Fixed, FWIW.
1 Like
One more villain, just in time for New Year’s Eve.
And that, as the saying goes, is that. I’ve now completed at least one of all 252 possible villain approach/archetype pairings, a project that’s taken a couple of years and initially started as a bit of a joke.
With all my SCRPG groups on hiatus until well into January I’ll be taking some time to re-assess where the blog is going in the future. Both the groups I’m playing in are considering whether to switch to new game systems in 2024, and the steady group I run for is also losing a couple of people soon. Seems like a good time to ask myself if this game is really the best choice to spend my time and energy on, especially with GTG’s slow release schedule for KS fulfillment reducing general interest in the game.
2 Likes
Congratulations on finishing an absolutely intense set of resources! That is a truly amazing list of villains, and a hell of a long road. Well done.
Whatever the future brings for you, I’m looking forward to it.
2 Likes
Thanks, FrivYeti. Your own Venture Comics project was certainly an assist with both inspiration and motivation toward the end. Didn’t think I’d ever get through those last few when I was down just two or three archetypes…
1 Like
As long as I’m trying to clean up ongoing projects, here’s number five of the Syracuse Seven hero team I’ve been sluggishly porting over from their home system of Tiny d6 Supers.
Asterope Jones got quite the glow-up in the translation process, which seems appropriate for someone who uses a lot of Radiant and Electricity in her abilities. 
She’s probably the most changed of the team so far, although Leaping Lizard is pretty close.
1 Like
And how about number six - not the Prisoner, although they’d be pretty much at home in that setting too.
A surprisingly easy port this time, although a bit low on damage output to really be throwing down with supervillains in the SCRPG. Then again, that just makes him a more accurate port, since the Tiny d6 Supers Justifier did not want a piece of that kind of action either.
One more to go.
1 Like
Interesting. May be just a coincidence, but @The_Justifier used to be rather active on these boards until about 7 months ago. I suppose it’s not too far a stretch that multiple people have used that handle, however.
1 Like
Never heard of them. If they happen to be a crimefighting mystery man shapeshifter, that’s definitely a coincidence.
EDIT: Oh, I see why they’re unfamiliar. As far I see their last post on the RPG board was November 2022 (on a thread where we were both posting, but I have to see a handle quite a bit to recall it after a year and some change). If someone’s not on RPGs regularly or getting mentioned on the podcast itself we probably won’t cross paths, RPGs is pretty much the reason I’m on these forums at all.
And let’s have the last of the Syracuse Seven heroes:
That finishes that project up - at least until I get to see the new Tiny d6 archetypes in the Gallantverse book and the team grows three members. Syracuse Ten doesn’t have quite the same ring, though. Maybe I’ll just have some heroes get snuffed or “graduate” to less of minor team.
1 Like
FrivYeti’s recent posts on his excellent History of Venture Comics thread reminded I promised to do a Ferris wheel-related environment way back when he was still in the Golden Age, so here’s one take on the subject.
This is more of a Ferristown landmark kind of ride than a little carny rig for Night Rider/Dawn Rider, and it’s got some mildly complex location rules, but it should still be useable for a variety of action scenes. I included one possible concept with some detail, and suggested a few others, but I’m sure you folks can come up with plenty more.
2 Likes
I dig the pulpy Golden Age street-level feel that this give off.
Hey, Rube!: Whenever you have to save versus damage, if the result after mods is 2-3 add one Carny Worker to the Surrounding Grounds location. If the result is 4+ add two Carny Workers instead.
Great reference.
If the scene tracker runs out, the villain who was climbing the wheel will escape, carried away by a flying craft (zeppelins are very appropriate for Golden Age games) that makes an unexpected appearance from the clouds above.
Reminds me of the climax of the The Rocketeer film.
stealing the wheel and other civic landmarks for ransom
And this is delightfully Silver Age.
1 Like
Just a heads up for anyone reading this thread, unless someone has a vigorous objection I’ll be taking this blog down sometime next week for at least a while, and perhaps permanently. There are a number of reasons for this:
- More than half my hits are from bots out of Singapore, and the ratio’s gotten a lot worse in the last month. They aren’t actually being much of a problem to me other than making accurate view counts more difficult, but I still don’t like it.
- Both the groups I’ve been playing in broke up over the holidays, with one just scattering and the other moving on to a rule system by a White supremacist that I want nothing to do with.
- The group I’ve been running for a couple of years now has also decided to try some other games and give me a break from moderating for a while.
Between the last two I no longer have a steady group to test ideas with, and all three were starting to seriously struggle with the game’s scene design system falling apart at “high level” play, ie when the PCs are up in the double-digit range for collections. We didn’t find a good solution for that before things came to a head, and with none forthcoming from GTG I think it’s time to pull the plug. I may start up again at some point in the future, but I’m not making any guarantees. A lot is going to depend on how much the Starter Kit re-release spurs interest, along with whatever other 2024 products may appear.
I’ll give a 24-hour warning before turning out the lights so anything people want to archive can be preserved.
2 Likes
Sorry to hear it. Archiving issues are a huge problem for RPG materials, and it seems a shame to lose all of the work you already did, but I understand.
Makes me wish the SCRPG wiki had taken off, but on the flip side, I didn’t put in the web time to build it either.
2 Likes
If I’m reading blogger right I have 90 days from when I take it down to restore everything, and I’ll back it up beforehand anyway so I’ll still have the data. If nothing else I want to let it cool down and hopefully discourage the worst of the bots, they’ve been out of control this month.
Given my actual view counts over the last few years it shouldn’t inconvenience much of anyone. I’ve got blogs with a tenth the content with more visitors, and my almost-dead minis blog is many times more active thanks to all the photo galleries. Like it or not the SCRPG just does not have a large online community outside of perhaps the discord, which I’m not interested in using. Maybe the revised Starter Kit will help that.
1 Like
It would be a real shame to lose the content that’s there, even if you’re not planning to make more.
3 Likes
That’s quite sad to hear.
If it’s okay with you, I’ll probably want to copy down a number of the villains for my own hypothetical future use, if / when I do ever get an actual ongoing game going.
I take it that no one wanted to reset everything back down to 0 collections, with or without narrative explanation?
1 Like
Of course, feel free. This stuff was meant to be used, even if my decision not to try to integrate the characters into the canon Sentinels setting probably didn’t help that any.
It was one of quite a few ideas we’d bandied about. All three groups had been experimenting with limiting collection usage based on desired session difficulty already, which was pretty similar in effect and not wholly satisfactory. It fixed the “how do I challenge this group?” problem the rules stop answering as collection count climbs, but resulted in a feeling that we were just spinning our wheels in the long run without the opportunity to really cut loose and use everything we had “earned” through play.
Considering this old blog post of mine (which turned out to be severely overoptimistic in its final paragraph) it’s ironic that there were so many early complaints in reviews about lack of advancement. If anything, advancement turned out to be too fast for the good of our game, and without some designer guidance on “high level play” (for lack of a better term) addressing the problem was harder than we were prepared to deal with. Since even 6-8 months of weekly sessions starts straining the scene design system it’s pretty clear the folks grousing about lack of advancement hadn’t actually played the game much at all.
3 Likes
gosh, I’m sorry you’re having to deal with all that at once 
2 Likes
Last day before I throw the blog on hiatus. Still struggling with Singapore bots.
I did copy down many of the posts into a Google Drive, so if anybody else here wants them — and if Chief_Lackey_Rich allows it — I’d be perfectly willing to share them.
2 Likes