Added thought on Achilles: Source material aside, I never figured out the green jacket with blue cravat (or sometimes reverse that) that Zin wore. I always figured lab garb (at least a lab coat) or engineer / mechanic clothing when doing work on machines and bots and the like.
Outside of that, and for more official pronouncements / photos / portraits, something that falls between fatigues and a jumpsuit (but red, not olive drab or khaki). A simple, working-class cut so as not to look like a potentate, but distinctive enough to fit with his ego.
Paralyzed / discouraged / disheartened by family drama.
The classic bane of speedsters: dizziness / disorientation attack.
Or a time attack - running at 500 mph isn’t any good if your hours are 1000 times as long as the rest of the world’s.
My favorite version of this has always been Flash goes too fast and can’t slow down, so he is stuck in a world of completely still people. (Example from Only a Dream from the Justice League series). No idea how you would communicate the situation in a single drawing, but was reminded of it from @Dave 's examples.
I dunno if this would work on a card, but having Harry sitting in “The Thinker” pose, while the rest of the world was depicted as stone statues, might work?
Harry standing, a bit dynamically, as if in mid-motion, in the midst of other people (maybe red-shifted?), head pivoting, panicky look on his face. “Moving Too Fast” … the trick is how to make them look static and him in motion when they are all static images on a page.
Variant: “Lost in the Speed Dimension” – (“It might take a while to get back”)
Variant: “Too Fast, Too Far” – Standing at an intersection, talking with a police officer, pointing in different directions. Best if it looks identifiably foreign (Tokyo landmarks, for example, or Singapore, or the Pyramids, etc.) (Or, heck, space/dimensional aliens, but still with the cop-pointing-at-a-map motif)
Since @Dave brought this up in this week’s recap, I figured I would share that I had also been thinking about this particular event recently.
So, let me give you guys a bit of a task (I’ve asked Bill similar questions in the past for helping determine what cards go where, but figured this might be fun for some of you folks), given the following events, tell me which of the following decks they would best fit into:
The Decks:
A Dread Queen/Vyortovian Military villain deck
A Halcyon City environment deck
A Vyortovia environment deck
An Oakland Cemetery environment deck
None of these options
The Events/Characters:
Kaiju Cat
The Yule Lads kidnapping kids
The Vyrotovian dimensional bomb
The Vyortovian spies investigating the Sepiaverse portal
The Brain Swap
I have my own opinions, but I’ll keep those to myself for now. I’m interested to hear what everyone else thinks.
The Vyortovian dimensional bomb – 3 … if I understand the “environmental deck” concept.
The Vyortovian spies investigating the Sepiaverse portal – 4 … random zaniness that ties into other decks.
The Brain Swap – 5, or maybe 2 … I mean, it ends up being part of the Vyortovia story, but it’s such a trope I think it could be done alone (without tying it to the story line).
Is that understand the concept of environment decks in general or of a Vyortovia deck specifically? I’ll answer both.
Environment decks are intended to represent where you are fighting the villain and, while they shouldn’t normally overshadow it, they should have their own impact on the deck. The example I always use is “If the Avengers were to fight the Masters of Evil who have fled behind Latveria’s borders for protection, what could they expect in addition to what the Masters of Evil could bring to bear?” Probably some Latverian military forces, some Doom Bots, and maybe some helpful civilians or freedom fighters who don’t like living under the thumb of Doctor Doom? But also the threat of causing an international incident, or Doctor Doom officially giving them safe harbor (and maybe rescinding it later)? Those concepts can just as easily been environment cards as tanks and Doom bots.
As for what I have in mind for the Vyortovian deck, not 100% certain yet where the delineation for “this is the Queen and her invading force” and “this is what the HHL ran up against when they stormed the floating island” is in my designer brain yet.
Alright, a couple of questions for the group mind:
So the Irregulators were originally going to be a group Comet/Matt Chase was going to put together some years before the game started but it never really took off, leaving A10 and her team to take up the name. Most hero teams come together to take on some threat none of them could take on individually. Who would the Irregulators formed to face off again and why did it inspire the name “Irregulators”?
I have a team support card in Radiance’s deck which I’m looking for a concept to tie it to (it had one, but I’ve grown less and less fond of it over time). The card effect is “Every player draws a card. One player plays a card.” I kind of want to feature Otto in the card art (since he really hasn’t gotten a chance to cameo yet) so I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas for Radiance (or Summer, since it doesn’t necessarily be superhero related) helping Otto with something?
So one of the things I decided early on was that since Rook Industries was so tied up with Halcyon, I wanted to include one character aligned with Rook in each environment deck: a talent scout at the Sport Stadium looking to recruit latent or low powered superhumans for Rook research, an investigator at Oakland Cemetery looking into the Wounds, a courier for Downtown who is unwittingly making deliveries to Rook-aligned villains. So who should to Rook lacky be at Saint Lucia Medical? A doctor is the obvious but least interesting answer, so I figured I would ask suggestions.
The threat might have been “their own darker natures” - imagine a group of delinquents, kids just on this side of juvie or junior supervillainy, or kids with powers but no place to use them or no ideas how. In that case the original team might have been defensive in nature, or limited in scope, so Comet could keep an eye on them. This could explain:
why the original team didn’t happen (Comet didn’t get approval to help those kids)
why he’s been so cautious with the current lineup (he’s finally got a chance to work with a team and he doesn’t want to mess it up)
Summer with the Ponies (or some other social group) in a social setting with Otto, who’s big and awkward - just write him as a Transformed trying to fit in.
Radiance playing support while Otto tackles a giant monster - maybe shooting down smaller spawn.
I like Bill’s ideas here with Summer. I was thinking (outside the Superhero box) of her helping him shop for something – trying out new sets of tires, for example. (“Does this make my chassis look fat?”)
For the Rook person at St Lucia, the biggest bad guy in any TV medical drama is the Head Administrator Who Is A Tool. Maybe Rook owns (or funds) the hospital, or offers management services to the hospital (among others). Aside from being there to maximize profits for Rook, they might also be watching for possible recruits (someone injured during a break-out of their powers) or injured supers in their civilian guise (“Those look like lightning marks …”).
Thank you Bill and Dave. All of these suggestions were great and very helpful for me.
Now for something I want to run by folks and see if everything makes sense and allow folks to make suggestions.
One of the villain decks is going to represent Rook Industries as a whole: schemes, corruption, unchecked capitalism, all that fun stuff. (Plus, who doesn’t want to punch a giant corporation in the face after… modern society, really.)
Anyway, this involved filling in two groups of people: the faces of the faceless corporation, as well as their various super-powered minions.
On the super-powered side, four candidates became immediately clear: Iconoclast, Troll, Facet, and Carbine. All four are tied to Rook (at least alluded to, in Iconoclast’s case) and each has a fairly solid connect to one of the Menagerie members (Carbine is the least solid, but I love the idea of her being proto-Charade, having a similar connection to Parker, but these are expanded universe thoughts).
The corporate side (which I am tentatively calling executives so I have a keyword for cards) are slightly more difficult. But I do have some thoughts.
Annika de Groot from the Cold Equations story works and can represent the R&D side of Rook. Doesn’t have a connection directly to the team, but still very easy to slot in as a baseline.
Rossum is the opposite side of that: very direct connection to the Menagerie and can represent a bit of a wild card in Rook (since he was only really on board to not go to jail and have a cover and resources). He can represent the Robotics side of Rook.
The other big side we got into with Rook was their interest in the Wounds. We never really had a face to match up with that facet (except for Rosa, but she has other functions in this deck) but I could see someone filling that particular role. Looking at the Deck of Villainy, an alternate version of Dr. Rishima Doshi (Professor Spectre) who never became an out-of-phase ghost fits that really well, and lets me be amused that the two people interested with researching the Wounds (Ghost Girl and Doshi) are both ghosts of a sort.
So for parity with the super-powered side, I would need a fourth executive. Since we’ve already got R&D, Robotics, and Dimensional Research covered, what sounds like a good fourth pillar? Finance? Political Interests? Cybernetics? (Kind of runs close to robotics though.) Thoughts?
Finally and separate from the eight mentioned above, I think I also want to include a mole inside Rook that can feed the heroes information. SNOWMAN/Jack Frost could fit into this role fairly easily since that’s already what they were doing in Cold Equations.
A combination of the New World Order and the Syndicate, yeah. Finance and politics. This might be the pillar Alycia knows most about, since they’d have competed with Dr. Chin on goals, while probably being similar in methods
Finance is always one of the corporate pillars (or else it doesn’t last long), and the executive who effectively leads that pillar in a quasi-criminal enterprise – investments, budgets, accounts receivable, laundering money, purchasing influence, and, of course, the ever-critical merger-and-acquisitions – will be a lynchpin and, should they choose to do so, an ever-present character in a company’s machinations, in the foreground or the background.
[Purely for example:] Hiroshi Haiiro is CFO for Rook, an silent, chill, eminence grise whose advice to Rosa Rook and the board – regarding money – is always profitable.
His interest is less in Rook’s activities per se than in creating a money-making machine within the global economy that eventually becomes the economy, that literally can enable its wielder to do whatever is not forbidden by the laws of physics, whatever is possible through the instrumentality of humanity, who are simply the wetware within the glistening financial cathedral he’s created. Apotheosis through high finance.
He is far from that goal, but still is able to use Rook’s financial assets (both the ones that show up on the ledger and in the annual report, and the more substantial ones that don’t) to manipulate markets, channel investments, acquire new technologies (and the companies/individuals that created them), destroy or absorb smaller competitors (or perhaps small governments), and be ready upon whatever request Rosa might make.
What does that look like in game terms? Someone like that is difficult to portray directly, as they are always three layers behind the folk acting. Synergies with the efforts of the other executives (“We don’t build the blasters – we make them blastier!”). Distractions for the heroes (credit cards that have suddenly reached their limits, apartment residences that are suddenly owned by someone else who’s tearing them down to create office space). Released bad guys (judges selected, juries manipulated, regulatory agencies suborned, fines paid). Unfavorable publicity for the good guys (Rook News!). Tech suppliers that are suddenly owned by, or under exclusive contracts with, Rook. Etc.
Similar in that her father saw money as a temporarily necessary evil, of use (like violence) to achieve the Great Mission, as the unfortunately essential fuel for his effort – but in no way the effort itself. He would have enough tendrils into financial markets (white, gray, and black), on a smaller scale, to pay for all those minions and bases, the tech and energy, the spider-bots and the overthrowing of small governments. He would also have had a lot of contempt for those obsessed with it; to him, Hiroshi Haiiro would be a brilliant talent wasted on so meaningless and cold and destructive an aspiration; a worthy opponent (if utterly corrupted by and part of the world order he despised) where they come head to head in pursuit of some shared goal.
E.g., that new tachyon collector module that a small company in Belgium has developed – who can acquire it first; who will send in hired thugs to steal it, or its inventor, or the designs; when will it become a conflict directly between Rook and Chen; and when will one side or the other or both decide it’s an unprofitable distraction from the Bigger Picture and either back down or come to a distasteful modus vivendi?
Alycia would probably have a more shallow view – money bad! – while having developed a small inkling of how necessary it presently is to get things done during her brief time trying to run things after her Father disappeared.
Ah yes, plutocrats. Of course. Between this and Dave’s suggestions (as well as nicking Dave’s name–Hiroshi Haiiro–because one name is as good as any) should make the rest of this fairly easy to play off of. Thanks folks.
I guess we’re unpacking the expanded universe thoughts. So the prompt from the Deck of Villainy for Carbine is “Jessica Miles was one of the greatest agents of A.E.G.I.S. ever trained. After years of watching her friends fall on missions against dangerous supers, she grew tired of the agency’s rules and restrictions. She quit so she could hunt and neutralize the supers she deemed most dangerous.”
Its fairly easy to slot in a fairly rough upbringing into this background. Not “my dad is a wanted terrorist” bad, but still rough. So Jessica goes into the military or law enforcement and eventually catches AEGIS’ eye (maybe after being able to takedown a super during a conflict). They recruit Jessica and put her under Parker to train.
Jessica is a good agent but ruffles under Parker’s micromanagement style. At some point it gets bad, good people are lost, Jessica walks away (as stated above). Eventually Jessica resurfaces as Carbine (or perhaps it was her codename under AEGIS and just never stopped using it), Parker questions if this is all her fault and takes an extended leave of absence.
Eventually Alycia gets brought into AEGIS and they call up Parker. If anyone can figure out what Alycia Chin has planned (since she wouldn’t just turn herself in) its Parker. Instead Parker sees someone who can be useful and help a lot of people. Rather than the short leash she kept Carbine under, Parker gives Alycia slack and lets her do her own thing. She encourages Alycia but doesn’t order her around except exactly where necessary.
Of course, this might run counter to a lot of what Dave wrote about Parker and Alycia, but it was something fun I thought would give Alycia a cool “antagonistic opposite” villain on the AEGIS axis (further ideas present themselves on the Heir of Chin and Second Gen Legacy axes).
I don’t think it contradicts anything. The only twist (which was never canonical in-game) was that Parker had a daughter who’d been Alycia’s age when she died, in what was (only speculated outside of even cut-scenes) a Chin terrorist attack. (This was one reason why Parker, a Brit, was working for the US-centric AEGIS, because AEGIS was more dedicated to taking Chin down than MI.6). I play this up a bit more in the novel.
The idea that there was someone similar to Alycia that Parker handled back in the day slots into that nicely. It would make her even more reticent to handle Alycia, while paradoxically incenting her to make it work out a lot better.
So throwing out some post-Menagerie book names for me to reference in some card quote text. These are just placeholders for now, so if anyone has better names, feel free to make recommendations.
A10 and Mercury: post-Menagerie book for A10 and Mercury, covering them both being the “faces” of their respective legacies now.
Trials of the Concordance: Revival: post-Menagerie book for Concord and the Concordant Trio. Eventually drops the “Revival” subtitle after the first couple of storylines.
Halcyon Spotlight: Series of mostly one-shots and two-parters highlighting various characters who don’t have their own books (i.e., a random Ponies story, Kid Kelvin, etc.)
Science-themed Book: Needs a name. Generally covers the science-themed characters: the Newmen, Jason Quill, etc.
Magic and Horror-themed Book: Your Tales of Suspense/Tales to Astonish/Amazing Fantasy-style book. Could cover a lot of ground, but intended to just be Ghost Girl/Grail Knight stories.
Funnily enough there is a real “Tales of Mystery” comic, though its full name is “Boris Karloff: Tales of Mystery” so I think that is an acceptable title.
