Earth D: Epitome

Since this is the first post in my Splintered Realities series, it makes sense to start with the first hero...

Epitome, the Ultimate Man (Hero 12)

Altered Human; Professional Adventurer; Resources 10

AC 24; HD 12d6 (hp 180); Move 5 miles (fly 5 miles); FEAT +13; Strike (+15/1d10+9); Eye Beam (+14/1d8+8/120’); Blast of Wind (6d6 damage; 30’; 8x per turn)

STR 24 (+9); INT 12 (+3); PWR 22 (+8)

DEX 22 (+8); CON 24 (+9); CHA 14 (+4)

Traits: Attribute Surge (x4; STR/DEX/CON/PWR); Burst of Wind (breath, 12d6 pool per turn); Bolt of Light (eye beams 1d8); Enhanced Senses; Flight (10 miles); Hyperspeed (10 miles); Invulnerability; Pummel (1d10); Quickness; X-Ray Vision

Talents: Expertise (STR x2, DEX, CON x2; PWR); Iron Will

Drawbacks: Major allergy to Element T (see below); Secret (murdered Skylar Price); Vow (to never take innocent life again)

Purpose: "To protect mankind from Armageddon."

“The Visitor from Tomorrow”, Epitome was bio-engineered during the 30th Century to be the ultimate superhero. When those in his time realized that events that will destroy the earth were set in motion 1000 years earlier, when Skylar Price assumed the mantle of Queen of Death; Epitome willingly traveled to the past to change the course of human history and save his future world. In order to minimize disruption to the time stream, he has retained only enough to change key events, memories which are activated at pre-determined points in time, all other knowledge of the future permanently erased. His first action was to murder Skylar Price to prevent her rise to power. This left him devastated, and he took a vow never to harm another innocent, and also took on her brother as his protege, training him as he became the Twilight Archer, unaware that Epitome was the murderer.

Epitome later founded the Justice Collective to bring other heroes to his side and usher in a new age of heroes.

Unknown to himself or those who prepared him for travel, the isotope that allows time travel, Element T, changes its nature during time travel, becoming exceptionally poisonous to any creature who has traveled through time. Therefore, Epitome (and any other character who has traversed time) is exceptionally allergic to Element T. Less than one pound of the element exists in Earth D, although this has been broken up, and some has fallen into the hands of evil forces. Even a trace amount can cause mortal harm to Epitome.

Sentinels of Echo City: Splintered Realities

I'm almost done with Absolute Power (no, really!), but I've been simultaneously working through notes on a number of projects for Sentinels of Echo City. One of them is something I don't want to print and publish, but have decided to use the blog to work on, and the Splintered Realm Forum to archive and organize...

Here goes:

Sentinels of Echo City embraces as many superhero comics tropes as possible. One of those tropes is the existence of many universes of existence: alternate worlds with alternate supers who have emerged. I spent some time reading up on the Squadron Supreme, and have been inspired to formalize some alternate realities. Two of these splintered realities that I want to explore are Earth D and Earth M. In working up some characters for these two realities, I realized that one character was so similar between them as to be, in terms of game stats, virtually identical.

The archer.

But this is the thing. I'm in the process of making my game's variation, Twilight Archer, central to the future storyline of Echo City. And then I thought, what if he was central to all realities' stories? What if his interactions with the worlds were central to what happened?

Bingo. This is so the win.

You see, on Earth D, a powerful superhuman, Epitome, the ultimate man, was sent from the far future to prevent one key event: the ascension of the Dark Queen, the character who in the world of Resolute Earth is now the teenage heroine Vesper. He was successful, but we don't know yet at what cost. Epitome may be the greatest hero who ever lived, and he leads that team's most powerful group, but how long can he keep the secret from that world's Twilight Archer that he is the one who killed the archer's sister to prevent Armageddon.

Earth M has seen just the opposite. No visitor has come from the future, and the Dark Queen has ascended. She may only be a teen, but this powerful mutant rules over the realm of death itself, and the rise of the great superhuman team has been largely to oppose her, specifically her servant Glyn the Trickster King, her lieutenant on earth. That world's Twilight Archer is a key member of that team, working diligently to both overcome and save his sister.

And on Resolute Earth, a few heroes have learned of these alternate realities, of this potential for Vesper's future, and have decided to intervene in positive ways, seeking to influence her for good and keep from from the dark path that could consume her.

It's going to be a lot of fun working on this :)

Absolute Power Coming Soon

I'm in the midst of putting some of the finishing touches on Absolute Power, the first longer sourcebook for Sentinels of Echo City. I'm very excited about how this book is coming together, for a number of reasons:

- It includes dozens of new traits, talents, limitations and drawbacks that increase the scope and breadth of the game in nifty ways.
- It unifies all of the character creation options into one format, giving you far more flexibility in the character creation process, but with more direct guidance into each step.
- It makes it even more fun to build a character. Feedback received on the core rules has often reflected on how much fun character creation is. This sourcebook turns that up to 11.

I've decided to release this as a pay-what-you-want download. This is not only a great introduction to the game (serving as a 'players guide' that will hopefully help more people to discover it), but is also a fun way to kill an evening, picking up a set of dice and rolling up a number of oddball superheroes. I think you're going to enjoy playing with this.

I hope to have it up in the next few days... stay tuned!

Echo City Team Up #1

Echo City Team Up #1 is now up, and it's a pay-what-you-want download. This means that if you DON'T pick it up, you are saying that my work is not worth your bandwidth and a little bit of storage space. And that's just insulting...

The Junkyard Dawg has been supplying weapons to the criminal underworld, and it's time that someone dries up that pipeline. Two Heroes You Can Hire seem up to the task.

This pay-what-you-want download is an adventure supplement for the Sentinels of Echo City superhero RPG. Although you need those rules to play this adventure, the content is easily customizable to your superhero game of choice... which SHOULD be Sentinels of Echo City now that I think about it, so then you're all set.

Sentinels of Echo City Phase One Plans

Inspired by the meticulous planning to release Marvel Cinematic Universe films for the rest of my natural life, I decided to lay out a road map for Sentinels of Echo City's Phase One, taking us through the next twelve months...

Echo City Team Up will be 10-page adventures offered as pay-what-you-want plugins for the game. These include a few new characters, a scenario/setting, and a new trait or talent (or a few).

Sentinel Supplements will be 24-page expansions to the core rules, providing expansions to the core game or larger chunks of new material to increase the scope of the core rules. I see these as $1 downloads.

The first issue of Echo City Team Up goes live tonight!

If I could complete 6 issues (about 50 pages of content) and 3 supplements (about 65 pages of content), I could then release print Annuals that would provide an update of that year’s new material, at about the same length as the core rulebook. That would be cool!

Tentative Release Schedule (with working titles in parenthesis):

July: Echo City Team Up #1 (Heroes You Can Hire)

August: Echo City Team Up #2 (Under the Sea)

October: Sentinel Supplement #1 (GM’s Resource)

November: Echo City Team Up #3 (Moon Mission)

December: Echo City Team Up #4 (Endgame)

February: Sentinel Supplement #2 (Absolute Power: Player Options)

March: Echo City Team Up #5 (Fear and Loathing In Echo City)

April: Echo City Team Up #6 (To Help Valhalla)

June: Sentinel Supplement #3 (Book of Villains, Heroes of the 25th Century, or The Greatest Generation: a sourcebook about the golden age of supers)

JULY: ANNUAL #1

I figure that the game has some traction and some interest, and I'd like to see that grow! In addition, I'm hoping that some third party publishers decide to release content as well...

Christmas In July and Bonus No Prize

The Christmas in July sale is on at RPGNow, and you can get all of my titles at a pretty good discount... if you've been waiting to pick up Sentinels of Echo City, now is a good time... especially since you still get the $5 credit for the core rules in print! That's what we call you win/win. If you order in the next two hours, you also get a special edition No Prize (vintage edition, exactly as offered in 1980s Marvel Comics) delivered right to your doorstep.

'Nuff said.

Sentinels of Echo City Quick Reference

The great gang over on the Google+ community have been suggesting that some quick reference materials for character creation, especially a chart with the 100 traits, would be a handy resource for those making characters. In the interim, +Michael Hansen posted a sweet new character sheet that improves upon the one from the core rules quite a bit. It's all been collected into two jam-packed pages of niftiness that you can print out and use. If you've been wondering about Sentinels of Echo City, this allows you to roll up a few hundred characters, even if you won't have any idea how their abilities actually work or how to play the game. I find it's fun just to roll up lots of characters, so have at it!