Halt Evil Doer! megaverse thread

[Charles Phipps]

I'm open to ideas but super hero teams are actually comparatively rare in HED! as compared to some settings where it's implied there's hundreds of them.

Depending on whether you think New York and Chicago still exist, Black Wing is Chicago's hero being as the hero of Falconcrest City and the rest of the "Wing family."

[dirkgentry2000]

I'm open to ideas but super hero teams are actually comparatively rare in HED! as compared to some settings where it's implied there's hundreds of them.

Depending on whether you think New York and Chicago still exist, Black Wing is Chicago's hero being as the hero of Falconcrest City and the rest of the "Wing family."

I can see that. I like the idea of a Batman analog in Chicago. Heck, Chicago was even the stand-in for Gotham in the last Batman film.

[dirkgentry2000]

Charles -- did you ever do a WW2 in HED part of this thread?

I had a Soviet super-team from WW2 in Defcon and was thinking about it posting it (and including Battle Czar)

[Charles Phipps]

I did a Golden Age section and a pretty massive one.

If you want to read it, go to the first post and look at the Index.

[daniel_ream]

As an admirer of Charles' work I may very well need to thrash you if you laugh at his work again (in public).

Oh, heavens, lighten up. Charles' own playtesters didn't take his characters seriously. I will certainly be picking up HED 1.5 as soon as it's released, as well-thought-out superhero settings like it are rarer than rubies[1].

Look, my amusement with Canadian superhero rpg supplements is that they desperately try to ignore basic geographical facts: Canada's entire national population is less than the state of California, and that population is spread out across three-and-a-half time zones in a razor-thin ribbon of cities pressed up against the US border like a Dickensian urchin at the window of the local sweet shoppe. The largest and densest city in Canada - Toronto - has an urban population of under 2.5 million. That's less than Chicago, slightly more than Houston. The next largest is Montreal - about the same size as Phoenix.

And I'm completely leaving out the sociological factors, like the fact that any Canadian with marketable talent promptly moves to the United States.[2]

Look, I love my home and native land all right, but not so much that I'm deluded about its relative importance in the grand scheme of things. If there really were super-powered people in Canada, they'd up stakes and leg it South because that's where the action is, Jack. (Although props to Charles for realizing that you could fit Ape City, the risen continent of Atlantis, the Savage Land, and a baker's dozen of Asteroid M's comfortably in Northern Saskatchewan without anyone really noticing.)



[1] Although, honestly, Charles, in the Olympics of Not Getting Around to Releasing the Second Edition of Your Superhero Setting, Aaron Allston just wins. He has like a 27 year head start on you at this point. Sure, you're a young man at the top of your game, but really it's time to concede the field to Mr. Allston and just publish already.

[2] "If you want to make Jim Carrey money, you go to LA; if you want to make Sean Cullen money, you stay in Toronto." - CBC News[3]

[3] Don't know who Sean Cullen is? That's part of the test.

Smilies all around for the humour impaired.

[Charles Phipps]

There's a number of fun filled facts, Daniel about your post and I give you a Silver Divinos Award (equivalent to the "No Prize") for giving me the opening to talk about a few of them. I appreciate the Canadian criticism as well because I was dying to talk about it but didn't have an opening for it.

1. The issue of Halt Evil Doer 1.5 is unfortunately boiled down to the fact that there was a serious speedbump in terms of finances. Something that was supposed to pay the better part of five hundred dollars ended up not doing so. That made it a choice between publishing Winterweir, which honestly could have been touched a bit with more art and some changes itself, and HED 1.5. Now, unfortunately, it's at the bottom of the list it was supposed to be at the top of. There's also the fact that I wouldn't be satisfied with just republishing it now since the Bush Administration has come and gone.

I've approached Mike Lafferty about flat out doing Halt Evil Doer! 2.0 instead.

2. You may have noticed there's a decisive lack of urban vigilante characters. I inserted Dreadmaster here precisely because of Mike's requesting it. However, there's a reason that most adventures in Canada will be against aliens and undead supernatural entities. Attempting to depict a swelling of street crime is just plain ridiculous in Canada. It's also why most super criminals are foreign rather than home grown.

3. On the "migration of talent." This is actually homaged. There's a reason that Ymir, Canada's greatest super hero, has done the Wolverine thing and migrated South to become the hero of Los Angeles' analogue in the HED! universe. However, in general, migration for super humans to the United States isn't all that common because of the simple fact that "Down South" is not exactly hospitable to superhumans as a general rule.

Everyone expects you to be a super hero or a super villain. Canada is viewed as a much better place for superbeings who just want to live.

[MightyDavidson]

Posts like Daniel's makes me wish this board had an ignore function.

[Charles Phipps]

Posts like Daniel's makes me wish this board had an ignore function.

Eh, I appreciated his criticism of the sociology involved of making realistic Canadian super heroes. I don't agree with him but I appreciate that he expressed his opinions.

Mine is not a fragile Author Ego.

Also, he's the guy who inspired me to talk to Dirkgentry2000 about HED! 2.0 and frankly it's probably a go because of him.

[MightyDavidson]

Posts like Daniel's makes me wish this board had an ignore function.

Eh, I appreciated his criticism of the sociology involved of making realistic Canadian super heroes. I don't agree with him but I appreciate that he expressed his opinions.

Mine is not a fragile Author Ego.

Also, he's the guy who inspired me to talk to Dirkgentry2000 about HED! 2.0 and frankly it's probably a go because of him.

Fair enough.

I personally would be quite happy to never hear his bad comedy act masquerading as how Canada "really" is ever again.

[Charles Phipps]

Fair enough.

I personally would be quite happy to never hear his bad comedy act masquerading as how Canada "really" is ever again.

Yes, it did seem a bit off.

How would you put it?

[MightyDavidson]

Fair enough.

I personally would be quite happy to never hear his bad comedy act masquerading as how Canada "really" is ever again.

Yes, it did seem a bit off.

How would you put it?

Well I'd certainly not try and claim that Canada is "not important enough" to have superheroes, as he's apparently trying to claim. While it probably wouldn't have as many superheroes as the United States does the heavily populated areas would undoubtedly have a couple around to keep local crime in check or try to.

A couple minutes research also indicates that Canada is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, with the second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. They're also one of the world's most important suppliers of grain products as well as the world's largest producer of zinc and plutonium and a world leader in natural resources such as lead, gold, nickel and aluminium.

Now I don't know about you, but I can think of a few good adventure ideas from that information alone. I could easily see Deathmask III or Overshadow wanting to seize control over those resources for example for thier own use. Or Count Reich II trying to destroy the agricultural areas in the Prairies, thus causing a lot of trouble for countries who rely upon those exports to keep thier citizens fed.

[Charles Phipps]

Oh and here's something for our Golden Age period of Canadian heroism.

Mapleleaf

Tough like a mountain, fast like a timber wolf, and able to summon the furious winds of blizard while controlling the very earth beneath us! Yes, he is MAPLELEAF, Canada's eternal champion against evil!

Mapleleaf is actually a tree spirit that was bonded with an English soldier during the French and Indian Wars by a Nooksack Indian medicine man. That story ends rather tragically as, while he defeats the French who wounded him, the first Mapleleaf died defending the tribe that had protected him from English soldiers on a rampage. The tree spirit never forgot this and gradually grew stronger as he merged with other champions. The tribes and local residents who heard of his legend came to revere him as a generic spirit of all nature.

Mapleleaf really became synonmous with Canada during World War 2. A Ottawa cartoonist named Jim Sternman heard of the Mapleleaf legend and incorporated it into a comic strip about fighting evil. This resulted in the unique situation where Mapleleaf's spirit was attracted to the man and merged with him. For awhile, Mapleleaf wrote of his own adventures, where he often fought American gangsters smuggling whiskey or stolen goods across the border.

Teaming with Lawman, Mapleleaf joined in the fight against the Nazis when World War 2 came about. Interesting, his abilities faded completely on foreign soil the moment that Canada's war with Germany ended. Returning to his homeland, Mapleleaf would be restricted to heroics on the soil of Canada from that point on. His career remained quite active, however. He fought numerous Communist infiltrators and several Soviet super villains before almost being elected Prime Minister. Ultimately, Mapleleaf decided to sacrifice his powers to marry and settle down.

Jim Sternman had not aged from the period of the 1920s to the early 1960s due to the power of Mapleleaf running through him. Thus, he was remarkably active up the 1990s when he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. That was when the current wielder of Mapleleaf's power, a black man named Ronald Paulson, was killed by Death Mask III. The powers then reverted back to Jim Sternman and he is solely being kept alive by them now.

At his late sixties, he has proportionately less strength than he did at the height of his youth. However, Mapleleaf is still able to trade punches with individuals like Black Wing II without breaking a sweat. His nature bending abilities remain unaffected, though, and he has a prenatural sense about what's wrong within Canada. His only blindspot is when people feel they're genuinely motivated by loyalty to the country. Hence, he was unable to sense his son's corruption to the House of Serpents.

Unsurprisingly, he and Lawman are best friends.

Supermarine Spitfire

"Mighty" David Richardson was one of the great minds of Aviation during the Pre-World War 2 era. He was quite familiar with the Washington family's research into battle armor, though American history text books are rather prone to the idea that David had most of his research done by Jack Washington Senior by the time he decided to design his own battlesuit. This is a lie, David and Jack had been working on parallel lines for creating a mechanical suit of battle armor. They collaborated a few times but it is questionable who benefited more from their partnership.

David had the poor distinction of being the third superhero in a suit of armor (or third super-being if you quite justifiably deny Rotter Parsifal that title because of the whole, you know, Nazi thing). This is less because of the fact that David was less talented as his associates than because he always intended to make sure everything was thoroughly tested before putting into service. A brilliant pilot himself, he tested all of his planes personally and felt the same need to do so for his battlesuit.

Supermarine Spitfire eventually was drawn into the war when Count Reich II sent hordes of SS operatives impersonating American soldiers, in fact American Bundists, to hijack the suit for use by Nazi Germany. Ironically, Rotter Parsifal didn't really need the suit but the Nazis never entirely trusted him or his inventions. Supermarine Spitfire handily disposed of them and was recruited by the Canadian government as bodyguard for the Prime Minister against Reich-backed subversives. He, ironically, had to defend his own factories more than anything else due to the extremely effective weaponry being produced there.

Supermarine Spitfire eventually joined the Liberators but never honestly adventured with the team and had more of an honorary post. Supermarine Spitfire did, however, participate in the Allied Liberation of France and the attack on Germany's final holdouts. He was also instrumental in preventing several attempts to restore the Reich before becoming an active hero in the 1950s. Ultimately, David retired after the Unmasking Massacre. This was not out of fear but merely disgust at America's treatment of its superheroes. David had never concealed his identity in the first place but saw no reason to persecute its heroes.

Extremely rich from wartime profits and the fact that the Avro Arrow Project was never shut down in HED! Canada, where his company produced valuable enhancements for it, David Richardson is perhaps most notable for the fact that he had a succession of attractive wives with numerous children. The youngest of these children was Katherine Richardson who would go on to become the super heroine Avro Arrow. All of his older children are trained as part of "Arrow Team" but are strictly part of Canada's super-powered home defense.

Supermarine Spitfire died in the year 2001, achieving that rarest of gifts for a well-lived life. A death in his bed of old age, surrounded by family.

[greycrusader]

I find this particular topic interesting, as some of the same notions occurred to me when I was writing the section on Canada for Daring Entertainment's Dawn of Legends (the expansion of the Autumn Arbor setting).

For those who haven't yet read the setting book, the Canadain government put together a "superhero" team mostly out of national pride, though also as a "worst case scenario" sort of precaution. Unfortunately, the team mostly spends a lot of time relatively idle, as Canada is a low population density nation with an exceedingly low crime rate. The few super-villains (who rarely dress in costume like their American counterparts) are mostly handled by specially trained RCM forces, or even local extra-powered tough guys and gals who likewise don't dress in costumes or adopt codenames.

So the Northguard is taken pretty lightly by most Canadians, even having a rep as something of a national joke. Their image isn't helped by their uninspired team name or the insistence Public Citizen (team leader) that the group act more like "real (ie, American) superheroes".

At the same time, Northguard does have a solid history of disaster relief work, volunteerism, and even stopping the odd Yankee super-criminals who cross the border in search of easy pickings. Their biggest victory came across Boruta, a Russian demigod/monster who swam across the ocean to rampage across the tundra. But that big win came years ago.

Two higher-profile members recently bolted the group, Happy Warrior and Max Wylde. While the Inuit Happy Warrior has no plans to emigrate, Max Wylde is mulling opportunties in the States. Most of the remaining Northguard members are "Proud Canucks" who serve out of civic duty; Public Citizen is convinced Canada is the Nation of the 21st Century.

Ironically, possibly the most formidable superhuman in history, the nigh-unbelievable Spectacular, was born in Canada. But nearly all his greatest adventures took place in the United States, unfortunately. Still, the Great White North claims him as a point of pride.

By the way, I apologize if I'm "thread-jacking" in any way by discussing my own work. But in a few ways, I'm struck by how Charles and I both incorporated similar themes regarding Our Neighbor to the North: in both game worlds, the scale of the country and the relatively few people allow large scale threats to fester sight unseen in the far reaches of Canada. Alien enclaves, long-buried government experiments left over from the Cold War era, stirring supernatural menaces....trouble may only strike once in a blue moon up north, but when it does, watch out below! The lower 48 would well to regard their brethren (be they Hero Force One or Northguard) with more respect.

Also, Charles and I both recognized the more peaceful nature of Canadian society; as he said, a campaign set up north would mostly see adversaries such as hostile extraterrestrials, the undead, ill-tempered elemental spirts and the like. Super-villains are more an American scourge.

All Respect to HED.

And all my best.

John

[Charles Phipps]

Thanks, John.

In fact I am actually eagerly waiting to buy Dawn of Legends supplement on the world as a whole because I want to read about the Great White North in the Arborverse (actually, Lee or Jon could you correct me on what the universe' official name is now? Is it the Arborverse or the Daringverse now?).

And yes, the basic idea I had for Canada is the fact that while it is UNLIKELY you could hide huge armies in the flat plains of Canada, you could certainly have a lot of places where such places are going to be surrounded by a lot of wilderness where you can work on building a minimum amount of camoflauge about them.

I liked the idea of Sentinel Processing Plants, Overshadow's Secret Armies of Clones being assembled underground, and all manner of weird Fairy Gates and secret Giant Rainbow Bridges to Jotunheim being in the HED Canada.

I disagree with the decision to make Canada's superhero team something of a joke, but the difference between the Daringverse and HED! is that there really are a bunch of superheroes who aren't terribly superheroic and you have to compete wildly for attention from the media in the Daringverse (correct me if I'm wrong). HED! has a serious superhero deficit by comparison.

But yes, it's interesting to compare and contrast.

[DragoonDarkfire]

As a Canadian I do think it'd be best if the integral part of Superheroing in Canada would be more along the lines of monsters and wilderness exploration. We're the second largest country in the world and more than three quarters of that is wilderness so I wouldn't mind seeing something like that.

As a matter of fact why don't we read more about environmental damage or wilderness threats to Canada? Things like poaching or the destruction of habitat? I mean people always seem to measure the level of disaster on the volume of human life lost but we never really get a good idea how supernatural evils and mad science effects things like ecosystems.