On Comparisons of SoTC and SA!

Several people have, of late, taken the tactic of questioning how I could possibly be fair when I claim that Spirit of the Century is a game that mostly sucks, and Starblazer Adventures is, on the other hand, an excellent game. After all, they argue, they are practically the same game! Some of the material is taken almost cut-and-paste from SA! to SoTC.

That's not really saying much. The real question is not what their similarities are, but what their differences are, isn't it?  I mean, Deadlands D20 and Call of Cthulhu D20 are both D20 games, but one (Deadlands) is reviled as one of the worst D20 games around, and Call of Cthulhu is hailed as one of the best D20 books of all time. Likewise, I'm sure that there's a lot of material cut-and-paste from Deadlands to Deadlands D20, but it doesn't make the latter book have any of the good things about the former.

So let's take a look at the important differences:

1. Spirit of the Century claims to be about playing Pulp adventures, making at least some argument for being a general genre-emulation game for the Pulp concept. It fails miserably at this.
On the other hand, Starblazer Adventures nominally claims to be a licensed book of the specific Starblazer Adventures magazine, but somehow manages to be a truly excellent genre-emulation game for the Space Opera concept.

2. In elaboration of the above: Spirit of the Century fails because it utterly misunderstands what Pulp is supposed to be all about. As I stated back when I reviewed this product, the SoTC book itself claims that pulp is all about ""action, science and optimism" and the most important of these is optimism. In fact, Pulp would better be described as being about "action, adventure, and progress", and by far the most important of these would be Action. Throughout their product, the SoTC authors were too caught up with the idea of being clever and trying to turn their book into an intellectual treatise, rather than an effective and accurate representation of the genre.
Starblazer Adventures, on the other hand, gets right away that the point is about having Space Opera adventures, and not to over-think it. They're not trying to be pretentious or clever to satisfy some gang of pseudo-intellectuals, they're just trying to emulate the fucking genre!

3. Spirit of the Century is not a game about Pulp, its a game about the "Themes" of Pulp, and the subsequent analysis of those themes is utterly flawed. By failing to actually focus on the Pulp itself, and want to make it about something that they'd consider worthy of "storytelling" about, they fail as a Pulp game compared to much better presentations of other pulp games, most notably the excellent Two-Fisted Tales RPG.

4. Both SoTC and SA are FUDGE-based games. There's nothing inherently bad about that, FUDGE is a toolkit engine that can be used in a variety of ways. However, one major difference between these two games is that SOTC by default makes use of the single biggest roadblock/flaw that FUDGE has, the stupid gimmicky dice. SA does not.
This seems a bit of a nitpicky point, but it is not. If you don't own FUDGE dice (and I do not) it already creates an additional barrier to the enjoyment of play. A needless one. SA wisely avoids this by adapting the FUDGE system to a D6-D6 mechanic of play.

5. SOTC is all about locking you into a certain type of play, whereas SA is all about options and alternatives; this is reflected in the system, where SA is all about the "toolkit", giving you lots of different ways to do things to your liking. You COULD play SA! in the "narrative-focused" way that SOTC does things, but you're not FORCED to.
SOTC tells you how you should play, in other words, while SA shows you the different ways you could play. There's a major difference in design philosophy.

And finally:

6. I have no interest whatsoever in the "Century Club" setting that Spirit of the Century spends far too much time hoisting on the reader; all of its material related to that is therefore useless to me, and to anyone else who wants to do their own thing with the Pulp genre.
Starblazer Adventures could very easily have gone the same route, but they chose not to. They were a licensed product, it would have been understandable if they'd essentially assumed that people who purchased the book would be playing in the Setting of the SA universe (universes, really). But instead of doing that, they made the default utterly GM-designed; they assumed that each GM will want to make his OWN Space Opera world. They provide a ton of material that's taken out of the SA magazine, lots of which can be super-useful to be "borrowed" for one's own campaign, but you can also choose to use none of it whatsoever, and the bulk of the material and the focus is on how to design your own worlds, systems, settings, organizations, etc.

So yes, sorry haters, but your arguments don't fly. These two products are NOT the same, they're vastly different.

RPGPundit

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RPGPundit Reviews: Death Frost Doom

Death Frost Doom is an "OSR"-style (old school renaissance, in case you aren't up with the lingo the kids are using these days) adventure for D&D; its been written up in such a way that it could pretty well be played with any version of D&D/AD&D, and certainly could be easily adapted to be played with any other fantasy game (Forward... to Adventure!, for example).

This adventure was written by James Raggi, and it comes in the form of a small booklet, with a few black and white illustrations. The inside cover is the dungeon map, and its quite a nice graph-paper dungeon indeed.

I recently reviewed Mr. Raggi's "Green Devil Face" booklets, and found them to be almost entirely useless. I'm glad to say that Death Frost Doom allows me to somewhat reform Mr.Raggi's reputation. Its a very clever adventure "module" for D&D (or again, just about any fantasy game), and I think it would make an excellent horror/fantasy adventure for a low to mid-level party.

I want to be careful not to give away too many of the details here, as that would somewhat spoil the experience. However, I'll say that the basic premise is this: Death Frost Doom is a potentially killer dungeon, and once more we see Mr.Raggi's obsession with near-gygaxian traps; however in this case the dangers (both in terms of traps and monsters) are far more dependent on how careful and clever the PC party is.  With a few exceptions, the danger is such that if the PCs think things through and are cautious, they can survive; if they are not careful, they're royally fucked.

The premise for presenting the adventure can be just as a dungeon to go to that the PCs might have heard about, if you're running that kind of "Sandbox campaign", or if you want, it can involve some kind of a quest to obtain an item. The dungeon itself is the catacombs of an ancient cult to a death/blood God. The whole area is cursed. The catacombs are found up the side of a mountain, relatively far from civilization, meaning the PC party will need to be well-prepared to handle the situation.  Resource management would certainly be important. Additionally, the nature of the accursed place is such that the longer you spend in the area, the more likely that the party will start to get seriously messed up, discouraging the PC party from going too slowly and trying to excessively rest to recover their abilities.

The adventure is also somewhat deceptive, in a good way, in that it is highly likely that the party can go a long way while encountering creepy things but without having any major combat or peril; and then, if they're not careful, all hell can break loose. With one noteworthy exception, the opponents are almost entirely undead of different kinds, so having a Cleric in the party can certainly affect the odds of survival. Having a druid can also change the tone of the game in a significant way.

Again, I'd rather not go into excessive detail as to the nature of the dungeon itself, though I'll say that there's a good deal of traps, many of which are magical, and pretty well all of which are topical to the theme of the adventure.  The tone of the dungeon and the adventure is suitably creepy and ominous.  The author correctly describes the adventure as a "Weird Tale", and credits the influences of the likes of Lovecraft, Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and others in that light.

There are some very interesting items, including curses, and a magnificent item in particular (the Purple Lotus Powder) that has one of those truly awesome random tables; reckless PCs will end up being either very happy or very sorry getting hold of this item.

The adventure is only about 20 pages long, but has more than enough to cover all that is needed for this adventure, and to provide your gaming group for a session or two of great play. At the end of the book, a second mini-adventure is provided ("The Tower", reprinted and revised from an adventure that originally appeared in "Fight On!" magazine).  This adventure is a nice bonus, but is not nearly as interesting as the main course, and the theme of the adventure is a bit of a mindfuck; essentially, its meant to be be a trick for "greedy adventurers"; since most D&D adventurers are after loot, this might be seen as somewhat needlessly punitive.

In any case, I'm glad to say that I certainly could recommend this product to anyone who enjoys old-school fantasy play, particularly with that horror/weird-tale twist. Its certainly a whole world away from the previous product I'd reviewed from this author.

RPGPundit

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The Dismantling of White Wolf

So, in all the hubbub of the FFG story, I didn't have time to report on another issue that sprung up in the gaming world. Ryan Dancey, in a recent interview made what was no doubt for him just an offhand comment, a statement of the truth that he didn't even really pause to consider, about the situation regarding White Wolf.

The question and answer were as follows:

Q: Can you fill me in on the status of White Wolf, the physical game company CCP acquired in Atlanta?

A: It's just an imprint... White Wolf used to have a fairly large staff. It doesn't anymore. It's focusing primarily on the World of Darkness RPG products. It's not doing some of the things it used to do; board games and other card games and things. The focus of the company [CCP] is on making MMOs and our legacy table top business is a legacy business.

So, first thing: Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

And second thing: I told you so. I'd been commenting for years on here that it was blatantly obvious that White Wolf's claim to being the "number 2 gaming company" was just a shell game, that there was nothing left behind it, and that it was plain to see that they were in a death spiral (ironically!).

Now its become obvious just how marginalized and near the end WW really is.  nWoD wasn't a gamble, it was a last gasp, a desperate attempt to recapture control of the gaming industry and save themselves from the freefall they were suffering from after the rise of D20. It failed.

WW sold the whole gaming world on an idea: the idea of "story-based" gaming, of games where the story mattered more than the system or the characters or anything at all really, of games full of "splatbooks" and "metaplot" where the game designers and the game masters collaborated to weave a tale of amateur novelist grade melodrama, and the players sat there and fucking listened and didn't get in the way. Their grotesque misunderstanding of RPGs led to the even more grotesque counter-movement in the form of the Forge and GNS.

WW would never have pulled off their pretentious coup-d'etat if it hadn't been for two factors: releasing Vampire just at the right moment, catching the wave of the pathetic dark-makeup-and-lace goth-lestat vampire fad (and thereby getting a huge boost of players who didn't really give a fuck about RPGs but loved the idea of pretending to be vampires), and the horrible horrible intellectual weakness of Lorraine-Williams-led TSR, where they were desperate for someone else to take intellectual charge of the hobby and give them an idea to follow. Unfortunately, the guys who definitely had an "idea" about what to do with the hobby were the White Wolf guys, and Mark Rein·Hagen's pretentious pseudo-artiste concept of roleplaying ended up dominating the hobby for almost ten years, and damn near managed to destroy it.

So no one but the Swine will miss White Wolf. By the end of the 90s, most decent gamers had given up on the RPG "innovations", and had either quit the hobby altogether or bunkered down with their pre-Swine games in their little groups. The hobby was devastated, when Peter Adkison, Ryan Dancey, Tweet and Cook came along and gave us D20, beginning a total renewal, and really signalling the end of White Wolf's claims to dominance, almost overnight.
Not that it would have been different had D20 not shown up. People had already, by then, abandoned White Wolf, it just wasn't as obvious yet. The regular gamers had long since decided "story-based gaming" was a failure. The Vampire-fad was ending, and with it any interest whatsoever that most goths had with rpgs.  And even the Pretentious Twats were leaving WW, feeling that it had become too "mainstream", they started forming their own countermovements with claims of even higher pretentiousness, under Ron Edwards' leadership, ending with the cult of the Forge, which replaced White Wolf in most Swines' hearts as their drug of choice for feeling superior to the "unwashed masses".

I don't know if we'll ever be completely rid of White Wolf. It may keep going, as a "legacy", for indefinite periods of time. But WW's significance or influence in the roleplaying world, much less its claim to being "number 2", has pretty much concretely died. To quote the Simpsons:
"Is he dead?"
"No, but his career is."

RPGPundit

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LSH Campaign Character Guide: Sensor Girl



Due to changes in the storyline of my campaign versus the comics' history, and my own personal preferences, from decisions I had made very early in the campaign, my LSH Campaign's Sensor Girl is a very different character from the DC Universe's, in fact, she's not the same person at all.

(A little note about the history of the Sensor Girl character: Just after Crisis on Infinite Earths, Levitz introduced Sensor Girl into the Legion comic; his original plan was to have it be Supergirl (who had just died in the Crisis), with no real explanation as to why she could be there; Levitz realized that without Superboy/girl, the Legion made no sense, and simply saying "well, we're doing something different over here" would be the best way to address this without utterly fucking up the Legion. Unfortunately, his superiors in DC at the time didn't feel the same way. They felt that under NO circumstances could Supergirl exist anywhere, or the real Superboy, so they decided that instead, they'd totally fuck up the Legion for 20 years rather than go the easy route... which explains a lot of where we are today with the Legion stories, where only now, that basically Levitz's original idea of Not Giving a Fuck About Explaining Continuity has been adopted, is the Legion starting to seriously Not Suck again.
Anyways, when the Sensor Girl = Super Girl idea was nixed, Levitz rapidly explained SG away as having secretly been Princess Projectra instead, which I always thought was fairly lame)

In my own campaign, I decided from the start of the campaign that the universe I'd be running would be the "Glorithverse" universe of v.4.  That is to say, it would be Lar Gand, as Valor, who would be the hero that inspired the Legion, and my Legion would not have anyone from the 20th century paying regular visits. I decided that instead of having a "laurel gand"/andromeda/tiger-rose figure (essentially, Giffen's Supergirl-substitute v.2.0 after Sensor Girl), I would instead have a Supergirl, but a 30th Century Supergirl descended from the original and someone in Valor's family lineage.

This left the matter of Superboy. I simply kept him out for most of the history of my campaign; but shortly after the time that Sensor Girl shows up in the Legion, there is an important storyline (the one Levitz tried to use to resolve the "superboy" question), where it is revealed that Superboy is in fact a creation of the Time Trapper from a "pocket universe".
Now, I had neither the Time Trapper nor Superboy as figures of note in my campaign, so I could simply have ignored this, but it also tied into a later storyline of revenge against the time trapper, and this storyline was of massive significance as far as charting the decline of the Legion was concerned.

Instead, I decided to do the following:
Sensor Girl is actually Lauren El-Gand, daugher of Kara El-Gand, the "Supergirl of the 30th Century", and Rond Vidar (famous scientist and secret Green Lantern). She was born in 2983. She joined the legion, her identity hidden as Sensor Girl, in 2986.

How? Sensor Girl is Lauren El-Gand, but from the future. She comes from the year 3006, and traveled back in time 20 years to save the Legion from a catastrophe.  In her own time, in the future, it is she who is the Legion's, and the 31st Century's Supergirl:



Sensor/Super Girl had been told of and trained for the moment she would have to travel back in time, by Braniac 5, who we know to be her godfather and to have cared for Lauren for at least part of her childhood. The reason for her travelling back in time would involve the fact that in 2987, a villain known as the Time Trapper would usurp the powers of Glorith of Balduur, becoming the new master of time. The Time Trapper would be, in many ways, far more ambitious and dangerous than Glorith, and in his plots would seek to destroy the Legion and conquer the universe itself, by altering the Legion's personal timeline so that he could gain dominion over all of creation billions of years in advance.

Braniac 5 and Lauren constructed a suit for herself, which would act as a camouflage to tachyon detection, would allow her to project certain holographic tricks, and would maintain her true identity absolutely secret. He also gave her precise instructions on what to do.

When she arrived in the 2980s, Lauren approached Saturn Girl, the one person she had been told to reveal her true nature to, and explained to Saturn Girl the gravity of the situation. Saturn Girl agreed with her plan, and personally proposed "Sensor Girl" to a vote for membership in the 2986 membership drive, without prior testing. This was deeply unorthodox, but based on the Legionnaires' great trust in one of their founders, they accepted Sensor Girl on Saturn Girl's word alone.

Unwilling to reveal her identity to anyone else, immense speculation flourished among the Legion and the public at large as to "who is Sensor Girl?". Theories, credible and incredible, abounded. Several legionnaires began to drive themselves nearly to obsession to try to discover the truth, most notably The Braniac 5 of 2986 and Invisible Kid, both of whom separately and jointly began to gather certain clues, but had not been able to figure out the full equation. Eventually, Invisible Kid settled on the theory that Sensor Girl was in fact Princess Projectra, who had recently left the Legion to rule her world and grieve the death of her husband (Karate Kid). His explanation of his conclusions to Brainiac 5 led the latter to conclude that Invisible Kid was mistaken, and Braniac developed his own theory, based on the facts he'd gathered; he came to believe that Sensor Girl was in fact Kara El-Gand (the present-day Supergirl), sent from the future. He was only wrong in respect to the fact that it was her daughter.

Meanwhile, Sensor Girl proved to be an excellent Legionnaire, skilled in both ability and training far beyond any of the other new inductees (obviously, because as Supergirl she had been in the 31st century legion for some time now). She combined her natural powers, the powers of her suit, and her knowledge (hazy as it was) of future events, to regularly astound the other Legionnaires as to her abilities.
Aside from knowing many details about missions the rest of the Legion was yet to have, Lauren was half-Daxamite and one-quarter Titanian. She had inherited, from her mother, most of her mother's Kryptonian-like superabilities. Unlike her mother, it appears that Lauren was immune to Kryptonite, though whether that was because of her suit, because Braniac would in the future develop some kind of serum/treatment against that as he had against the Daxamites' Lead Poisoning, or because she was born immune, is not clear. From her father, she inherited much of Rond Vidar's incredible intelligence and capacity to learn, which is believed to be due to latent, subconscious, psychic abilities. Her "Sensor Girl" suit could change appearance, protected her in a variety of environments, made her impossible to scan with any technology from the 2980s, and allowed her to manipulate time-energy on a small scale (she used it in two conflicts against the Emerald Empress, for example, to destabilize the Emerald Eye of Ekron).

In 2987 it was revealed to the Legion that the Time Trapper, believed to have been a servant of Glorith of Balduur, had somehow overthrown her and taken her place as the Lord of the End of Time. It was further revealed that Legion Academy student Laurel Kent was an automaton, an agent of his. She attempted to destroy the legion, activated from a "sleeper agent" status after the beginning of a "crisis"; but was ultimately defeated. Even so, it appears her real goal was to keep the legion busy while the Trapper shifted the timelines; he altered history, creating a whole new timeline where Supergirl had never existed, and in her place, as a legionnaire, was Superboy (Clark Kent, from the 20th century). None of the Legion remembered the original timeline, except for Lauren. Protected by the defenses in her suit, she obviously remembered her mother having existed, and that Superboy was never meant to be in the Legion.
Her position was strengthened when Cosmic Boy, legion founder (now retired) came back from a trip through time; being in temporal flux he remembered the original timeline, and realized that Superboy's presence in the future was wrong. On his insistence, the Legion sent a team back to Smallville in the 20th century. There they discovered the Time Trapper, who had set a trap for the group, and had manipulated the young Clark Kent into betraying his companions. Unfortunately for the Time Trapper, the Legion resisted, Clark had a change of heart, and the Trapper was forced to kill Superboy, triggering the Blinovich Limitation Effect (a law of time that, in this application, meant that the fixed importance in time of Clark Kent was such that, killing him long before he could become Superman and do all the things he was meant to do was so beyond the universes capacity to accommodate itself to the temporal paradox that the universe started to collapse).

In the chaos, it was revealed that the Time Trapper was apparently none other than the future version of Cosmic Boy himself! Convincing the shocked Legionairres that the only way to save all of creation was to work together, the Time Trapper restructured the timeline and then fled, leaving the Legion to limp back to the 30th century, where they discovered that in this new timeline, neither Superboy nor Supergirl had ever been a part of the Legion.

Sensor Girl thus knew that the job wasn't done. And when those legionnaires who remembered all that had occurred and what the Time Trapper had done (particularly Cosmic Boy and Braniac 5) began hatching a secret plot to travel to the end of time and kill the Time Trapper, Sensor Girl knew it was her time to act. She revealed her true identity, as the future's Supergirl, and joined the conspirators traveling to the end of time. 

There was a cataclysmic battle against the Time Trapper, at the end of which the Trapper was defeated when the Legion managed to liberate Glorith of Balduur and restore her to her place as the Lady of the End of Time; and the Time Trapper was finally slain, and the original timeline restored. But this event had massive consequences for the Legion. One of Duo Damsel's bodies was killed, Valor was left comatose and unlikely to ever recover, and as a consequence of their actions, Braniac 5 would end up leaving the Legion. Supergirl was returned to her own time period, in 3008, rather than 2988 with the rest of the team, effectively ending her time as "Sensor Girl" and that heroine's story in the Legion.
However, she was able to send one last message to the Legion. By harnessing the energies of a supernova, with the help of 3008's Braniac 5, she transmitted a final message to the Legion of 2988.  She told them that she was alright, and warned them of dark times that were ahead for them. Her tone implied that some of the Legion team would not survive (it was hinted that neither of Lauren's parents are alive by then), but urged them not to give up, and to know that the Legion endures.

Her final message also suggested that she might have developed an attraction for the younger Braniac 5 that she got to know in the past. Whether this would mean anything for her and the older Braniac 5 in the future is not certain; although considering that he had dated her mother, is old enough to be her father, and took care of her as a child; there would be a number of arguments against such a relationship blossoming. On the other hand, this Supergirl, unlike her mother, has a level of intelligence much closer to Braniac's own and could act as much more of an equal to him in intellectual terms. Braniac himself chose not to comment on the other Legionnaires' speculations about this, but it is noteworthy that he left the Legion right after the battle with the Time Trapper, and has now returned to Colu where it is assumed he is making use of his new role as Science Tyrant of that world to construct the technology he now knows will be needed for the events surrounding Sensor Girl's appearance to take place. Recently, Supergirl and Rond Vidar have joined him there, using Colu as their base-camp in their campaign in the war against the Khunds, and they've brought seven-year-old Lauren with them. History is beginning to fall into place.

RPGPundit

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LSH Campaign: Dispatches From the Apocalypse, By Raoul Duke

Where Have All The Villains Gone?

Long fucking time passing, that's where! What kind of a question is that to ask? The other night, I damn near choked on my insta-burrito when I heard Khfeurb Chee Bez wistfully long for the days when the Fatal Five tried to blow up the Sun, or Lightning Lord massacred a crowd at a Seventh-World-War-Reenactment. 

Of course, one must recall Mr. Chee Bez's little fucking secret: long before he was a newscaster, old big-ears was once the utterly pathetic would-be superhero "Antenna Lad", who's main power, aside from being able to pick up radio waves with his ears, and annoy the fuck out of me, was to utterly suck at being a superhero. Shit, its a pity he changed careers for something else he utterly sucks at, becoming a "journalist".

I decided that Mr. Chee Bez's editorial required a response.  This article is NOT that response; my response was given to Chee Bez more directly last night, when I jumped naked onto the windshield of his moving hover-convertible, urinated all over his plush upholstery, and fired my Bowel Disruptor at his pet cat, deftly swinging away on a passing tree branch while the panicked big-eared freak struggled to deal with the sheer shock of these unexpected events. You'll be glad to know that nothing of any real value was lost from my antics, Mr. Chee Bez crashed his hovercar safely into a church, destroying both car and church, and leaving cat in traction.

So THAT was the response; THIS, on the other hand, is an answer. To Mr. Fucking-Antenna-Lad and all the rest of the Dork-brigade (auxilliary) who still believe we're in the fucking good-old-days of rocket-shaped-clubhouses, I will tell you where the supervillains have gone: PRISON.

The Legion of Superheros was an anomaly, but a lovable one, that made sense in its time. Why did it make sense? In what way could a gang of barely-pubescent mutants running around in tight costumes getting all sweaty be sensible to anyone but the likes of Mr. Chee Bez And His Pussy?

At the time, there were three reasons why it made sense:
1. We were living in an age of unrivaled prosperity. People could afford to care about stupid things. They could imagine stupid ideas. They could think that someone named Triplicate Girl or Sun Boy could actually solve all of their problems.

2. The Government was fat and incompetent. It didn't need to work, it didn't need to be thin. We were floating in so many credits that no one gave a fuck if the government failed, even in some of its most basic responsibilities. Hence, I give you Takron-Galtos. The "prison planet" that the Fat Stupid Old Government thought was going to solve the United Planet's entire crime problem. One central, poorly built, poorly guarded planet with no special containment protocols for metahumans, where we were going to round up all the best super-powered criminals and put them there. Where they would promptly learn how to be better criminals, bribe the corrupt guards, escape from the flimsy defensive barriers, or be liberated by their allies. Fucking brilliant.

3. There were supervillains.

To be fair, however, the third point didn't really start to happen in any meaningful way until the Legion first showed up. Before 2973, no supervillains to speak of. After 2973, you have guys running around in tights committing crimes, calling themselves things like "Starfinger" or "Moleculo".  Which only goes to show that emotional retardation isn't something limited to the good.

So at one point, the Legion made sense, because we had (point 3) supervillains AND (point 2) an unbelievably stupid prison system that allowed them to escape over and over again. And the legion would catch them over and over again. And all the fat drooling morons in the LSH Fan Club would sit at home watching their Hypernet Uplink eating Bachelor Chow and touching themselves with excitement.

But what's changed? Well, for starters, binky, we don't eat Bachelor Chow anymore. That company's gone out of business. We eat Dominion Chowder now. Well, you do. By you, I mean the non-famous, those who don't have Iris Allen showering them with credits, fancy apartments, and upscale dinners. You know, the underclass.

Oh, yes, there's another little change: we have an underclass now. A real one, I mean, not one for whom "underpriviledge" meant only owning ONE hover-car. This new underclass is producing a new kind of villain, or rather, a very old one: gangsters and pirates. People who don't feel the need to dress up or have a silly name, and don't give a shit about going after the Legion. Sure, the Legion can go after them, but it just looks kind of sad, doesn't it? The Legionnaires going after common street scum in their shiny uniforms and capes come off looking a bit like a cross between Fascists and Elvis (may the Great Magnet rest his Zombie bones).
The whole spectacle shows them off for the silliness of what they really are: a source of entertainment, in a world that's not entertaining anymore.

And the old villains? Well, they're all locked up in Labyrinth now; Takron-Galtos' replacement prison-world. Only this one has an impenetrable force-field created by Braniac 5, state of the art internal security, and, let's not forget: brainwashes criminals to force them to be good people. But that last little human atrocity is something I'll have to save for a future article.

Mahalo,
Raoul Duke

Currently Smoking: Stanwell Deluxe + H&H's Namaste