new Podcast - Icons-centric!

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DC Adventures Character Gen

New Podcast!

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Latest Podcast - DC Adventures Actual Play

Sorry I've been neglecting the blog.
Podcast is just so much easier, unfortunately.

Here's the latest - which has been a big hit it seems. It's an actual play/demo of DCA Adventures from Green Ronin (which is, yeah, using the shiny and new Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Ed rules)

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Vigilance Podcast #6 - Interview with Jon Leitheusser of Green Ronin about DC Adventures and MM 3rd Ed

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Vigilance Podcast 1 - Interview with Steve Kenson

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Podcast Notes:
Here at Vigilance Press, we were lucky enough to secure an interview with Steve Kenson (Mutants and Masterminds, Freedom City, ICONS) for our first Vigilance-cast.

Thanks again to Steve Kenson for taking the time out of his schedule to talk to us.

Mighty Saguaro Mug

Dan Houser's Zazzle Store (where the Mighty Saguaro mug came from)

ICONS

DC Adventures Press Release

DC Adventure Heroes Handbook

Mutants and Masterminds Third Edition


Mike's Libation of Choice - Black Box Cabernet Sauvignon


Vigilance Press Website

Vigilance Press Blog

The dog barking in the background about 2/3 of the way through is Tara, the Vigilant attack corgi

Your humble host

Colophon

Recorded on Pamela using Skype, mixed with Audacity.

Intro music was titled It's Crime Fightin' Time. It's by Bailey Records. It's available from RPGNOW at this link

Centurion Trailer

Sort of like Diehard. Except instead of Bruce Willis - it's a handful of Roman Legionnaires. And instead of terrorists - it's Celts. And instead of a skyscraper - it's Scotland.

Other than that - exactly the same :) (or not) And it looks kind of awesome

More Centurion Videos

Warren Ellis on Why Pirating Your Own Comic Might be Smarter than having it on an iPhone App

Here's the post.

Money quote:

If I were starting out today, I'd be thinking very hard about wrapping my comic into a .cbz container, slinging it on Rapidshare and posting the link on download sites under an anonymous handle.

I mean, obviously, more people are probably thinking about an iPad app. But the thing about iPad apps is that, as with the iPhone, there are going to be a huge fucking load of them very soon, and they're going to be very difficult to sort through. An iPad app for an indie comic is going to get lost in the crowd just like an indie comic in PREVIEWS. Probably worse, since paging through PREVIEWS is a bit easier than clicking through a category dump in the App Store.

Hacking Werewolf Part Two: Getting to the Cool

Apologies for the long delay in Werewolf articles. I've been wrestling with the issue of what I'd do with Werewolf the Apocalypse. I've been talking to my old gaming group from the 90s and lurking on some Werewolf discussions online as I try to figure it out.

So -to answer the question I posed last time: what would I change about Werewolf the Apocalypse?

1) Lose gifts and rein in the spiritual abilities. The game is about werewolves - not mages. Let's not muddy the waters. Also -- No stepping sideways. The Umbra was a bad idea badly implemented. To do it well - it would probably need to be the entire focus of a game. And that game wouldn't be Werewolf. If you want to keep some kind of spirit communication, OK. But make it much more difficult and much more ambiguous. You shouldn't just be able to call your totem on the big spiritual telephone for a clue

2) Consider getting rid of tribes or lessening their importance.Werewolves aren't overly political creatures. Yeah - politics are an intrinsic part of personal and group relations. And Packs are indeed political structures. But back room, Machievellian manipulations? Leave that for vampires. In terms of tone -- Werewolf is a game of action.

If you keep tribes - add more tribal diversity. More varied and contradictory cosmology between tribes.

Libra, over at the Mutants and Masterminds forum had an interesting take on Werewolf social structure: focus on packs as the primary social unit.

- While humans speak of 'tribes', 'clans' and occasionally a 'Werewolf Nation', as far as most werewolves are concerned they only live in packs (Which admittedly differ in size and precise composition). It's fairly uncommon to find a lone werewolf - but the most dangerous lycanthropes tend to be these lone wolves.

3) Lose the eco-jihad. It's a little troubling when you look at it hard. (It's ok to slaughter because my god (errm - Gaia) tells me its necessary). Also Pentex and the Black Spiral Dancers a little mustache-twirling as villains go.
(Note - yeah - several, but not all, of these have been addressed in the new incarnation of Werewolf)


4) Lose the other shapechangers. It's called Werewolf. Keep the focus on lycanthropy. Leave were-cats, bats, snakes, sharks, bears, spiders and ravens for another game.

5) Lose the Veil and the Delirium. So - when humans see you in Crinos form, they fall over twitching like a herd of fainting goats? That doesn't say spatterpunk horror to me. That says slapstick comedy.

So -all this begs the questions: What's the basic core of what I would argue was the "cool" behind Werewolf: TA?

It comes down to two elements
1) You're a primal, violent anti-hero

2) You're in a world of supernatual mystery and darkness were many things need fixing. And by "things" we mean "EVIL:. And by fixing -- we mean "violent death"

(As a sidenote -- you can make a decent, if not 100 percent, convincing argument that Werewolf: TA was cashing in the ridiculous level of popularity that Wolverine was enjoying in the 90s. In Werewolf, you're pretty much playing a character who might as well be related to Marvel's most stabbity mutant.

Claws - Check!

Beserker rage? Check!

Attitude ranging from philosopher warrior to classic bad-ass to anti-heroic sociopath? Check!)

Admittedly, it sounds simple, even goofy. And this is one reason I've been wrestling with writing this post.

It sounds particularly simple in comparison to the weightier themes that were fronted by other OWOD games like Vampire, Mage and Changeling. But, if I'm being honest, that was the core of the fun I had with Werewolf.

(As an aside: I say "fronting:, because, well --- How often did Vampire games actually incorporate angst and wrestling with the Beast vs Humanity? Seems to me like a lot of that that got lost in the violence and fangy superhero vibes - which I suspect is why Danel is talking about rebuilding it.)

Put another way: WTA was Supernatural if Sam and Dean were lycanthropes. Or Kolchak the Night Stalker if Kolchak was a werewolf.

 And, it was fun if certainly not as deep and serious as other White Wolf game. (I still remember a friend of mine holding Changeling in his hands - as though it were a family heirloom - and declaring that he didn't know any gamers in his city who were worthy of it. )

Next Post: 
Campaign ideas for the new, stripped down Werewolf concept

Heavy Lifting part 2

Another professional writer weighs in with skepticism on the e-book market-space as a silver bullet for unknown writers

Money quote from Joe Konrath. Check out the whole post -- but this is the section where he dismantles the ebook market as a magical cure-all

Q: Now that Kindle is adopting the agency model with a 70% royalty, and Apple is opening an iBook store, shouldn't I get in on this now before the market is flooded with shit?

A: Maybe. If you have an out of print backlist. If you have an agent with books she hasn't been able to sell. If you're a published author with some shelf novels. Then yes, you should get on Kindle and iPad and Nook and Sony and everyplace else that comes up.

But if you're a newbie author who hasn't even finished your first novel yet and is already designing the cover art, perhaps you need to slow down a bit.

I'm not out to crush anyone's dreams here. But writing a good book is hard to do, and not everyone can do it. There's a learning curve. We're all eager to get read. We all want to get published. But before you let the hard-to-please masses read your work, you really have to make sure it's good enough. Readers don't care about you, or your dreams, or how hard you worked on a book. They want to be entertained. Period. If they buy your book and don't like it, they'll let you and others know.

You wouldn't buy your first saxaphone, practice for a month, then go audition for the Boston Pops. You'd spend a long time practicing and learning before you were good enough.

One one hand, authors being able to instantly reach readers without any gatekeepers is a fabulous thing.

On the other hand, too many authors may jump into this too quickly, without mastering their storytelling skills.

I know this for a fact. I've judged self-published book contests. It was awful.

If you really want my ebook sales, here's the only path I know to duplicate them.

1. Write 9 unpublished novels and get over 500 rejections.

2. Sign a six figure print deal.

3. Mail out 7000 letters to libraries, visit 1200 bookstores, and travel to 39 states speaking at writing conferences, conventions, and book fairs.

4. Write a blog that gets half a million hits per year.

5. Sign six more book deals.

6. Get one of your big print publishers to release an ebook for free.

7. Study the market so hard your spouse thinks you're crazy, then take your early rejected books, make sure they're perfect, and upload them to Kindle along with several short story collections and collaborations.

8. Cross your fingers.

That's the journey I took to get here. Your journey will be different. But no matter your path to success, I urge you not to cut corners. There is no shortcut to selling a lot of books, because books sell one at a time. Learn your craft, learn the business, work hard, try your best. That's the secret.

Hacking Werewolf

I've been reading Daniel Perez's discussions of rebuilding Vampire

And this motivated me to write down thoughts I've been tinkering with regarding how I'd hack Werewolf to optimize it for the kind of gaming experience I want from it.

I don't want to say "rebuild". That's what Daniel's doing with Vampire. He's stripping back to the core, keeping the cool essence and building from there.

What I'm doing is different -- I'm offering a different thematic take on the idea of lycanthropes as protagonists in an RPG.

Which begs the question: So, what was wrong with Werewolf?

First off, right off the bat let me say that I'm only talking about OWOD, Werewolf: The Apocalypse. I haven't played the NWOD version.

Next,  it bears stating: Werewolf: The Apocalypse was a fun game and I had a lot of good times playing and running it. I'm not saying "werewolf stinks!". This is a labor of love. Or like. :)

Having said all that -- my beef with Werewolf was this: It never really got over its "little brother" relationship to Vampire and never really came into its own.

Which is slightly curious- because upon reflection, it looks like the vampire myth really stole the whole "cursed protagonist struggling to retain his humanity and fight against his inner Beast" meme from the modern incarnation of the werewolf myth.

From the seminal 1941 Lon Chaney Jr film Wolfman 

Even a man who is pure in heart

and says his prayers by night

may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

and the autumn moon is bright.

Pretty neatly encapsulates the whole "angsty holding onto your humanity but failing tragically" thing, eh?


You can't blame White Wolf.

It was a cultural change. In the span of a few decades, Vampires went from undead and evil antagonist to sympathetic and flawed protagonist.

I'm not sure where it started -- but it was well underway in the 1970s.
 Just theorizing here -- perhaps the folks who really brought the idea of vampires as sympathetic characters into the mainstream were George Hamilton and Anne Rice  Hamilton portrayed a love-sick, charming Dracula in Love at First Bite in 1979. Rice's Interview with a Vampire was published just a few years earlier in 1976 and gave us the Platonic Ideal of angsty, sympathetic vampires: Lestat.

(I'm very sure there are some other examples that I'm missing. For example: Morbius the Living Vampire premiered in Marvel comics in 1971 and 1973 saw the introduction of Blade. )

Bottom line is this: While that meme used to belong to Werewolves, Vampires own that shit now. Lock stock and barrel. Complaining about it is like complaining that Star Trek and Star Wars  are bad sci-fi. Yes - they are. However, franchises like that are also the very definition of sci-fi to the majority audience.

So -vampires have stolen the main shtick that used to belong to lycanthropes, and its gone for good. (Although the latest Wolfman movie, IMHO, makes a credible shot at stealing it back. But that's a conversation for another time.)

 So, now, what do you do with werewolves?

WW's answer was pretty confused.

As mentioned above - Werewolf the Apocalypse was basically Vampire's little brother. It was a muddled mix of the angst of Vampire ("When will you rage?" is a catchphrase that would fit much more comfortably into how they were portarying Vampires in the OWOD), the byzantine politics that were a White Wolf trademark, and a sort of enthusiastically violent power-gaming vibe that (arguably) eventually polluted much of the rest of the OWOD.

Throw in a half dozen or more different changing breeds all with different backstories and agendas -- and, well, it was pretty freaking unfocused. Not that an RPG needs to be completely focused. But you've got to have a central unifying theme. Vampire stole the most likely one for Werewolf and White Wolf tried to fill the void with an angst/politics/power-gaming cocktail that didn't really satisfy completely.

 So, what should you do with Werewolf? (Or, rather, what would I do with Werewolf?)

That's a post for next time...

NEW AVENGERS LINE UP

apparently the new prerequisite for being an Avenger is having a movie deal

This Artist is Awesome Dan Christensen

Discovered this guy, Dan Christensen on the official Mutants and Masterminds forums.
Great artist -- really evokes the pulp era. Done some professional work too in Europe. Hope he find a publisher here in America.

Check out his gallery/blog
and here's his store

Stranded on a Distant Star --

Chuck Rice (my publisher via Vigilance Press) is trying a crowd-funding experiment called Stranded on a Distant Star.
Give it a look, eh?

The Heavy Lifting

http://mizkit.livejournal.com/541066.html

a post about crowdsourcing writing.

basically - getting your audience to pay you directly -- something only really viable over the internet.

Here's the most interesting quote for me

Right now is where somebody says “Ye gods, cut out the middleman!” Not a chance. I will never give up my traditional publishers and I dearly hope they will never give up me. For one, Jay Lake details just what a publisher does for a writer, and frankly, it’s most of the heavy lifting. I do the creative work. They do everything else. Critically, they introduce me to an audience willing to pay for my work–and some of those people find me online, become blog readers, and may even become patrons in the direct funding sense. I could not *accomplish* a patronage model without my traditional publishers; my friends, generous as they are, aren’t generally wealthy enough to actually support me.

And - that's the thing.

Which is one reason I don't get particularly excited about e-book readers, Print on Demand or patronage projects. Yeah - they're nifty. They're fun and new - and its interesting to speculate what effect having anew conduit is going to have. Are any of them going to be a cornucopia of opportunity for unknown creative people?

Case in point -- Some of the enthusiasm that I've heard some writers and RPG types express about the iPad and Kindle has the same starry-eyed quality as the Singularity crowd. Yeah, it's potentially cool.

But...
I wouldn't bet the farm on it is. The basic problem of drawing an audience is still there (and if you're doing table-top RPGs? Yeah, the problem is getting a little worse every day as your audience shrinks or decides to go play MMOs.)

It's like the old 1000 True Fans idea. You still need to find those 1000 people. And people are very distracted today. At the end of the day -- you still have to sell it to enough people for it to be viable. Does the internet or whatever shiny new technology of the day we're excited about today actually give you new ways to draw that crowd?

Yes - kind of. There's still only so much money and mindspace to go around. You've got to compete for it. 

And let's talk about the competition on that new toy everyone's talking - the iPad. Tthe kind of stuff I'm doing or interested in doing  (novels, stories, RPG books) aren't mp3s, iPhone apps or even youtube videos. On something like the iPad, you're directly competing with shit a lot louder and shinier.

(Having said that - it might be the perfect medium for digital comics. Once it's price point enters the realm of sanity. That bears thinking about.)

Wargames Preview: Stonehenge Agency

(artwork by the always reliable and talented Steff Worthington and Rick Hershey) (Stonehenge is the creation of Chuck Rice. I've just filled it in a bit.)

The Stonehenge Agency

The Stonehenge Agency is a highly classified division of the Ministry of Defense, which – according to legend – was founded in the time of antiquity by the surviving members of King Arthur's roundtable (Sir Hector, Sir Bors, Sir Bladwain, Sir and Sir Berboris) and dedicated to guarding Excalibur until such time as a new champion worthy of wielding it appeared. While the British government officially denies the existence of Stonehenge – (and any government officials who were asked would brusquely sniff that the questioner spent far too much time reading American four color comics) the rumor is close to the truth. The charter of the Stonehenge Brotherhood charges the organization with: "Defending the sword Excalibur and all relics of Merlin and Arthur and with protecting the realm from all threats natural, supernatural and infernal." Over the centuries, Stonehenge has built up an impressive collection of magical artifacts and relics, which it keeps under tight guard in its labyrinthine complex which lies beneath the streets of the Whitehall district in London. Stonehenge has historically had a domestic mission and has been Great Britain's first line of defense against vampires, werewolves, dragons, fey incursion and demonic invasions.  


Recent History and Organization In the 1930s, as it became apparent that Hitler's Third Reich had an unhealthy fixation on the occult and on acquiring magical relics for military use, Stonehenge expanded its official scope, ramped up the Operations Division and sent dozens of field teams around the world on missions to seize artifacts of supernatural import before the Nazi teams of Nazi archeologists could snatch them up. Stonehenge agents were also deployed on commando missions into occupied Europe to sabotage Nazi programs to develop supernatural super-weapons before they come to fruition. After World War 2, Stonehenge adapted to the challenges of the Cold War. Two Soviet intelligence agencies, the GRU and the Red Directorate, were using captured German mages from the Thule Society to jumpstart their own arcane intelligence programs. With the US politically unable or simply unwilling to pursue the military and espionage applications of the Dark Arts, the burden fell to the UK, and specifically to Stonehenge, to monitor the Warsaw Pact’s supernatural programs and to develop countermeasures.  


Operatives The agency has an extensive pool of analysts, researchers, artificers, clerics, mages and field operatives at the London HQ. In addition, Stonehenge has six operational units in the field. These teams have a degree of autonomy but periodically report back in to London for approval and direction.  

• Team White continues the World War Two mission of Stonehenge – tracking down and destroying supernatural Nazi hold-outs and magic using neo-fascists. Even forty years on, horrors birthed by the Third Reich continue to rear their ugly head. White is primarily deployed to Western Europe but their missions often take them far afield. They have been the steadfast enemy of the Fourth Reich since they became aware of the neo-Nazi cabal in the late 1940s.  
• Team Blue is charged with monitoring and controlling the lycanthrope population of the United Kingdom. Blue has several squads in the field at any given time – usually in rural Scotland, the English Midlands, and Wales. With a core cadre recruited from the SAS, Blue has the closest and most open relationship with the British military of any Stonehenge field team. The team has historically operated in a "seek and destroy" mode. However, recently members of Team Blue have suggested trying to open negotiations with known werewolf tribes. As of the mid-1980s, this diplomatic initiative is still being debated at the highest levels of Stonehenge.  
• Team Red is deployed on the continent and keeps tabs on the European contingent of the Vampire Nation. Red seeks to sabotage VN goals and promote chaos and disunity within the undead community as much as possible. It also occasionally assists Team White on an as-needed basis.  
• Team Black recruits the majority of its agents from MI6 and the SAS. Black has several operatives active in the Warsaw Bloc and is charged with monitoring and infiltrating the supernatural programs of the GRU and the Red Directorate. They have been unusually successful in this endeavor – and thus Stonehenge has extensive knowledge of the Soviet Union’s spell-casters and magic forces (including the potentially damning blackmail that the Supreme Commissar of the Red Directorate is himself a sorcerer.) Black is the Stonehenge team most likely to carry out offensive missions behind enemy lines. There are urban legends within Stonehenge of Team Black squads liquidating Eastern Bloc sorcerers or even wiping out entire arcane research facilities behind the Iron Curtain. A dedicated Team Black squad is rumored to be deployed to the British Brigade Berlin with the mission to ferret out and kidnap Stasi and KGB double agents within the West Germany government and military.  
• Team Purple is based in Canada with teams throughout North America. Its mission is to monitor magic-users in North America and take action if their activities are considered a risk to British interests. Stonehenge has been concerned since the 1940s about the lack of official US interest in magic and the potential for the American government to be compromised by sorcery. Team Jade is charged with countering inter-dimensional threats, be they from the fey, infernal realms or even more frightening places. Recruiting heavily from British clergy, academia and arcanists, Jade Team squads operates on a world-wide basis. In 1982, they exposed an extra-dimensional scouting force that had co-opted the leadership of Haiti and was preparing a beach-head (using an experimental power-plant as a portal) for a global invasion.  
• Team Amber is the emergency backup force for Stonehenge operatives in the field. A ‘trouble squad’ from Team Amber is kept on ready alert around the clock for deployment anywhere in the world to support agency operations. Team Amber squads consists of battle seasoned, veteran operatives and are made up of a mix of veteran Stonehenge commandos armed with magic artifacts and conventional weaponry and the agency’s best spellcasters. In 1983, Amber was instrumental in defeating Oilliphéist, an ancient dragon of Irish antiquity, which Provisional Irish Republican Army spellcasters had summoned to attack Belfast. Team Amber also has the nickname "the Last Legion".  

Leadership Since its’ founding, the core leadership of Stonehenge has been the surviving Knights of the Round Table and their male descendents. In the modern era, this group comprises the upper ranks of Stonehenge -- while the bureaucracy of mages, spies and field operatives who make up the rank and file of the organization are recruited from throughout British occult circles, intelligence service and the military. The agency is still in possession of Arthur’s sword. Throughout the history of the Stonehenge Brotherhood, new wielders of the blade have emerged periodically. This happened most recently in WW2 when a super-soldier wielding the ancient blade joined the British superteam the Crown Guard during WW2. Per the Stonehenge charter, when such a new wielder of Excalibur emerges, he (or she) is considered the de facto leader of the group. 


The most recent wielder of Excalibur treated this as a purely ceremonial consideration and faithfully took his orders from the leader of Stonehenge (and often directly from Churchill as well.) Outside of the ruling council, the highest ranking officer in Stonehenge is Director Jared Burgess. A mystic specializing in druidic magic, Burgess was recruited into the agency as a field operative in the early 1940s and has worked his way up the ranks. Around the HQ, Burgess prefers the title Archmage, although this honorific is strictly a concession to the Director’s ego and is completely unofficial. Burgess is one of the most powerful mortal sorcerers on Earth (second only, possibly, to Supreme Commissar of the Red Directorate.) Burgess has fought and defeated power enemies from Scottish werewolves to the Thule Society to fey to gibbering otherworldly menaces that would drive lesser men stark raving insane; and he never lets anyone forget it. Despite his ego, Burgess is highly, almost obsessively, conscientious, and takes his responsibilities to Queen and Country incredibly seriously. 


Headquarters The massive subterranean headquarters of Stonehenge is located beneath the Department of Security and Pensions Indexing at 55 Whitehall St (which is merely a cover for the supernatural agency). Stonehenge moved into a secret, abandoned Masonic lodge built in the Roman sewers under London in the mid 1800s. As the agency’s needs have grown, the HQ has expanded, sometimes co-opting the labyrinthine networks of ancient tunnels underneath London and other times building their own structures as their needs required. The Stonehenge complex contains the agency's command and control center, magic research and development facilities, its arsenal of magic artifacts and devices, barracks, holding cells configured for a variety of unusual occupants and specially constructed diplomatic facilities for dealing with the Fey Courts (or other extra dimensional beings).

Wargames Preview...Superspies and Commandos of the Cold War

Over here at the Mutants and Masterminds forum, I'm talking about the latest Wargames sequel: Superspies and Commandos of the Cold War

Here's a peek

U.S.H.E.R. (The United States Headquarters for Emergency Response)
U.S.H.E.R. (the United States Headquarters for Emergency Response) was founded during WW2 as a counter to the superhuman troops and super-science weapons that the Nazis brought to the battlefield. With a massive budget and a staff of military scientists, strategists and super-soldiers U.S.H.E.R. put together Vigilance Force, one of the major American super-teams during the war and also developed much new technology that aided the war effort substantially.

After the war, and the emergence of the Iron Curtain, U.S.H.E.R. transitioned into the new mission of monitoring and opposing the Communist threat and established itself as the American security agency that would deal with threats too powerful and strange for conventional forces.

Although many intelligence agencies and service branches maintain some form of super-powered force,
U.S.H.E.R. is the primary American agency for superhuman affairs and also boasts a formidable brigade of power armor. In fact, from the mid 1970s to early 1980s, after the Steel Commando went rogue and destroyed the majority of US Army’s power armor suits, U.S.H.E.R. was the sole American power armor force until the early 1980s. The agency effectively fills much the same role as both the Red Directorate and the Shturmovik Agency do in the Warsaw Bloc.

U.S.H.E.R. maintains a strict screening and vetting process for operatives. Using advanced biometric lie detectors and psi-analyzers, U.S.H.E.R. carefully screens every potential operative at all levels and regularly re-screens veteran agents. Thanks to these measures, U.S.H.E.R. manages to be the one American intelligence agency that isn’t substantially compromised by Soviet agents during the Cold War.

Unfortunately, U.S.H.E.R.'s reputation for technical arrogance (mostly earned by its chief engineer, Fred Wilson) has made many enemies in the US military and intelligence community -- and this has hampered adoption of the agency's technology and processes. Soviet double agents in the FBI, CIA and NSA have worked to exacerbate the inter-agency rivalries that have too often blunted U.S.H.E.R.'s effectiveness.

U.S.H.E.R. was busy throughout the Cold War: clashing with Soviet (and occasionally Chinese) meta-forces in Europe, Asia, Africa and outer space, fighting leftist guerrilla forces in South and Central America as well as being the primary governmental resource for combating superhuman crime in the US. In one of the agency’s more public victories, while the bulk of American super-soldier forces were dealing with an international crisis in Berlin in 1982, U.S.H.E.R. repulsed an inter-dimensional invasion by the Psion Hordes of Ybir'K near North Platte, Nebraska

In another notable (but less well known) engagement, U.S.H.E.R. and its frequent rival, the Shturmovik agency, used their respective (highly classified) space stations to stage coordinated sabotage missions against the Tsavong fleet that was orbiting Earth during their invasion attempt in 1985.

Headquarters: U.S.H.E.R. currently maintains two secret installations on American soil: Liberty Station (under the Statue of Liberty) and Rock City (under Alcatraz Prison). U.S.H.E.R. agents work for the Department of the Interior and serve as tour guides at both installations as part of their cover. Classified at the highest levels is the agency's fortified low orbit space station, Vigilance Outpost 1. The station was covertly constructed in the mid 1970s to counter a similar station that the Soviet agency Shturmovik had put into orbit.

Leadership: Two members of one of the American WW2 super-teams (Vigilance Force) are still with U.S.H.E.R. in senior leadership positions. General Christian Thomason, once the patriotic fire controller known as Old Glory (in a notable bureaucratic snafu, Thomason was one of two American super soldiers to use that code name during WW2), is the Commandant of the agency.

Thomason's good friend, Fred Wilson (formerly the WW2 gadgeteer hero known as Captain Miracle; although he now prefers the codename Savant) heads up the Research and Development Division of U.S.H.E.R. Wilson is the primary engineer behind U.S.H.E.R's arsenal of advanced weaponry, its power armor squads and the advanced aircraft of the Pegasus Brigade. His pride and joy however is the mainframe codenamed Medusa – the world’s most sophisticated cryptographic computer. Medusa is able to intercept any message and decode any signal. Wilson used experimental positronic technology of his own design when building Medusa, and the computer is capable of not only advanced analysis and number crunching but also developing its own heuristics and employing intuition to solve problems and crack codes previously deemed uncrackable.

Samantha Mason – the granddaughter of the WW2 speedster the Minuteman – has inherited her grandfather's powers. Mason is a member of the Nighthawks and one of the agency's chief field agents in the European theatre.

Operatives: U.S.H.E.R. has four Field Groups
Atlas Battalion: The Freedom Alliance super-team cannot be everywhere that a superhuman response might be required. A secondary force was needed that could fill in when NATO's super soldiers were otherwise occupied. The Atlas Brigade was designed to fill that niche. With armor designed and built by Fred Wilson (aka the Savant), this unit was formed to counteract the threat of Soviet superhuman and power-armored forces. The Atlas Battalion is U.S.H.E.R.’s heaviest combat unit, wearing the Atlas MK IV exoskeleton, which enables the wearer to lift up to 2 tons as well as make tremendous leaps. Wearing full body armor, trained in a variety of deadly hand-to-hand disciplines and carrying lethal weaponry, this unit is called upon to face the worst threats. The MK IV exoskeleton can be retro-fitted with modifications that give the wearer protection from the rigors of undersea, arctic or outer space duty.

Blue Knights: The newest of U.S.H.E.R.’s field units, the Blue Knights, were formed to combat a rising wave of domestic crime and terrorism committed by super powered beings and other threats traditional law enforcement could not control. Blue Knights typically operate alone in the field but are supported by more traditional agents, especially agency medics and analysis agents. There have been occasions where teams composed of Blue Knights have been assembled to deal with extremely dangerous situations (such as a major gang war or prison riot).Unlike the Atlas armor, which is made for direct frontal assaults, the armor worn by Blue Knights focuses on stealth, detection and subduing a target. The Knights themselves receive extensive training in hand to hand martial arts and carry non-lethal weaponry intended to aid in arresting subjects and bringing them to trial.

Nighthawks: Since WWII the Nighthawks have been the eyes and ears of U.S.H.E.R., operating in small groups in hostile territory and conducting espionage and counter-intelligence missions. When conditions call for it, Nighthawks are ready and able to take the fight to the enemy, striking where they are least expected. Nighthawk armor is lightweight, equipped with exotic stealth technology and "silent running" glider wings.

 The Pegasus Brigade was developed during WW2 to combat the advanced fighter planes of the Luftwaffe. Today, the Pegasus Brigade still flies the most advanced and exotic aircraft that can be dreamed of by U.S.H.E.R's genius engineers, and they provide transportation and air support for U.S.H.E.R missions around the globe. The Pegasus Brigade also staffs and provides operational support for U.S.H.E.R.'s top secret space station, Vigilance Outpost 1.
In addition to its power armor troops, U.S.H.E.R. recruits super-humans into its ranks and has several dozen in its ranks. These super-powered operatives are integrated into the Atlas Battalion, Nighthawks and Blue Knights.



Nighthawk Armor

Atlas Brigade Armor

Warcraft movie.....really?

So - since Spider-man IV has been cancelled, what's Sam Raimi up to?

AICN knews think that's he'll be giving the 3D Avatarific treatment to the World of Warcraft.

I know I'm the only geek who's bored to death by Azeroth. I'm not sure how you make this movie without getting slammed by fansboys and critics alike.
Although -- given the kind of money that's probably driving these kind of decisions -- maybe those are both minor considerations.

Best Sci-Fi Movies of the Decade

The always enjoyable Jon Scalzi has a column up at AMC discussing the best Science Fiction of the 00s (although his list seems to creep outside that genre here and there - with Blade 2 and the Incredibles, for example. Depends how you want to define sci-fi, though.)

Thought this was neat for a few reasons.

1) He names Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - and I'm happy whenever anyone agrees with me that that was a great movie.

2) He suggests that The Incredibles does what The Watchmen wanted to do in terms of being the definitive commentary on the superhero genre. (Which begs the question - are we talking about the book or movie? (Note: I haven't seen the movie) And what exactly do you mean by "definitive commentary". Anyway...) Which - I'm not sure I agree with, but is interesting to chew on. I've been kind of burned out on Alan Moore for a few years, so I might not be an objective space to comment on it. Incredibles is certainly more entertaining and accessible. But I don't think either was particularly a goal of Moore and Incredibles didn't have some hurdles that Watchmen had.. Moore's been quoted before as saying he was trying to prove that comics could be taken seriously as literature when he was writing Watchmen . Lets be honest, that was a heavy burden to carry -- particularly in 1985. That he succeeded is a testament to his talent. Incredibles doesn't have that kind of baggage.

It's an interesting column. You should check it out

2009 Sales Numbers

Had 10 to 12 releases from RPGObjects and Vigilance Press in 2009.
Here's a link to all the stuff I've done

Total Numbers
Combined sales numbers of all copies sold of all pdfs in 2009 = approximately 400

Top Sellers:  A series of WW2 themed short pdfs that were written by Charles Rice that I adapted to Mutants and Masterminds (from RPGObjects in-house system Modern20)  were the best sellers

M&M: Pearl Harbor December 31


M&M: Super-spies and Commandos of WW2  32

M&M: The Crown Guard  58

M&M: The Eugenics Brigade  42
M&M: Vigilance Force  39

Another top seller was The Ice Palace - which took the Nazi Antarctic base map from Defcon and sold it seperately. This moved ~ 60 copies.

These were all inexpensive pdfs and they focused on WW2 -- always a popular era among supers gamers.



Middling
After moving to RPGObjects from Adamant, Defcon sold 28 copies. Given that it had already moved ~70 while an Adamant product, this is something of note. Also - we cut the price in half and sold it for 5 bucks.

Wargames 1 moved ~20 copies in just the last two weeks December of 2009. While that's a moderate number - for two weeks of sales for an M+M Superlink product, that's a very nice number.

Disappointments
Soldiers and Spellfighters moved around 20 copies in 2009. We released 4 supplements from late 2008 and into mid 2009 to support S+SF. They all had moderate numbers for short pdfs (they're all hovering around or slightly above the 20 copies mark). Frankly - we were hoping for better.