Cataclysm Cover

This morning I roughed in the cover layout for Doc Stalwart Annual #2: Cataclysm Across the Cosmos. I decided to go ahead and include all of the characters that KS backers had requested for their commissions - it is 19 characters in total, so I was able to fit them into my homage to Mike Zeck's cover to Secret Wars #1. If you're going to swipe a cover design, may as well go for one of the most iconic of all time. 

Stalwart Adventures #1

So... it's been an eventful few days. The bad news is that my white blood cell count crashed because of chemotherapy and I ended up in the hospital for a few days as they work to get me back up to speed. The good news is that I have my computer with me and a lot of time, so I have been able to get work done on Stalwart. I finished Stalwart Phile 2 this morning, and I finished Stalwart Adventures #1 this afternoon. They are posted on DriveThruRPG. They are both PWYW, so head over and grab them. 

Stalwart Phile #2

Stalwart Phile #2 is now available as a PWYW release on DrivethruRPG. If you are a KS backer or a member of the FB group, you already got a link to the pdf. This will pair nicely with issue 3, that will stat out the Great War-era group Freedom's Four, and which will build on the theme of fighting Nazis. Because, again, we punch Nazis in the face. Because maybe we need a reminder of that once in a while. 

Multiple Birds

Well I've had a productive morning! I finally got the inspiration for something that was going to go into the core rules, but I never solved it (and which was suggested by Tony L. originally - who also suggested the letters page)... I wanted to include a 'classic advertisement' somewhere in the book from the early 80s, but never really figured out how to make the page work. However, my Facebook feed in the last week or so has included a bunch of Hostess ads from the early 80s, and I realized that was the sweet spot, and the perfect ad to include. So, I went ahead and created that page... but, I also solved a few problems. I haven't actually drawn many pages of comics in a long time (I did a page for the Core Rules, but I drew that over a year ago now I think)... I didn't have a process in place to create a page. I didn't have any sort of routine. So, I went ahead and created a blank page in paint that was 2000 pixels wide and 3000 pixels tall. Working at 50% size, I did a rough layout/thumbnail. Then I moved to 100% and blocked in some 'pencils'. Then I put in the dialogue. Then working between 200% and 300%, I did the black and white for the whole page. Then I did colors for the whole page. 

And I am very happy with how it turned out. So, here it is... the black and white and color versions. And, I now have a process in place to create the pages for Cataclysm (or any other comic pages I do going forward). The proportions ended up being just right for the various tools I use in Paint. FYI, the whole process took a little over three hours.  

Thinking about tyranny...

I have no idea WHAT contemporary news could have me thinking about Nazis and fascist dictators... but I started to cobble together some villains for my intrepid Freedom's Four to face. I love how these are coming out. I have both original characters and some public domain characters, so I'm thinking that I'll basically have two Stalwart Philes dedicated to Nazis. I mean, it turns out that there are never enough Nazis to punch in the face. Here are two more. I particularly like how Iron Maiden turned out. For Captain Reicher, I just took the public domain Captain Nazi and re-skinned him. I was not comfortable drawing a swastica at all, and I figured that he's a member of the Great Reich, so he needed their symbol on his costume.

Errata for Stalwart '85

A hefty prizeless goes to Rick Hull for bringing these to my attention. Please feel free to send any typos/corrections my way. I don't plan to correct the books (since many of you have physical copies), but for the purpose of being as accurate as possible, here is the list of errata for Stalwart '85:

• Antigen: Evade should be 5 (Tag Evade +1)
• Clockwork Killer: HP should be 13 (12 +1 Tag)
• Emissary: HP should be 30 (Tag HP+2) 
• Lord Wrack: Focus should be 7 (Tag Focus +1)
• Messenger: SP should be 8 (Tag SP +2)
• Typical Javelin Agent: HP should be 12 (no HP tag)
• Javelin Knights: Mind D8 (4); Reflex D8 (4)
• Rochambeau: HP should be 20 (Tag HP +2)
• Blue Sun Boy: Force should be 8 (Power D16), Evade should be 5 (Reflex D10, no tag)
• Earthquake Kid: HP should be 17 (HP +1 Tag)
• Gamma Grrl: Evade should be 5 (no tag)
• Stalwart Sentinel: Focus should be 6; Force should be 7
• Typical T.E.N.D.R.I.L. Agent: Level should be 3, Endure should be 4
• Aria, Daughter of Ancients: Evade should be 4
• Zero, the Final Robot: HP should be 34 (HP +2 Tag)
• The Butterfly: Evade should be 6, not 5
• Captain Cross: Evade should be 4, not 3
• Dablo: Endure should be 5, not 4 
• Heracles: HP should be 40, not 36
• Mr. Lightning: Endure should be 10, not 6
• The Owl: Evade should be 7, not 6
• Plymo: Focus should be 3, not 4
• Sub Saunders: Endure should be 6, not 5
• The Sponge: Evade should be 3, not 6

Stalwart Phile #1

After a few rounds of edits, I think that this is actually correct! You can now get a copy of the Stalwart Phile #1.

I finally stopped trying to be clever and did what I wanted to do originally, which is follow the format for the Marvel Phile from Dragon Magazine back in the day - a short article with 3-6 character stat blocks, and no particular frills. I'm going to alternate between my characters/world in odd-numbered Stalwart Philes, and PD characters in the even-numbered Philes. I'll be posting these with a direct link to the pdf to the FB group and the Kickstarter, but I'll also put these up as a PWYW release on DriveThru in case you feel like tipping and to increase awareness of the game to the larger community.

Thanks!  

Into the Null Zone

Wow. I got something DONE - I put together a cover design for Doc #50, with the first foray into the fabulous Null Zone. I actually feel the cloud lifting a little today, and I haven't taken my two morning naps, so progress! Still not feeling math, but at least I was able to focus long enough to get this finished. Feels good.

And it gives me a chance to blog about an actual idea that has something to do with gaming... someone posted on FB somewhere about how Sandman could basically just kill anyone. He can send a little bit of sand into your heart or brain and cause a stroke and boom. In effect, many super-heroes could do this. If they really used their powers in a smart way, many supers could just cut off oxygen to their foes and end fights quickly... but they obviously don't.

And that got me thinking about why playing superhero RPGs is in many ways harder than other types of games - you have to willingly suspend your disbelief to have your character conform within certain standards, even when you have better options. As a fighter, your best option is going to be your long sword. If you had a fireball spell, you would use it. Every time. A supers game basically says, 'yeah, you have unlimited fireball spells, but wouldn't it be fun to conjure flame here and see what happens?' Everyone at the table has to be in agreement that this is the way the game is going to roll. You could use your force field to choke Simian Prime out in one round. But you don't because... you pull punches? You are dumb? 

Because it's a convention of the genre.

I have some built-in safeguards with Stalwart Points and ways you can use your powers in 'unusual' ways, but there's no rule saying that knocking out your foes with your force field isn't the 'usual' way you use that power, except that it's not a comic book way to do it.

Therein lies the rub for supers gaming. If you have one player at the table who's like, 'uh, logically, I just use my teleport to teleport the criminal directly to prison', then the game is already over. In effect, the players have to choose fun over winning. It's a mindset everyone has to agree to. Building a game that has traditional XP progression and advancement rewards players for winning. A supers game, to my mind, has to have rewards that have little to do with 'winning' the encounter, and more to do with 'enjoying' the encounter. Fun has to be the reward.

Fighting Through Chemo Fog...

I had a new chemo treatment with heavy-duty immunotherapy at the end of last week, and it has been a challenge to get my brain locked in ever since. I'm just kind of generally having a hard time focusing on anything, which is (all things considered) a minor annoyance. My pain is almost zero, and I spend my days napping and scrolling. My Facebook feed now overflows with LEGO updates, 70s and 80s comics, and a little bit of pro wrestling from the late 80s, so it keeps me occupied and I suppose on some level I'm filling the creative reservoir a little bit with raw material that I can draw from later on. 

I have tried on and off to work on both the adventures I'm writing (Cataclysm and Issue 58), but as soon as I get to math or specific details of plot, my eyes roll into the back of my head and my brain just won't cooperate. I have swelling in my hands and feet, so even building LEGOs right now is challenging because of uneven control of my fingers - just typing this feels weird because of the pins and needles feelings in my fingertips that's been here a few days. 

So, I doodle a bit and scroll. However, this morning I found an image I'd started during the KS campaign that I never finished (not sure why - but I obviously did now) of Satana, a PD character, and realized that she's the heavy hitter that Act 3 of Cataclysm is missing. She'll be appearing there, but I thought I'd at least share something that I am working on. I'm hopeful that since I'm almost a week out from my last chemo treatment, and have two weeks until my next one, at some point sooner than later this chemo fog will lift and I can get to some actual progress. 

However, in the interim it has been incredibly gratifying to watch you all start a community around Stalwart '85 on FB, and I'm very grateful to all of you who've contributed or shared your enthusiasm for the game. It has really and truly been a source of amazing positivity in the suckage of cancer.

Finally, thought I'd share that I have re-discovered the Decemberists, and I cannot believe how deep and rich their catalog is. It's like I find a new song and become completely obsessed over it. I have been listening to the Hazards of Love on non-stop rotation for a few days, but last night came upon the Infanta and just love it so much. I see that they are touring a little bit this summer, and I'd like to be strong enough to go and see them live. I don't go to many concerts (I have maybe gone to six in my lifetime), but the Decemberists would be front and center on my wish list. Being healthy enough in July to take a six-hour road trip to Canada to see them would be a huge win. 

Thinking PreGens

First off, thanks to you all (especiall Rick Hull) for getting a FB group up and running and for some great conversations so far. Here's the link if you want to jump in.

Now that I am thinking of including pre-generated characters for the introductory adventure, I was first tempted to go pretty generic and go with maybe four elemental heroes or something that would be 'archetypal' in some way. Then I thought I'd just re-print the Young Wardens from the core rules. Then I thought - nah, that's not the game I want. I started to look at my legacy characters, and realized that I have given Monument III, but have barely referenced who Monolith I or II were, and there was my opening. I could put together a team of 'midnight guardians' or somesuch. I then realized that I'd drawn Mr Justice, a PD hero, for someone last week on the Public Domain Heroes FB, and seeing that this guy is a ghost, he'd fit in perfect. I figure I have 2-3 more spaces - I already have Vesper as controlling darkness energy, but I could always add another character who can do that... in some ways, this group would have been a foreshadowing of the group that Doc ultimately ends up with in issues 251-260, which included Zirah and Monolith III. 

- Maybe the apprentice to Eldritch? A young sorcereress might be a good fit. Not sure how a new player would handle magic, since it requires a bit of understanding of how to use the rules and existing frameworks to do cool stuff. I think the more imaginative you are as a player, the more fun magic would be to play - and the less comfortable you are, the more un-fun this could be.

- Gila the Monster doesn't canonically appear for 20+ issues yet, but he would have been a good fit here. I could do an earlier version of Gila... but ah well. Or just a different big lizard dude. He's not that deep. Or go with a golem type here (altough Monument is already the muscle kind of).

- Renegade would not have been terrible, but he appears a hundred issues too late - In retrospect, I should have made him a character who appeared in the first fifty issues. He officially is where he officially is, and I have already committed that once something is published, it is 'canon' and I won't go back and change it. Canonically, Renegade appears for the first time in issue 143 (unless that's Renegade II... DON'T TEMPT ME FRODO). Although.. my use of the phrase 'took on the role of the Renegade' in his opening text leaves me the opening that this was an existing identity... that maybe his uncle had retired from. Oh man. I'm totally doing that. Renegade I is on the team. Sweeet. This is the Renegade of Meridian. I think my original Renegade when I was in middle school had the moon knight gimmick of getting twice as powerful at night - I might keep that, and have him have two stat blocks (daytime and night time) - with maybe an extra perk at the full moon.

- Someone has to have a head for a skull. That seems like a gimme. That or at least a headless horseman of some kind. Or maybe just a skull that floats around. Head and hand of Vecna. Kid Cranium. The Occipital Protuberance.

Odds and Ends

The introductory adventure using Malamus and adapting Mighty Doc Stalwart #58 is coming along quite nicely. Here's the central image that will be the cover for that issue and adventure. I hope to have it up and published by the weekend - it will be sent to all KS backers as a pdf, but will also be PWYW on DriveThruRPG. My only question is whether or not to include pregenerated characters. I have options: I could just reprint the Young Wardens (since this is kind of how I see a character group like that getting introduced anyway). I don't like the idea that there is an 'official' team that does these things - the 'official' story featured Doc. I could just publish Doc and a few possible allies? Add a few more public domain heroes? Leave the PCs out entirely and encourage the players to use their own characters? I mean, the core rules with all character generation rules are available for free, and I want to encourage people... it's the only thing I'm not sure how to solve yet. There are lots of PD characters that I haven't touched yet - I could create a different set of maybe 8 Public Domain heroes that are a separate thing, but which are a free resource anyone could then draw on when they need a character. I could make 'Public Domain character packs' of maybe 6-8 characters at a time and probably never run out of characters to do this for, but give a lot of support to the game and continue to expand from the characters that were part of the KS. I don't want to take from anything that was already a KS exclusive, so I'll be leaving those PD characters alone.

I also added two links to the comics database, but since that thing is already pretty big, it would be easy for you to miss them if you weren't looking. I've added them both as backup features in Mighty Doc Stalwart #200, seeing that issue in many ways as shared with Simian Prime. I added the Simian Manifesto and the text that would have accompanied a Project: Javelin mission into Simian City. 

Slugfest!

It dawned on me this morning that I have never actually drawn Doc vs. Simian Prime. I mean, I have lots of drawings of Doc, and a few of Simian Prime, but I've never drawn them actually... you know... fighting. So, I took up the challenge and decided to go for the most iconic sort of late 60s slugfest image I could manage. I'm quite pleased with how this has come along. It's going to be the cover to something at some point... here it is in both black and white and color. I even like the black and white version. It's very clean.

An Introductory Adventure

I spent a little more time with the grand comics database for Doc, adding some details from the core rules that had not been in my master document. I think it is all aligned now - as you can see, there are many blank spaces that need to be filled in, and a lot of placeholders where I know who or what may have first appeared, but I'm not exactly sure what the story was that they were involved in. That said, it's a pretty good skeleton of what the history of Doc's adventures have looked like, and it also leaves me with a lot of room to expand, deepen, and enrich the lore. If this was everything, I'd be okay. I think that there are still major storylines and characters who have yet to be introduced, and I'm excited to find those things hidden in my searches through the 'back issue bins' as I explore my imagination.

I also see several storylines that are going to adapt nicely into adventures. At present, I conceptualize adventures at around 8-10 pages - the cover of the comic, one or two samples of interior art (probably not full pages, but panels from throughout), a one-page overview of the storyline as it appeared (with historical context and all that good stuff), and an adventure broken into three acts with frame/cut scenes that help to shape the whole. While issue #1 would seem to be the most reasonable start, I'm actually leaning towards the first appearance of Malamus the Magma King in issue #58. This could break nicely into a first encounter in the northern streets of Meridian where Malamus' legions have risen from the earth to 'counter attack' the people who have been disturbing his caves. After a short battle, the Magmen would retreat, having made their point - continued hostility will bring even more damage. In a cut scene, we could learn that a company has been doing illegal sonic testing and drilling in the northern mountains, disturbing Malamus. In Act 2, the heroes could attempt to intercept a Project Javelin task force (maybe led by Prototype) that has been sent to destroy Malamus and crush his small empire. In Act 3, they go to his volcano and try to negotiate a peace agreement that will get Project Javelin to stand down and bring at least a temporary peace. 

This would set in motion a lot of different elements of the comic, and introduce an organization that does unethical stuff that could be an ongoing background threat. Doc himself could either be present for the mission, or the idea is that he is always on some other mission but acts as a resource for the heroes via telecom. He could phone in with suggestions or send some help, but he just happens to be on the moon, or fighting tsunamis in Japan, or helping rescue people from Mr. Everest, or whatever.

For longer storylines, I could adapt them as multiple parts, doing smaller campaign arcs (war of the demigods), or I could find linked issues across continuity and release them as a cohesive story (the various stories having to do with Doc's secret lab being taken over, crashed into the ocean, and ultimately used as an undersea base). Staying with the idea of adapting the existing comics history gives me a nice framework to stay within, and really defines what these adventures will look like.

A GL Swipe Because I Did

I've been actually chilling a bit on Facebook, just joining groups so that my feed is full of 80s comic goodness and supers RPG stuff. I can now just jump on and scroll through the most awesome stuff and spend time in the same world of Stalwart '85, which is groovy. I ended up joining a Green Lantern group just because of this image, and then I had to swipe it and create a variation for Bronze Beacon, because I just loved it so much. No idea who the artist is, but I love the style. Here's the original with my unapologitic adaptation.

Edit: I found the source - fan art. Wanted to give the dude the credit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DCcomics/comments/qq9osk/fan_art_just_finished_reading_new_frontier_and/

On Staying in My Sand Box

I keep instinctively looking at ways to 'expand' the game for Stalwart '85. I keep thinking of what I want to do 'next', or how to move the game/story/world 'forward' in some way. I keep wanting to make new 'main characters' to pick up pieces of the narrative and carry them in other directions. I originally planned last summer to hand over the reigns from Doc to Skye, and to start to tell her story instead.

But Doc always comes back into the picture. I started play testing the Cataclysm Across the Cosmos this week, and realized that it's not that story unless Doc is there. Doc is the center of gravity for the whole thing. 

In the last few days, I've been scrolling through some old scans online of Marvel 2-in-1, thinking it would be cool to have a character like the Thing who could go around and team up with other heroes to expand the world. Oh. I already have him. He's Doc. He's already doing that.

In fact, he's been doing it for 264 issues as of the time Stalwart '85 comes out. 

It always comes back to Doc. That's the future - it's the past. I was thinking about how to develop adventures for the game, and realized that I have a database going of great adventure ideas in seed form - I have re-organized this a bit and posted it so you can see the living database, but the answers are all right there. I should be publishing adventures for the game, but they can be rooted in adapting the existing 264 comics. The game is set in April of 1985. It's a fixed point in time. I can now spend my time going back and filling in as many gaps as possible. It's a bit of a strange creative enterprise for me - my job is to spend my time going through the 'back issue' bins, organizing things and adding to them. I don't have to generate 'new content' - I can just spend my time building up the catalog of what already exists as of April 1985. That should keep me busy enough. This is the entire sand box I have to play in. I can stay within these walls and never run out of things to work on - if you figure an average Doc story was 16 pages, and there are 264 of those, that's over 4,000 pages I haven't figured out yet. I think that's enough to work with. 

Plus, the whole idea of the game itself is that you're with me in April of good old '85. You bought the game, you own some comics, and you're itching to start your own game set in this world. You have no idea what storylines or continuity or strangeness is ahead, and you start building a game based on the comics you have. As you go, you hit conventions or comic shops or mail order and start to fill in your back issue collection. My job now is to help you do it.