Showing posts with label comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comics. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

The Boys RPG and This Undying Blog

I'm watching The Boys now on Netflix and loving it. I read the comics a while back, and it was a great gonzo deconstruction of the genre by Garth Ennis. I was worried how these characters and concepts would translate to the small screen, but Netflix has made enough changes to story and events to suit TV and its need for episodic drama.



Which got me thinking about a The Boys (or The Girls) roleplaying game. Use whatever ruleset you prefer and try these setting conventions.

TWO TYPES OF POWER LEVEL

The comic and TV versions operate on two different levels of power. This will result in two different types of game.

1) SUPER POWERED (COMIC VERSION)

If you want to emulate the gonzo action of the comics, this is the way to go. There are a few precepts:

  • All supes start with super toughness and strength. They can heal quickly, shrug off bullets.
  • Supes and the Boys know about Compound V
  • All Supe killers have taken Compound V and have super toughness and strength.


2) GRITTY STREET POWERED (TV VERSION)

If you prefer the TV version, try this.


  • Supers still start with super toughness and strength, but can be taken out with enough bullets or explosives.
  • Compound V is still unknown
  • Supe killers start out with normal human limitations, but can acquire the Compound. This might be a good adventure seed.


SUPER KINK

All supers have a kink, a pervision that would wreck their career if found out, and which they feel compelled to do. Also, any kink involving physical damage gives them immunity to it.

1 Bodily Fluids
2 Apotemnophilia - sexual arousal caused by the idea of having one of your limbs cut off, or being made to look like an amputee.
3 Urolagnia - sexual attraction to urine
4 Galactophilia - sexual attraction to human milk or lactating women
5 Emetophilia - sexual attraction to vomit
6 Ursusagalmatophilia - aroused by teddy bears
7 Klismaphilia - sexual pleasure from enemas
8 Coprophilia - aroused by fecal matter
9 Dacryphilia - getting off by watching someone cry, with implications for violent behavior
10 Formicophilia - sexual desire to be covered by (and sometimes eaten by) insects
11 Harpaxophilia - sexual arousal at the thought of being a robbery victim
12 Paraphilic infantilism - sexual excitement from dressing up like a baby, as well as being treated like a baby.
13 Furries are people who dress up in animal costumes and take on the persona of that animal. 
14 Beastiality - sex with real live animals.
15 Necrophilia - intense sexual attraction felt by some people towards corpses.
16 Sex with Puppets
17 Pony play - BDSM fetish where people are dressed up in leather pony costumes, complete with hooves, bits, bridles, and saddles. 
18 Autoerotic asphyxiation - getting off while choking yourself. 
19 Vorarephilia - sexual attraction to being eaten by or eating another person, often in a single bite
20 Multiple Personality Disorder – Roll on this table 2 times.


SUPER POWERS


In addition to the starting super toughness and strength, roll extra powers randomly depending on the level of super you are making.

Top Tier (the 7) - 4 super powers
B lister (teenage kid, etc) - 2 super powers
C rank (local hero) - 1 super power
Super loser (Mesmer) - 1 power, no super toughness or strength

COMPOUND V


In a comic level game, Compound V is known about by both sides and easily obtainable. For a TV game, the supers know it, but The Boys and government don't.

However, to put some mystery in your game, you could change up the origin of the Compound. Here are some ideas of its origin.

1 Blood of an alien kept in some secret Voigt compound in Antartica.
2 Industrial runoff from the production of weird science technology used by super science heroes.
3 Ooze from a natural spring hidden deep in the Amazonian jungle, protected by tribes of headhunters. Expect lots of natural super animals as well.
4 The mutant gene for super powers exists in 1% of the population, the Compound merely activates it.
5 V is actually nanobots that improve the subject. This opens possibilities for bot jamming tech and a nefarious plot to nanobot the whole world.
6 V is a vaccine for the disease that causes super powers, smoothing out the transformation. In an outbreak, the infected are turned into freakish monsters, so expect having to deal with that at some point.


THE BOYS TRAUMA

All supe killers have some secret trauma that has set them on their mission. Roll on the following table to see what it was.

1 Your squad was wiped by a super. You get extra police or military training.
2 You are a compound V baby. Roll for one super power.
3 Your lover was killed by a super. Get a bonus to rolls when fighting the killer.
4 You were an ex fan who was spurned at a comic convention. Get a bonus to rolls when fighting the spurner.
5 You were molested or raped by a super. Get a bonus to rolls when fighting the aggressor.
6 It is your mission from the NSA. Get spy training.
7 You stumbled onto the cover up. Get extra computer and information tech skills.
8 Your father or mother works for Vought, and you resent them. Get knowledge about Vought company secrets.
9 You are a prohuman, anti super activist. get contacts from like minded people.
10 You were injured during a staged super fight. Get a bonus to rolls when fighting the combatants.

THIS BLOG & GAMING


After the busiest semester of my life, I am back at it till school starts in April. Unless the virus puts that back a few weeks...

Friday, October 26, 2018

Trapped in D&D World

Imagine yourself transported to a fantasy setting. We all have. Would you survive?

This premise has been around for ages. It is the main concept behind John Carter of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Since the advent of roleplaying games, it has turned into its own genre. It starts, of course, with the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, co-produced by Marvel Studies and TSR in 1986.


A tale of involuntary LARPing

Six school kids are transported to the world of Dungeons and Dragons, and adventure about aided by the Dungeon Master, all the while searching for the way back home to our real world. Certainly, it fired my junior high school imagination, and I have since found and read the unproduced final script online. The stories are realist fantasy with no tropes representing game mechanics.

Then there is The Realm by Guy Davis and Sandy Schreiber, a 1986 black and white indie comic (Arrow/Caliber) that postulated the same situation, but didn't pull any punches in terms of violence, nudity, or characters embracing evil. This puts it in the same realist fantasy category as the previous entry.

I had this issue, filled with cartoon blood & boobies


A few years back, I stumbled upon the amazing webcomic Penultimate Quest by Lars Brown, a story about characters from our world trapped in a "dungeon that never ends"

Down the rabbithole


PQ adds both a loss of memory trope to the mix, as well as RPG mechanics such as respawning. Additionally, it is drenched in metaphysical ambiguity, with characters not knowing if they are in reality, a possible purgatory, or hell. Finally, PQ leverages the power of comics to present kinetic and showy action panels, which are a refreshing change from D&D's non-lethal combats and The Realms half anime, half SCA-inspired action sequences.

Now I see the Japanese have made their own version, Hai to Gensou no Grimgar (Grimgar of Flies and Illusions).

Grimdark Fanservice


It is much the same as PQ, with characters starting as amnesiacs finding their way as adventurers. When one character says, "This is not a video game," others ask what that expression means, implying that the longer they stay in the game setting, the more their link to the real world grows tenuous. Grimgar adds to the mix a 'weight' to combat that has drawn attention from film critics (HERE). In its realism of violence and monster motivation to survive, Grimgar has a lot in common with the grim fantasy of Goblin Slayer, which also wallows in fantasy tropes without the 'trapped in D&D' trope, unless the clicking dice sound at the end of episodes is a clue to some future revelation.

Finally, cartoonist Olan Rogers has recently launched The Lion's Blaze, the story of 4 young people trapped in the eponymous arcade game, who have to stay there to revenge and resurrect one of their number who is slain by the game's antagonist (watch trailer HERE). Game mechanics are front and centre here, and the 'stuck in a literal game' limits the reality of fights while the low modality of the artwork and amateur voice acting makes this into pure cheesy fantasy fun.

Interested in trying this genre in a game? Here are some system-free ideas on how to do it:

JOCK
Pros: Bonus to physical strength and endurance, bonus with weapon from sport done
Baseball: Club
Hockey: 2 handed sword
Wrestling: Unarmed damage
Cons: Not very bright
Classes: Fighter, Knight, Barbarian, Noble

NERD
Pros: Bonus to intelligence and knowledge rolls. Able to make a weapon based on science done:
Chemistry: Gunpowder
Physics: Arbalest
Biology: Poison
Cons: Not very strong or healthy
Classes: Wizard, Sage

OUTCAST
Pros: Stealthy, cunning, knows where things are
Cons: Not overly social
Classes: Ranger, Thief, Acrobat

PREP
Pros: Knows social rules, always looks good
Cons: Jack of all trades, but master of none
Classes: Cleric, Knight

THE KID
Pros: Always gets kidnapped instead of killed, good at befriending monsters
Cons: Not really good at anything but getting into trouble or making allies
Classes: Any, but does them badly