A Descent into Dullness

A light week, with only three pulls. Starting with the second issue of Turf. And the war between Falco the last of the New York mob bosses and the Dragomir family escalates. Plus a crashed alien spaceship...

Invincible lies comatose and so his father and brother sit out the Viltrumite War on a mostly barren world, waiting for him to heal. Leaving it to Allen the Alien, Techjacket, Space Racer and Battle Beast to serve as the core of the Coalition attack on the Viltrumite Empire...

Lastly Marvel Zombies 5 has Aaron, Howard and Jackie journey to the cyberpunk Marvel-8410 to chase down the E.A.T.R. virus cyber-zombies. Of course when Aaron's ex becomes involved it makes things more complicated. The Geof Darrow/Christina Strain cover is also very sweet...

Jenny tells us all how to deal with both immortal vampire jellyfish AND bears...

Inspired by the previous picture

[Poll #1534120]

Chuck Austen + Stephanie Meyer

Generation: Twillight X

Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar, colors by Audre Jardel, translated by Alexis Siegel

Vampire Loves is centered mostly around the vampire Ferdinand. He's just broken up with Lani, his plant-spirit girlfriend after he caught her cheating on him with one of his friends. He's a bit of a depressive type who normally only feeds with one tooth so as to make people think they've been bitten by a mosquito. And he really doesn't have a clue about dating. Vampire Loves follows Ferdinand, Lani and their collection of spirits, robots, humans, mystics and others in their attempt to find love...

Sfar's work often has a level of sadness to it, even the humor. But its charming and thought-provoking and hopeful. Sfar's world is one where the occult and the normal converge, mostly showing that people are people and thus mostly confused. Even when they're dead. Or a tree...

That stupid vampire baseball Writer's Block is stuck in my head. Now I'm wondering more about the concept. First just ignore the call-back to the damn Twillight books. Think the early season episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns hires an entire team of ringers for his softball team to win a bet. Now replace that with vampires. So you've got two vampire baseball fans who maintain teams. And one decides to fill his with pro-players...

Now I'm thinking what all-time greats are still alive. Because once someone is turned into a vamp two things matter. One, performance enhancers like steroids or the like should either be expelled or just not have any effect at all. And second no matter how old they were BEFORE going vamp, now they're a young, strapping undead athlete. So why bother with whoever the big names are now when I can have Jackie Robinson with all his skills AND the strength to bench a buick...

So people who actually know anything about sports, what nine (or however many a full bench is) still living baseball legends would you bring in as undead ringers to win your bet?

Oskar is a young boy in Stockholm. He's just slightly off from the rest of his class and so is the normal target for the local bullies. He has no friends and dreams lonely fantasies of violent revenge. Until Eli and her "father" move in to the apartment next to his. Oskar is fascinated by the new girl, who seems to share his sense of loneliness. The two become friends, even after Oskar learns Eli is a vampire...

While the movie has a few misfires (the scene with the cat attack stands out for looking goofy rather than supernatural and creepy) this Swedish movie feels fresh and new after so many standard vampire films. Its not that the movie truly has any new concepts, its simply that the standard tropes are presented in a way that comes off as different. Plus both the child actors give remarkable performances...

Yeah, I know its no longer Tuesday. But remember me mentioning that whole No Sleep Read Webcomic Instead thing? Yeah. And now I'm at work with no game books. I meant to grab my ps238/Hero System book and make a kid Champions character, but I forgot. So instead I'm going to see if I can still do V:tM pc strictly from memory. After countless hours world building for my Phoenix By Night games I used to be able to. Anyone who actually HAS their books with them can feel free to audit. I'm basically going off my memories for 2nd edition stuff...

We start by picking a clan and concept I suppose. We'll go with my favorite clan Nosferatu and make him..an ex-cop? Sure. A cop with a temper too violent even for a World of Darkness police force. And maybe a drinking problem. Drunk on the job, killed a suspect in interogation in a way that couldn't be covered up. Kicked off the force, eventually on the streets, where he was Embraced by..some Camarilla Nos looking to build a brute squad...

So his Demanor will reflect that thugishness, while the Nature will be about the tarnished desire for jusitce buried deep, deep under the cynicism and anger...

Statwise you get 7/5/3 to assign to three types, Physical (Strength, Toughness/Con and Quickness/Agility), Mental (Intelligence, Will and Perception) and Social (Appearance (which is 0 for Nos automatic) and I forget. Two kinds of Charisma, so we'll call 'em Cha1 and Cha2). Each starts with 1 dot (except for Appearance for Nos).

For a street monster Physical is king so it gets the 7, Mental will take 5 and since it has only two to divide between Social ends up with 3. Put 2 into Str, 3 into T/C and 2 into Q/A. Then 1 into Int and 2 each into Will and Per. Then since I can't remember what they ARE, 2 into Cha1 and 1 into Cha2...

So:
Str: 3 T/C: 4 Q/A: 3
Int: 2 Will: 3 Per: 3
Cha1: 3 Cha2: 2 App: 0

Next is skills. Three types. I can't remember the exact ones, but the first is stuff thats easily self-taught (fighting and sneaking), the second is stuff that its best to have some instruction (shooting and driving) and the last is the higher education stuff (sciences and what not). They get 13/9/5.

I'm going to have to guess at exact skills. So same order as I wrote them. We'll go with a brawl of 3, a scrounge of 2, a streetwise of 3, whatever is sneaking of 2 and some kind of intimidation skill of 3.

Then firearms 3, melee 2, local history 2 and driving 2.

Lastly computers 1, bureaucracy 1, law 1 and 2 into languages.

Next up is either Disciplines or Backgrounds. You get 3 Discipline points to start and 5 Backgrounds. Our brutal cop friend will take Potence once and Obfuscate twice (since a Nos without Mask of a 1000 Faces at least is HARD). Then the Street influence twice, a point in Herd (a string of intimidated hookers) and two points in Contacts (old cop buddies).

Virtues are next. Courage, Consience and Self-Control. I don't remember how to figure them out but I think I spread seven points around. But I'd want Courage high (4) and Consience (2) and Self-Control fairly low (1).

Willpower equals Courage to start if I remember. Path of Humanity is Consience and Self-Control. A lowly 3. Our guy bought no Generation as a Background so he's 13th. So his blood pool is 10 max and he can spend 1 per round. Merits and Flaws I no where near remember them all or their values. I also have Freebie Points. I can't remember if its 10 or 15. I'm going to say that either way I've got a generous Storyteller so it will be 15. Virtues IIRC were 4 points each. We'll bump Self-Control and Courage 1 each. Which bumps Willpower to 5 and Humanity to 4. That leaves 7 freebies. Stats are 5 each, Skills are 3, Disciplines are 7 and Backgrounds are 1. And Willpower is probably 2. I think. So I'll bump that T/C up to 5 making him one tough son-of-a-bitch. Also any stat or skill above 3 I believe I have to take a specialization for. We'll go with..tireless? That sounds right for whatever the endurance stat is. Maybe its Endurance? I could bump Willpower, but 5 isn't BAD for a 13th gen childer. Instead he'll take 2 dots in Resources. I'm thinking his cover identity is actually that of a pimp to reflect the Rerources and Herd. Name. Name. Jeremiah Green. Known as Big Dawg to his string...

So it would definitely need some polishing and checking. But, considering I haven't cracked these books in quite some time I think I did pretty well...

Sadly, this week, there won't be a Friday Poll. And I think I'll be taking a break from doing them for little while. Mostly because I'm really running out of ideas for them. Going over the last ten I realized I did ones using Bad Super-Hero Concepts TWICE. And thats over a period of only two months. So no more until sometime in the new year. Though I'll probably do a poll on Christmas. Because I love Christmas...

But as to what I've learned:

1) Bad Super-Hero Idea (Take 1): The Oozing, Weeping Plague Sore Kid...

2) The most popular way to help kill zombies? If you had to borrow a gun from Firefly's Jayne...

3) Best Dracula? Bela!

4) Scariest ghosts are those made up of your own dead dreams...

5) Favorite Halloween treat? Mini-candy bars...

6) For destroying my Nemesis, its a tie between Karl Rove's brain in a robot alligator or a zombie-cyborg made from my roommate. Probably be best to use both then...

7) Most popular Sci-Fi/Classic Novel mash-up movie idea was Dumas' The Three Rockateers...

8) Bad Super-Hero Idea (Take 2): Drunken, Racist, Suburban Housewife Woman. Plus a bonus poll result showing the Comte de Mink is the most popular of the Weasel Lineage of Heroes...

9) Three way tie for showing them all. So obviously that means the Not-Mad-At-All Plan will involve a robot army, otter pups, 18 million tiny whirling devices, poison frogs, a selection of roses, a riddle fiendish in its intricacies, passages from King Lear, the power of STEAM and the ghost of Bud Abbott...

10) Another tie, as the best way of gaining revenge from beyond the grave is either your own re-animated corpse or bees. Maybe the revenant can spit bees?