obsession with punishing the heroes" stuff for their lackeys and other foes that can be beaten with punching.  "Fiat invulnerability" villains shouldn't behave that way any more than you'd declare a vendetta against a gnat.

You know he's back in print in Dyskami's Absolute Power, right?  The game is nothing but a new edition of SAS with the setting time-skipped forward a bit.  No better balanced than ever either, I might add.  And Kreuzritter is as much a cardboard cutout of a master baddie as ever, so if you liked him before you'll like him there, he hasn't changed in any meaningful way.  But he does have quite a few more words written about him now - they split the setting into its own book, making it a $120 two-volume game if you want the world and the rules.

You remind me of an event was back in the 8ps at the Rec Center on Fort Stewart: eleven of us were rollinf,up me,characters in front of the GM (GM insisted, and as a fan or Is no Array, I was only too happy to oblige).  He _did_ allow players to either accept it as is, or to swap their highest result with the lowest result (onlt guy I have ever seen offer that).
 
We,all,watched with great amusement as one od 4he military guys presenr rolled six straight 12s dor his characteristics.  Something else I have never seen since.