Aieee! Crunch time!

So this weekend is Winter War, my local gaming convention (official website, my previews for this weekend, old con reports in various formats here, here, here, here, and here). I got an amazing amount of stuff done over the weekend but I'm nowhere near as ready as I'd like to be. There will be updates this week, but not any long pieces. I've got dungeons that need dragoning, mazes that need minotauring, and encounters that need criticalling.

Still, I got a few things in the queue that might amuse.

"Ladies, God's gift to you has arrived."

Here's more PC art for my upcoming Encounter Critical game.

Hansel Manho, criminal/doxy

Alot of different things went into making Hansel. He's one part space scoundrel in the vein of Han Solo and Starbuck, and one part creepy sleaze in the tradition of Riff Raff (the Rocky Horror butler not the Underdog mobster), those wild and crazy Festrunk Brothers, and Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute. In many ways Hansel here is a spiritual brother to Zap Branigan.

The character's look mostly comes from Frank N. Furter and 70's Tyroc and Cosmic Boy. The free-floating collar and bowtie combo is courtesy Hugh Hefner. And the nose and hair are meant as a tribute to Owen Wilson's character Hansel from Zoolander.

and the number of the linking shall be five

Whitewash City - print out Wild West buildings

DreamAuthentics - custom made stand-up arcade cabinets!

Goodstorm - these folks have this great T-shirt design thingy that makes CafePress look like a dinosaur

Links to articles comparing and contrasting DC and Marvel comics

Our Relative Size - 'A short animation illustrating the relative size of our planet.'

today must be list day

Over at theRPGsite a fella named Wil asked people to list all the RPGs they've played at least once. Here's what I came up with off the top of my head.

D&D '81 Basic/Expert
AD&D 1st edition
Boot Hill (2nd edition)
Gamma World (2nd edition)
Gangbusters (1st edition)
Star Frontiers
Marvel Super Heroes (Basic, 1st ed)
D&D '83 Basic/Expert
Ghostbusters
Twilight 2000
AD&D 2nd edition
Call of Cthulhu (3rd edition boxed set)
MERP
MechWarrior (1st edition)
Traveller
Shadowrun
A Palladium-powered Dr. Who game
HERO System (4th edition, mostly Champions)
FUDGE
Mekton Zeta
Pendragon
Toon
Call of Cthulhu (various 4.x editions)
the big black boxed 'D&D Game' basic set
Top Secret (1st edition)
Over The Edge
D&D 3.0
QAGS
Bad Attitudes
Wuthering Heights
Heroes Unlimited
Savage Worlds
Blue Rose testdrive
Feng Shui
Mutants & Masterminds 1st edition
d20 Modern
OD&D
Risus
Encounter Critical
Iron Gauntlets
D&D 3.5

I wouldn't be surprised is someone like Pat or Don pointed out something I've missed.

Make Mine Mantlo!

I did a search on comics.org for all of Bill Mantlo's writing credits. I compiled the data and took out all the foreign language reprints. I'm sure this list isn't complete, but I know I'm not the only comic fan on the internet who might like to see this information.

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The Mantlo List!

Alpha Flight 29-67, Annual 1 & 2
Amazing Adventure 1
Amazing Adventures 33, 38
Amazing High Adventure 4, 5
Amazing Spider-Man, 181, 222, 237, Annual 10, 11, 17
Astonishing Tales 32-35
Avengers 188, 206, 210 Annual 9, 12
Battlestar Galactica 8, 9
Bizarre Adventures 30
Captain America 191, 256, 291
Captain Marvel 47
Champions 3, 4, 8-17
Cloak & Dagger 1-4 ('83 mini), 1-11
Creepy 109 (Warren)
Daredevil 140
Deadly Hands of Kung Fu 7-27, 29-32
Defenders 30
Eerie 17 (Warren)
Epic Illustrated 5
Fantastic Four 182-183, 193-194, 216-218, Annual 13
Fear 29-31
Frankenstein 18
Ghost Rider 16
Howard the Duck ('76) 30-31
Howard the Duck ('79) 1-9
Human Fly 1-19
Incredible Hulk 245-313 Annual 10-13
Incredible Hulk vs Quasimodo 1
Inferior Five 3 (DC!)
Invasion 1-3 (DC!)
Iron Man 46, 78, 86-87, 95-115
Jack of Hearts 1-4
John Carter Warlord of Mars Annual 2
Last Starfighter 1-3
Man from Atlantis 1-7
Marvel Chillers 1-2
Marvel Classics Comics 15 (Treasure Isand), 18 (The Odyssey)
Marvel Comics Presents Spider-Man
Marvel Comics Super Special 25, 31, 33
Marvel Fanfare 7, 16, 19, 25, 27, 28, 43, 47, 56-58
Marvel Fumetti Book 1
Marvel Graphic Novel 14
Marvel Magazine 2
Marvel Masterworks 11-12
Marvel Premiere 26, 28, 31, 40, 44
Marvel Preview 4, 7, 10, 22, 24 (at least some of these are text-only pieces)
Marvel spotlight 9-11, 27
Contest of Champions 1-3
Marvel Super-Heroes 383 (81 series), 15 (90 series)
Marvel Super-Heroes Magazine 1
Marvel Tales 228-229, 235-236, 239, 245, 247-248, 262
Marvel Team-Up 38-56, 72, 134-135, 140, Annual 1, 6
Marvel Treasury Edition 25
Marvel Two-In-One 11-12, 14-24, 47-48, 99
Micronauts 1-58, Annual 1-2
Micronauts Special Edition 1-3
Might World of Marvel 9-16
Power Man 25-29, 38-39
Questprobe 1
Rawhide Kid 1-4
Red Sonja 5-7
Rocket Racoon 1-4
ROM 1-75, Annual 1-4
Savage Sword of Conan 110
Sectaurs 1-8
Sectaurs: Warriors of The Symbion
Skull the Slayer 5-8
Son of Satan 8
Spectacular Spider-Man 6, 9-10, 12-15, 17-40, 42, 53, 61-89, 104, 120 Annual 1, 4
Spider-Man and Daredevil Special Edition 1
Strange Tales ('87) 1-7
Super-Villain Team-Up 4, 9-14
Swords of the Swashbucklers 1-12
Tarzan 20-29, Annual 2-3
Team America 2, 5-8
Thor 240-241, 309
Transformers Comics Magazine 1
Vision and Scarlet Witch 1-4
Warlock 5
Web of Spider-Man 11
What If? 21, 31, 36, 52-53, 55
X-Men 96, 106
X-Men and the Micronauts 1-4

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That's quite a body of work. I totally need to get myself a copy of Savage Sword of Conan #110 to see Mantlo's take on the hardest working Cimmerian in show business. Swords of the Swashbucklers looks right up my alley as well.

Turns out that as a kid I owned at least two comics scripted by Mantlo. Both were issues of The Incredible Hulk and the only Hulk comics I owned. Hulk #268 was a tale from the Weird West, featuring a skeletal cowboy called the Pariah. He carried this golden stone that had an Indian curse placed on it. Eventually Hulk got sick of this chump talking about curses and death and stuff. So what does the Hulk do? He smashes the glowy magic rock. End of story. That's one of the things I love about superhero comics. So many problems can be solved with punching and smashing.

Hulk #277 starts out with the U-Foes (an evil Fantastic Four) having already captured Bruce Banner. As you can see on the cover, this one starts out with Bruce Banner in his shredded purple pants crucified on some sort of high tech device that prevents him from hulking out. That's a pretty mind-blowing way for a comic to open. And more to the point, the U-Foes plan on executing Bruce Banner on live national television. And the rest of the heroes watching can't find where the baddies are broadcasting from, because of the yellow and orange dude's super-powers.

Of course Dr. Banner is freed and goes green. The Hulk, equipped with Banner's mind in this issue, then methodically destroys the U-Foes in probably the most brutal fight sequence I had seen in comics until the 90's era of splattergore supers. At one point Hulk's grappling with Ironclad, the silvery guy on the cover and the team powerbrute. Vapor, whose power is to turn into any gas she chooses, makes herself into a cloud of acid and tries to envelop Hulk. The big green machine pulls a quick counter on Ironclad and drops him into Vapor's acid. And the dude starts to melt. It was rad.

The final foe the Hulk tackles is Vector, the team leader and the cool-looking yellow guy on the cover. Vector's superpower is telekinetic repulsion, he gestures and things fly away from him. There's this great sequence where he's repulsing stuff at the Hulk, trying to push him away. But the Hulk just keeps on coming. Vector starts out sending whatever stuff is at hand, but eventually throws all of Gamma Base at the Hulk! Slowly walking through a swirling tornado made of everything Vector throws at him, the Hulk is an unstoppable engine of vengeance. Finally the Hulk grabs Vector's hands. "You grabbed my hands?!? No one should be able to grab my hands!!!" Then what comes next flipped my lid. The Hulk just squeezes until Vector's hands are crushed! The dude crumples to the floor. I swear you can almost hear guitars wailing as the Hulk just demolishes these chumps.

Man, I really need to track down that issue.

There is only one Mantlo and Chris Sims is his prophet.

My Fave 3.x D&D Books

In no particular order, here are the D&D books that I really dig on.

One of the hardest things for me to grok about the new D&D was how to build my own monsters and set their Challenge Rating. Mike Mearls' Monster's Handbook is both a textbook and expansion for the monster building process. It may be made for 3E, but pretty much the whole book still functions under 3.5. I still crack this puppy open whenever I'm looking to trick out a critter.

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The new classes are intriguing, the feats are fun, but it's the alternate class abilities section that really makes the Player's Handbook II sing. The ranger, rogue, and monk alternates have made regular appearances. And the new duskblade base class is probably the best warriormage class I've ever seen.

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Do you remember all those tiny pamphlet adventures from the early days of 3E? Adventure I from AEG compiles the best of them, fleshes 'em out, adds some editorial polish, and upgrades the stats to 3.5 standards. There's a whole campaign worth of one evening adventures in this book.

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Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords might just be my current flavor-of-the-month, but I really enjoyed trying out some martial maneuvers last night. And Doug's character in my Eberron game has made great use of the Crusader class. If you like playing the melee monster but find standard fighters to be a little uninspiring, this is the book for you. With this book in play you can unleash your inner hackmonkey but get all the mechanical toys of a wizard.

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I haven't put Arcana Evolved to use yet, but I simply adore the new classes and most of the new races. The magic system is an excellent tweaking of core D&D magic, while not going so far afield as to make it unrecognizable. The setting sometimes leaves me cold, but it certainly does a good job of tying all the new mechanical toys together.

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The new Unearthed Arcana is the book that got me to make the jump to 3.5. Many of the best mechanical alternatives from the wilds of the OGL have been gathered in this tome. I don't care what kind of D&D game you play, there is something in this book that will make your campaign cooler.

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If I had my way Dungeon Interludes would be the new template for how prepackaged campaigns are made. You get an epic series of six dungeon crawl adventures, spanning levels 1 through 13. But here's the catch: it's not a continuous campaign that will occupy your group nonstop. Instead, you are supposed to play at least one other adventure in between each chapter. So you get the continuity of an epic plotline without the shackles of being committed to slogging through the plot at the expense of all other adventuring. I used Dungeon Interludes filled out with Adventure I as the first plot arc of my last D&D campaign and the results were pretty effin' sweet.

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Minions is just a goofy little monster book with no pretensions. A lot of companies make monster books that use the critter entries as an opportunity for fleshing out their official campaign setting. While there's nothing wrong with that approach, I prefer a grab-bag of critters that I can use as my own campaign building blocks.

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When Iron Heroes first came out I wasn't ready for it, in terms of my own comfort working under the hood of the d20 system. Since then I've run several sessions of d20 modern and an 18-month D&D campaign. With this experience under my belt, I feel more prepared to tackle this crunchy D&D alternative. Iron Heroes takes a lot of the cruft that has haphazardly accumulated on D&D and trades it in for more sword & sorcery style badassery. Awesome-tastic. The only thing that this game lacks is in the magic department. If anyone knows of any good tips for combining Arcana Evolved's magic with Iron Heroes' sword fu, please let me know.

Oh, Sheila

When it comes to the female of the species my usual tastes go towards brunettes and raven-tressed lasses. Famous examples from my nerdtronic youth include Erin Gray's Wilma Deering, Velma, Wonder Woman, Princess Leia, and the Baroness. Gentlemen may prefer blonds, but they never did much for me. And while red-haired women are a staple of cartoons and comics, I found both Jean Grey and Mary Jane Watson were never my type. But as a kid I had an absolute crush on one redhead, Sheila the Thief from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.

I think part of what made Sheila appealing was that she had a fuller range of emotions compared to the rest of the cast. She worried about her kid brother. In moments of pathos she shed a tear. When I see 80's era American cartoons nowadays sometimes they strike me as emotionally deflated. The committment in that era to "kid friendly" programming bled a lot of the oomph out of the shows. Sheila may have often been the stereotypical "overemotive" female, but at least she had emotions. And I'd be lying if I didn't admit that her emotional vulnerability was part of the character's appeal. But then I also get a thrill out of the Savage She-Hulk beating up robots, so I'm kinda all over the map when it comes to my tastes in imaginary chicks.

Then there was that one incident that forever made Sheila special:


Truth be told this sequence only takes a split second in the show and I don't remember it from my youth. I didn't really see this until ABC Family started re-broadcasting D&D a few years back. My first reaction was "OMIGOD! Sheila panty shot!!!!1!!" My second reaction was "Dude, you are such a perv. She's like sixteen or something." In my own defense I would note that when I started crushing on Sheila she was a sophisticated older woman.

When someone posted that screencap on theRPGsite it called to mind this painting by fantasy T&A guru Dorean Cleavenger called 'The Courtyard'. It's one of his tamer works:

When I first stumbled across this pic, back in the early 90's, my first thought was that this picture was Sheila all grown up. I think it's the combination of red hair, exposed thigh, tall boots and cape that caused this reaction.