Not that I'll get to use this idea any time soon

[james_davis_nicoll]

Because it looks like 4E D&D might be the next year's campaign but what would be a good quintessentially '80s name for a superhero?

The basic idea that I'm toying with is that the guy hit his PR peak around 1989 because as we know superhero rpg universes reflect the comicbooks of the time. In 1988 and 1989, wisecracking masks who enjoyed what they did but who didn't do anything unsavoury were in but by the early 1990s people wanted to hear about depressed superpowered thugs beating the crap out of other depressed superpowered thugs. Even though this guy was stilling doing what he did as competently as ever, nobody cared. Or cares. He's still sticking with his old schtick twenty years on despite the lack of acknowledgment. It's what he knows and anyway it's a lot more fun than the famous guys are having.

Comments

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Which works well enough. "Stick to your game plan and things will turn around eventually."

In this case, twenty years was just long enough.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Do you have a power concept?

'Cause, y'know, "Color + Noun That Has Something To Do With the Power" works. Or "Adjective That Has Something To Do With The Power + Noun That has Little To Do With Anything".

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The tricky part is avoiding some hideous fate intended to demonstrate that only sociopathic thugs can prosper. In the comics, Booster got his original suit trashed and then lost an arm. Blue Beetle ends up with a bullet in his head. Both Dibneys are murdered. We won't even mention what happened to Stanley and his monster.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Speedster-brick. Brick because I figure it's easier to be optimistic if nothing can kill or cripple you and speedster because I've rolling horribly on initiative lately.

[dsrtao]

Late eighties: the second wave of hair metal and Thundercats. WWF Superstars of Wrestling.

Big hair should feature prominently.

[mikedavsi.livejournal.com]

His name should be Speed Metal.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hot Streak?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

. . . actually, that's pretty cool for a speedster brick . . .

think of it this way...

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

If I was a superhero, I wouldn't run right out and declare myself "[insert super power here] Man"

I liked the way they handled it in one of the Batman movies. They let the newspapers name the guy.

What's his power or schtick?

--Hawk

Re: think of it this way...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Fast, hard to hurt.

[(Anonymous)]

Seconded. That is exactly the name my brain was trying and failing to conjure.

- Ken

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it really is.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

He could have a venom-spitting body-of-stone archenemy called Acid Rock!

Re: think of it this way...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The problem with letting the reporters name you is that you may not get lucky and get a handle like Green Arrow. The Hulk title once mentioned a brick who put an infinity symbol on her costume and the press called her "that crazy eight chick".

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

He could have an entire roster of music-themed antagonists! I'm suddenly thinking about an origin event involving his band, whoever they opened for and the audience.

Of course rock being rock, a lot of the themed villains won't have made it to the 21st century.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

My speedster-brick was Detroit Diesel. Pinstripe blue jumpsuit, red boots, gloves, and belt, black Monopoly train on the chest.

Re: think of it this way...

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

That's true. I always had a hard time playing "super" superheroes. I usually played normals, who had no disads in Champions. Which is difficult to keep up with the characters who had all the powers in 3 different character forms with multi-power thingys.

But I was the smart one in the room. I didn't get distracted by the GM, or busy studying how I could make my perfect character more buff.

--H

Re: think of it this way...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Team member normals in Champions tend to be the guys with 200 points in skills, perks, contacts and so on. Scary guys.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

There's probably strong selection for stuff like CON 35, regen and +20 BODY (Only to avoid consequences of lifestyle) amongst the super-rocker crowd.

Re: think of it this way...

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

Or, as seen in Civil War: the villains may give you names you *didn't* want, such as: "I'm not going to be taken down by Goldfish Girl and the Bondage Queen!"

(which would be Namorita and...oh, can't remember the other generic c-list hero's actual name, but it was pretty funny)

Speedster brick, huh? Like, say, Cannonball? Of course, that's been used - but it's more catchy than "Armour-Piercing Discarding Sabot Man".

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oh, G-d. . . I can just see it now. A good number of the themed villains would just have given it all up. . .

"Hunh. You look familiar, somehow."

"Maybe you took my class on tax preparation at the community college?"

"No, no . . . that's not it . . . OH MY GOD! I GOT IT! Weren't you that supervillian back in the eighties?"

"Oh . . . no, no, no -- look, I was nineteen! Okay? And the judge gave me community service and expunged the records after I helped out in the Invasion from Beyond -- it's over. . . I'm a CPA now . . ."

"That's right! You were that shapeshifter -- you could turn into a swarm of birds, right? What was it that you called yourself?"

"Look, can we just get back to your taxes? I had a couple of questions on these office-related deduct. . . "

"Yeah, and you had that haircut. . ."

"Look. . . please. I was a teenager, it was the eighties . . ."

"Yeah . . . Flock of Seagulls -- that's was what you called yourself . . . "

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

A background character in the Wild Cards universe was a superpowered rockstar ("The Lizard King", maybe?). He eventually opted to try Tachyon's Trump cure, and was one of the people it worked on. Sadly, though he survived the initial cure, it turned out that his powers were the only thing keeping him alive with a hyper-rockstar lifestyle, and he died of that within a few years of his cure.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It was actually the Wild Cardiverse Jim Morrison, wasn't it?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't the band have been able to go after him? Which just gives him another reason to want to down play his past.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's why modern-day vigilates like Copyleft consider him a hero.