Technohol 13: Marvel Super Heroes RPG (Classic & Saga) Material

Saturday, May 19, 2012

(posted May 17th, 2012)

Merry Friday!

You know, when I first started working on the 1990 Gi Joes, I thought I was doing so in a complete vacuum. You see, most of those characters got little, if any face time in the comic book, so I didn't really have anything to work with save for the file cards that came with the actual action figures. The funny thing is that I was completely wrong in this regard; there was in fact plenty of media associated with these guys.

I just had no clue. You see, by the time 'Series 2' of the Gi Joe cartoon came out, I had since lost the ability to watch it. I think it aired haphazardly on USA Network now and then, but the truth was I missed it because I never got home in time to see it. And at the time a VCR was something of a luxury (yes, this was in the days before TIVO), so it wasn't like I had one to record any of those episodes.

Over time, I sort of wrote that show off entirely. Oh sure, once I'd eventually acquired a VCR I purchased one tape of that show, featuring the Eco-Warriors. And my response was mostly 'meh'. From that viewing alone, I assumed the show mostly covered folks from 1991 or so, and so I didn't really care about finding the other tapes available from that show.

But boy was I wrong. Recently, I acquired my copy of season one of that second Gi Joe cartoon, and have been slowly digesting it ever since. The first disc was that forgettable 'Operation Dragonfire' five-parter, which featured folks from the 1989 era, so I was mentally prepared for more of that on the other discs. Imagine my surprise when a lot of my favorite folks from 1990 suddenly showed up in an animated form!

This made me so happy that I devoured the second disc - even with some of its similarly forgettable material. But inspired, I started some work reconfiguring my Gi Joe Handbook in the 1990 roster. I'm sure a lot of you are going to groan at what I'm doing, but what I've decided I need to do is to 'condense' the entries for each Joe into a singular document... as breaking them up by year has become untenable.

Oh sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but having twenty versions of Snake-Eyes on my site has grown into a proper pain in the posterior. Not only is it tanking my search engine results (such as they are), but simply maintaining them all is too much of a chore for me to continue. Thus, I'm going through and cleaning up each 'original' instance of a Joe, and am adding details of further figures at the end of their descriptions.

I started this with Ambush, working out the kinks of my idea as I went. His was especially tricky since I'd given him a new talent in his later iterations, but the overall idea seems to work well. Of course, as I perform this work I'll also be creating 4C System: Edition 13 versions of each Joe, even if I'm just about the only person on the planet supporting that version of the MSH RPG these days. Sigh.

I'll continue on with my work on the 1990 Gi Joes over time, but I thought I'd let you know that I'm finally revisiting other peoples' content here on the 13. I'd taken a considerable break from such once I had wrapped up the Joes through 2009 or whatever last year, as I really needed it, but I feel I can start up on that business again without totally burning out anew. That's the hope, at any rate.

Of course I've also concocted a new character description this week - I haven't just been playing with my Gi Joes. In case you were actually enjoying my work on the Jensen Congress at all, I have another one of those Mike Jensen counterparts ready. He is Disco Mike, or Mike 003 to his compatriots. He's from a timeline where disco never died, and is the inventor of practical portable laser weaponry on his world.

So that just leaves one more Jensen I need to cover before I consider the Congress complete - or rather, complete enough. He is Mike 002, the guy who invented force fields for the group. I'll probably work myself up to finishing him off over the next week, at which point I can start focusing on other Variant Earth 13 materials. Like those dwarves I was talking about last week... and never got to. Heh.

I'm crafty that way.

What's New?

I've added plenty to the 13 of late, including (Disco) Mike 003, Mikaela 101, Mack 066, Mike 001, Michelle 232, the Post-modern Girl, Chase Storey, Sticks Mclellan, the Godless Dandy, the Acrimonious Apostate, the Cyborg in the Red Suit, Master Smith, Faith Antithesis, the Misdirector, Elves (typical), Mindgame, Hate Ball, Hates-Wizards-Like-Nobody's-Business, and Unrivaled-Brilliance-Before-You!

Technoholic Content

In the event that those expressive icons at the top (and bottom) of the page don't tell enough of the story for you to see what lies beyond them, here is a quick summary of just about everything on the site. I even added one or two pages that I didn't have room for in the navigation bar above (well it looks like I do, but there's more coming... oh yes.)

The New Universe: It was the world outside your window - at least, until the so-called White Event rippled across the face of the earth, leaving approximately two in every million people forever changed. With the dawn of the paranormal, the world would be forever changed - and for the worse - as various governments scrambled to master this new, uncontrollable power.

Gi Joe: a Real American Hero: Assembled from the very best members of the various armed forces, Special Counter-Terrorist Group Delta is also known by its nickname, Gi Joe. This group was created to handle all kinds of threats to democracy, but was forced to focus its efforts on Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world! Only Gi Joe stands between Cobra and its nefarious goal...!

the Vintage Age: The dawn of the heroic age, the 1940s were an era fraught with peril, both in the form of rampant fascism as well as villainous individuals of great personal power. The only thing standing in the way of their conquering the world were a loose band of stubborn, individualistic super heroes determined to protect freedom at all costs!

Transformers: Robots in Disguise: Traveling to our world across both space and time, the diabolical Megatron has come to our planet to seize control of the incredibly powerful Fortress Maximus - and will destroy anyone and anything that gets in the way of this goal! It's too bad for him, then, that the Autobots were ready for him and his flunkies, and literally had years to prepare for his arrival...

Variant Earth 13: Superficially reflecting the 'real' world, Variant Earth 13 is a nexus of sorts, a place that has an analogue of events in a multitude of other timelines. While the Powers That Be try to keep a lid on things and preserve the status quo, all manner of ascendant beings are quite active in the pursuit of their goals, and events are quickly spiraling out of control...

MSH Infinity: Built for adventures throughout a multiverse of possibility, the Planescape campaign setting featured a battle of ideas amidst incredible locations. The MSH Infinity reference will be an eventual translation of this incredible material into MSH RPG terms, allowing you to take your heroes on an adventure they won't soon forget - if they don't simply move in...!

Miscellaneous Characters: A place for those folks that don't quite fit into the sections above, the Miscellaneous Character Handbook is a sort of repository for odds and ends that I've perpetrated over the years in statistical form, folks I don't want to build a whole reference for yet I wouldn't mind featuring on the site - since I did the work to get them playable, after all.

Custom Rules: This is a compendium of the custom-built rules systems I have created for use by the general public. Currently, these rules are for the Universal Heroes Role Playing Game ('Classic' MSH RPG) as well as the 4C System: Edition 13 rules. I intend to eventually add Saga versions of all this material, as well as rules for one more game - but that's down the road some.

The Technohol 13 Master Roster: In the event that you are looking for a character you think I've covered in the past but don't want to leaf through the above sections to find him or her (or it), you can't do wrong to look here. This is a compendium of links to everyone I'm currently featuring on the site, in both their MSH Classic and Saga versions. It's huge but comprehensive!

Technoholic Updates: While I try to update the 'news' section above on a weekly schedule, more or less, I usually update the Updates page as soon as I've added something to the 13. Sometimes I'm working 'ahead' and sometimes I'm not, but that'll show you just what it is I'm up to at any given point in time, in the event that you're looking for the newest in Technoholic goods.

The Atomic Links: This is a collection of MSH RPG links I have assembled for you, either in a Classic or Saga flavor. The list seems to be dwindling rapidly of late, as AOL and now Geocities seems to be removing all their hosting services (or going under, as it may be). But these links nonetheless lead to additional MSH RPG material for your gaming use, so check them out when you're done here.

Technoholic Basics: This is a quick bit of information about the site itself, going a bit above and beyond what you see here on the 'main' page, and goes into my motivations for the site and so on. It's also where I've placed the Technoholic Color Changing Mechanism, in the event that you would rather pick your own color than go with the quasi-random Color Rotating Thingus I built a bit back.

Author Information: In the event that you'd like to know a little bit more about the author of this here web site (everything on technohol.com is written by me unless specifically noted otherwise), this is the link for you. Feel free to read about my sad little life and get to know me some, and if you have a burning need for even more Firebomb dirt, a link is provided therein.

Send Firebomb An E Mail Message

Got something to say to Firebomb? Sure, I used to have a Guest Book here that people would love to deface, but I had to take that down and haven't bothered putting up a new one yet. Or a forum or anything snazzy like that. So, since I don't have one of those any more, feel free to drop me an e mail message any time, utilizing this address here: firebomb@technohol.com.

This site was born on April 9th, 1998, and last modified on May 18th, 2012!