Some Practice and an Example

Today I decided I want to practice statting things out in Mutants and Masterminds again and show an example of my modernizing these golden age characters.

This is Gimp. This is his origin according to the Public Domain Super Hero wiki:

"The Gimp was a crime boss who lost his right leg, at the knee, and had it replaced with a metal prosthetic with a knife on the end. He could stab a man in the chest with a kicking motion. He also carried conventional weapons such as a Tommy Gun."

Alright looking at this picture and the description we have an old bald guy, with a bladed peg leg, and a really offensive name.

When I saw this guy, my first thought was of Gazelle from Kingsman: The Secret Service. If you've not seen the movie, you should do so. For those of you that haven't seen the movie, here's a character intro clip that includes some brief shots of her fighting.

Alright that name won't due. However, "the Gimp" could be what he's called behind his back. Also, what if he's not old. What if all those lines are scars? Okay, now we've got something to work with. Of course all of this will be fleshed out in the final release, but here's my impression of the character thus far.

Organized crime boss gets taken out by another crime syndicate. He loses his leg and is serious scarred up, but doesn't die. He gets a prosthetic bladed limb and starts hunting down other crime bosses for revenge. I haven't decided if he wants to rebuild his syndicate or become an assassin for hire.

Sounds good to me. Now for the stats. I'm seeing him a PL 6 crime boss/assassin hybrid.

Harold "The Gimp" Valentine

PL6 

STR 2 STA 4 AGL 5 DEX 3 FGT 6 INT 4 AWE 4 PRE 3

ADVANTAGES

Benefit 2 (Well-Off, Status: Crime Boss), Connected, Defensive Roll 2, Equipment 3, Improved Trip, Instant Up, Move By Action, Prone Fighting, Well Informed

SKILLS

Acrobatics 3 (+8), Athletics 2 (+4), Close Combat: Prosthetic Leg Blade 4 (+10), Deception 2 (+5), Ranged Combat: Tommy Gun 3 (+6), Stealth 3 (+8), Vehicles 3 (+6)

POWERS

Spryer Than I Look: Leaping 2 • 2 points

Prosthetic Leg Blade:  Strike 6 (Removable) • 5 points

EQUIPMENT

Tommy Gun (Ranged Multiattack Damage 4, Critical 20)

OFFENSE

INITIATIVE +5

Prosthetic Leg Blade +6 Close, Damage 6

Tommy Gun +6 Ranged, Multiattack Damage 4

DEFENSE

DODGE 5 FORTITUDE 6/4 PARRY 6 TOUGHNESS 4 WILL 4

POWER POINTS

ABILITIES 62 + ADVANTAGES 13 + DEFENSES 0 + POWERS 7+ SKILLS 10 = TOTAL 92

I Need A Hero

I may be alone in this, but I think most published super settings (especially city books) have too many heroes. Take my favorite setting, Green Ronin's Freedom City, within the city you have the Freedom League (JLA/Avengers), Atom Family (Fantastic Four), and the Claremont Academy (X-Mansion), plus a handful of solo heroes. Sure, I want my setting to have other heroes, but I want pc's to be the focus of the game. For this reason, I've decided that while the setting as a whole has more heroes, Forest City only has a few resident heroes. While there will be pulp hero-style, civilians that can be recruited as allies, the city only has three heroes proper (well not counting Project: Second Chance, though we'll discuss that later). They are:

Lady Fairplay, "Goddess of Chastisement," is the only true powered hero of the city. Given "unlimited energetic powers" via an experiments conducted of Forest City's scientists (these may or may not be related to the Tunguska event). Lady Fairplay is most likely going to be a PL 8 paragon in the vein of golden age Superman. I'm keeping the teacher alter-ego aspect for my version of Lady Fairplay, but I'm going to change the character's sexual orientation for Forest City.

Young Robin Hood is essentially going to be the Hawkeye/Green Arrow of my setting. His origin will be similar to that listed on the Public Domain Super Hero wiki, other than being a resident of Forest City, rather than NYC. He'll be inspiration for other young heroes. Being wealthy, he could easily be a benefactor to other heroes. As a side note, I've decided that he is the father of Fatman the Human Flying Saucer, a hero that I'm excited to use later on in the setting (though codename will definitely be changed). Stats-wise, I think he's a PL 4.

Micro-Face, is a gadgeteer. His primary gadget is the Micro-Mask, a full face mask which allowed him to amplify and throw off his voice, superior hearing, and x-ray vision. It had telephone wires that he could attached to lines to make phone calls. Cleveland has a large African-American population and unfortunately, golden age representations of African-Americans typically weren't the most positive. For that reason, I've decided to change Micro-Face's ethnicity. I believe race will factor into why the U.S. government turned down the Micro-Mask in the first place. Micro-Face will be a solid PL 6, which is what I'm thinking the standard golden age Forest City game will be.

Why Forest City?

Initially, I struggled with setting for this project.

Deciding the time period was easy. As I mentioned previously, the golden age works perfectly because that's where most of the public domain comic art comes from.

The where of the setting is different though. Is it on the coast? Which coast? How about keeping it open and just setting it in the Midwest?

Aerial view of downtown Cleveland, December 1937 

I decided I wanted the city to be set in my home state of Ohio. That gave me three major choices: Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland. While I admit I have more familiarity with the first two (I live in Columbus for gods' sake), I decided to go with the latter. 

Here's why I chose Cleveland over Cbus and Cincy:

• It's on Lake Erie and has a connection to the Atlantic via canals and rivers (and later the Saint Lawrence Seaway).
• It's the birthplace of Superman's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
• It has connections to organized crime, especially in the first half of the 20th century.

As far as names go, I wanted one that captured the feel of the city, but sounded sort of generic (though not in a bad way). I believe Forest City (which has been one of Cleveland's nicknames since the 19th century) does this quite well. Though it has a reputation for fires, Cleveland has been a very green city over the years. The Cleveland Metropark system has parks across the city and is currently 21,000 acres nature preserve spread out across and around the city.

New Project Announcement - Forest City

Now the that Blogging From A-Z April Challenge is done, I can get started on my new project. I want to start by saying that this project was inspired by Linneman's Dogwood City posts over at Monstrous Matters.

I'm going to start working on my first pdf rpg release. I'm going to create a city setting for Mutants and Masterminds using the Super-Powered by M&M Trademark Licence. I think I have some really good ideas. Unfortunately I'm awful when it comes to creating art, so like some others publishing supers stuff, I'm going to use public domain supers to build my setting. Because the greatest collection of public domain supers material is in the golden age, my initial release will be during that era. That being said, I'm going to do my best to be more inclusive and include some modern sensibilities in my versions of the characters. As long as I can keep the momentum going I'm going to move forward in the timeline with future supplements.

My primary resources are:

Public Domain Super Heroes
Comic Book +
The Digital Comic Museum

This blog started out as a Mutants and Masterminds blog, so it's fitting that my first "published' material be for that game. This is a big project and it's going to take a while. My gaming group is giving me good feedback and +David Coppoletti has offered his services to me, so it's going to be good once it's finished.

Expect regular or semi-regular updates.