And yet another supervillain today, Mister Maker, nominal leader of the on-and-off villain team The Force Multipliers. This is another big complex post with links to a bunch of older villains, and represents a “hard” (or maybe “nightmare”) mode fight for most teams. My PCs wanted a real challenge, and they sure got one with this lot. Use with caution, especially if your PCs aren’t used to facing a lot of minions.
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Nifty! Most super teams usually try to insure that no two members have the same gimmick, but here you’ve leaned into that instead.
Also, all their internal drama makes me see them as villainous analogues of The Fantastic Four.
Alternatively or in addition to giving the Heroes some extra Minions or Lieutenants to help, the GM could add some optional Challenges that don’t have any repercussions if they go uncompleted, but give the Heroes a boon if they’re Overcome, such as more Minions or Lieutenants, or free Actions using the environment’s dice pool. Similar to SotM: EE: OblivAeon’s Missions, essentially.
Wait, so Mister Maker’s been a supervillain since the 1920s or '30s? That’s even longer than most supers.
Ideally you’d want sets of suitably-sized dice with a different color for each baddie (eg red dice are always Mister Fixer androids, orange dice are for Bodycount’s quantum copies, Manpower gets yellow duplicate, etc.) but that’s a big ask even when pulling from everyone’s dice collections.
I don’t think you intended to reference Slim here. The two do have fairly similar monikers, though.
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Sure is. He was inspired (very loosely) by the Ultra-Humanite, Superman’s very first really truly super-villainous foe in 1939 and by U-H’s ancestor from the “Reign of the Superman” from 1933.
While U-H is much better known these days as a big white mutant gorilla guy, his original body was a stereotypical bald evil scientist stuck in a wheel chair - which I suspect was intended to indicate he was a polio victim, something that would have been a depressingly familiar sight in the late 30s. He eventually abandoned that body via brain transplant, first shifting to the form of a rising Hollywood movie starlet named Dolores Winters for a while, then (after a long hiatus where he was assumed dead) several non-human bodies (including a big mutant insect) before settling on the big white gorilla that he’s stuck with since. U-H’s real superpower appears to be total immunity to any form of body dysmorphia - you could stick his brain in a flowerpot and he’d find away to make it work for him.
Mister Maker’s only direct connection to U-H is being a transplanted brain, although the morphic exteriors of his android shell is a nod to all the body-hopping variations, as well as the classic mad scientist look the original U-H body used.
Ah curses, I was fighting that mistake all the way through and apparently I missed one. Fixed. Maybe I should have stuck with my original choice of Mister Machine instead, but IIRC someone had used the supranym already. OTOH, the current supranym sets up for an villain team-up story with a bloodthirsty brute and a fire-thrower so the writer could give it the ludicrous but catchy title “Butcher, Baker, Mister Maker!” Maybe they rob the World’s Fair or something…
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I didn’t know any of this until Season 3 of CW’s Stargirl. Alas, another show taken before its time. Best of the Arrowverse-adjacent, IMO. We could use more modern retellings of Golden Age content.
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If you want really strange, Dolores Winters (the first victim of an involuntary U-H brain-transplant) was retconned years later into having survived, gotten her brain put in a new body, and subsequently becoming a deranged super-villain in her own right. The video here covers her story in pretty good detail.
That channel in general is doing fine work covering old Gold and Silver Age stories that have been largely forgotten, and without falling into the mean-spirited tone many youtube comic reviewers take with older works. There’s also this channel for more Golden Age focused reviews. His output is kind of slow but he does dig up a lot of info on his subjects including biographical data on the creators, which is often hard to come by when you get back that far.
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But that just raises the question: what happened to the original brain of the body that Dolores Winters’ brain was transplanted into? Perhaps her brain was transplanted into another body…
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Huh. I could have sworn I hit some obscure character by that name, but maybe I’ll go ahead and switch to Mister Machine after all. I rather like that for a brain-in-an-android-shell guy from the 1930s.
IIRC the video I linked to said the retcon had her brain put into a corpse stolen from the morgue by one of U-H’s medically-talented henchmen who was coincidentally a big fan of her acting. Presumably that brain wasn’t saved.
I guess restoring life to the dead is no problem if you have a nice fresh brain to stick in the body. Who knew? Certainly not Frankenstein, that hack. 
I’m also struck by the fact that U-H has incredibly skilled henchmen in the early days. They’re literal brain surgeons.
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Well, after a bit of googling, it looks like there was a character of that name in a few issues of a 2001: A Space Odyssey comic back in '77. However, when he was integrated into the Marvel Universe, his name became Machine Man. (And he actually appears in Marvel’s Earth X, which I’ve read.)
Whether you use the name is, of course, wholly your decision, although I think you’d be justified in doing so.
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Ah, that’s where I’d seen it. I’m enough of a Kirby fanatic to have read those, although I’d forgotten the name change. Well familiar with Aaron by any name, and particularly fond of his revival in NextWave/Agents of H.A.T.E. where he’s a funhouse version of his usual self. So yeah, I think I’ll do the rename - I like it better and I’m happy to homage the King. Think he’d have approved of such a innately gonzo character concept.
One of these days I’ve got do do a proper Count Dragorin and Lupek from his gloriously insane Jimmy Olsen run.
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So the “Fashion Foes” podcast today inspired me to come up with this baddie, because if they aren’t going to use “Needler” I sure as heck am.
Sir Needler, Septuagenarian Knight of the Underworld
Yes, he is literally a mean old man supervillain. With minimal reskinning he could be an actual RPG-era Fashion villain, but I’ve written him up to fit more generic settings as usual.
Another biggish post today, covering the Weiss Organzation, a private security and military contracting firm that presents themselves as a haven for persecuted mutants. They definitely don’t have all sorts of shady business going on at all.
Well, they do, but those white suits sure are snazzy.
Includes villain writeups for the director and her bodyguard, a bunch of different minion-grade operatives and their lieutenant-grade mutant backup.
New on the blog, the first of two posts going over my process for designing an action scene. I’ve had a few requests to do more “gamemaster theory” (and in this case, practice) stuff and finally got motivated enough to do so. If there’s enough interest I’ll see about doing more of that kind of content in the future, although it does take quite a lot of typing.
Part two will be up sometime tomorrow.
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And part two is up now, with all the crunchy mechanical prep work and some after action commentary. Bit long, but it does include two new villains, a lieutenant, three minions, an environment and various maunderings. Let’s see how much engagement it gets.
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Nifty. I especially like the “What Produces Urgency?” section in Part 1. The SCPRG and its creators strongly recommend using a Scene Tracker in as many scenes as possible, but often there may not seem like there is anything in the scene that necessitates a ticking clock. And yet, usually trying to think of a time-dependent element adds an interesting twist (lowercase t) to the scene.
The Protoids are certainly cool, although describing them as the colour of “a livid bruise” is somewhat disquieting.
It’s interesting that you seemingly have heroes take a montage scene with Recovery actions at the end of an issue, as the rulebook says that all heroes are automatically back up to full health at the start of every issue. Your approach certainly does provide a different feeling, and I wouldn’t imagine that it would break anything, so I suppose which method to use is (like all things) ultimately up to the GM, depending upon what atmosphere and mood they desire to evoke.
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Yeah, it’s an aberration for us too. Normally I’d do a full heal-up at end of issue/session, but I’d planned another ~2 hours of “content” including a short action scene where an old foe with a grudge was going to ambush them as they returned to their HQ and try to KO the hero they hate most, which was intended to be the proper end of issue and a hook for next session. We had a family thing come up with one of the players and his ride had to leave with him, so we called it early instead and did some card games instead.
So next session (which I ran a while ago, this is all past tense) opened with the ambush, which got more serious owing to them major twisting twice from Overcomes in the secret base. I didn’t really want to let them get the end of issue full heal because in story only a couple of hours had passed since the base fight and even before the amp-up the ambush was supposed to at least feel dangerous. I also didn’t want to shaft them too badly since I’d let the protoid battle go two extra turns while they mopped up after hitting the win condition. Those two turns actually did a lot more damage than I expected (one of the two heroes went Out from Yellow, and two of them went from Yellow to Red - hot dice for my flunkies) so I decided to wing it and give everyone one level of Recovery, then an actual montage scene to do what they wanted.
All but one of the players opted for a second Recovery, so we wound up three heroes full, one of the ones who’d been Out at the top Yellow, and the other hero who’d been Out opting to Overcome to dig for information in the computers (before the police showed up to raise any objections…), rolling a 14(!) and getting a big fat Boost as a “positive twist” for their trouble. That player likes to take this kind of risk - they love starting scenes in Red, which has resulted in them going Out in in round one or two in the past - so I’m wasn’t worried about that with rest of the team in pretty good shape.
Which they needed to be, since the ambush that was going to be a lone villain, a few lieutenants and some challenges replaced the lieutenants with two full blown villains thanks to the team’s twists. The PCs also got to convert their five hero points each before the ambush, although I forget exactly what everyone did with them.
Metatextually, the wrap-up issue of the “Perilous Protoids” storyline ran a little short owing to creative team being late with what was supposed to be the hook for the next arc, leading to the editors frantically stuffing in a backup story and two pages of Hostess Snack Cake ads to fill page count. No doubt fans were complaining about all the filler, although the Moseby Twins proved to be popular minor villains.
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Having done a walkthrough on how I design an action scene, I thought an addendum post on the blog about the pitfalls and plusses of the different types of scene elements you have to work with would be useful for newer game masters.
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Multi-target abilities are much more punishing than single target ones . . . If you find a villain overperforming because of these abilities, remember that you don’t have to affect every target you could
Also, you simply flat-out don’t have to use a villain’s ability if it’s proving too challenging for your heroes. (E.g., If the heroes are getting utterly swamped by the villain’s multi-target Pulsar Beam Projector, you could take a turn of the villain just monologuing about how weak their nemesis is while taking a basic Hinder action against them.)
A few villains have access to very powerful healing abilities, with the Domain archetype being the worst offender. Be careful about using these abilities to stall out the heroes until the scene tracker expires, as it can easily feel like robbing your players of a hard-won victory.
True, although this does make me get the idea for a villain whose entire gimmick is stalling. The Adhesivist, for instance, would likely have only abilities that Hinder.
Your musings on lieutenants led me to wonder about scenes that are all (or mostly) lieutenants. My first instinct is that that’s a bad idea. When 
= 4, for a hero team facing only lieutenants, the book recommends × ÷ 2 = 8 lieutenants, or 2 per hero. Unfortunately, I don’t believe I have enough play experience to judge how difficult that fight would be. At = 5, it’s 13, which is almost certainly too much. If we replace one squad of lieutenants with an environment or challenge, it becomes 6 at = 4 and 10 at = 5.
[Environments] are unusual because you’ll never use more than one in a scene unless something very peculiar is going on - maybe a string of major twists throws all participants into a whole new environment mid-scene?
Other possible peculiarities that could produce such a result include
- The scene takes place in two wildly different locations simultaneously, with villains and/or heroes constantly moving betwixt them. Teleportation would likely be involved. (In this case, I’d only count one environment when budgeting the scene.)
- One environment is the actual location where the action is taking place, while the other is a powerful entity (e.g., OblivAeon). (In this case, I’d count two environments when budgeting.)
- Both environments are actually massively powerful entities clashing with one another. (Ibid.)
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That is certainly true, although to be honest I haven’t seen a situation where the villain(s) were doing so well that the GM needed to resort to basics with them to avoid a TPKO. It sure can happen through an over-strong combo of abilities (that Force Multipliers team almost qualifies thanks to being a crazy skew of spawners) or lucky dice, but for me my villains always get lucky when it’s too late to eke out a reversal. Someday I’ll roll all double digits on round one…
That does sound about right for the guy. I’d make the “cost” for the scene tracker running out lighter than usual for a scene built around a villain stalling it out.
It definitely seems to break down when there are an odd number of heroes, although as you pointed out you can diffuse it with an environment and one or more challenges. I tried running a scene sans environment with four heroes and eight lieutenants once (the concept being a simulation team-training battle with a bunch of D-lister villains) and the heroes did eke out a win with only one PC going Out, but if it had been five heroes and 13 baddies I think it would have been a lopsided slaughter. Most heroes can beat two lieutenants on their own, but only barely - and if the lieutenants have strong abilities even that might not be true.
Part of the problem is that the lieutenant damage mechanic makes them quite resistant to the traditional answer to being outnumbered, ie multi-target Min or (for the strongest Yellows) Mid die Attacks. Just can’t sweep them the way you do minions and you’re still behind on action economy.
Those all sound reasonable, assuming the powerful entities are each causing a twist of their own each round, either on their own turns or just before or after the environment turn.
In the case of a split-location dual environment situation you could probably just ignore the environment turn of any location that’s empty of heroes when it would go. Stuff is presumably still happening but the PCs are where the audience attention is focused, and you can just handwave the off-page events.
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Another superhero, this time ported from a Tiny Supers character I did for a one-shot a while back. Also wrote up his nemesis so he didn’t feel lonely.
Yeah, they’re living cartoon characters from a fictional series of B&W shorts from the 1930s. Not my most serious work.
Agreed. For the Adhesivest specifically, I think I’d probably make the only consequence him—and whatever allies he has—making a clean get-away.
Right. I’d most likely give each powerful entity its own turn, distinct from any environment’s. (The scene tracker would still advance on the environment’s turn, of course, provided there is one.)
True, although a possible exception to that that I can envision is some minions being added to an otherwise empty environment without the players knowing, so they’re surprised the next time they return there.
(Although this does bring up the question of why they’d return to a (presumed) empty location. I suppose an unresolved challenge or some other sort of MacGuffin. (Or, perhaps more likely, a villain (or the heroes themselves) are simply fleeing.))
KO Clown kinda reminded me of Kid Eternity.
Wait, so you’ve added another meta-layer to the whole thing? KO Clown is from a fictional cartoon that exists in a fictional comic book universe?
He can’t conjure up anything really complex or boring (comic books but not a dictionary)
Really? Not even for a gag where he bashes it over a baddie’s head?
He may express concern about catching cooties when fighting female supervillains.
Does he also display the Wouldn’t Hit a Girl trope?
Description: A cartoon bad guy. He generally wears a black suit under a black overcoat and a tall, crooked stovepipe hat - black, of course. Short and scrawny with a hunched physique and arms so long his spidery hands drag on the ground. Carries a six foot long fountain pen that he impossibly tucks away in his coat when it’s not needed.
Yes, but does he have a long black handlebar moustache with which to twirl evilly?
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