The Professor X Paradox
Many of us here at Critical Hits enjoy comics, especially of the superhero variety. So it’s natural to try and combine our love of roleplaying games with our love of superheroes into one solid package.
Primarily, our experience with superhero games was in GURPS Supers. GURPS is a system we developed a fair amount of experience with, so it seemed natural to build on our previous low point powers and crank up the character points to make ourselves some superheroes. The system also afforded enough flexibility to cover a wide range of characters that we wanted to play, from a super-fast speedster (named, guess what, Speedster) to a powerful hulking brute (The Uncrushable Gronk.) The only concept that GURPS was completely ill-equipped to handle was the Green Lantern archetype. Other than that, our group experimented with a wide range of classic character types, enabled not just by the Supers rules, but any other GURPS books that we needed to fill it out.
Unfortunately, there always seemed to be a wall that our campaigns hit, and has made us reluctant to pick up another superhero game in many years. While discussing the issue and attempting to settle on a new system, The Main Event and I hit on the core of our problem, and we dubbed it “The Professor X Paradox.” [Read the rest of this article]
The Amazing Graysons: Baby Nightwing?
In honor of our Inquisition:
It looks like the CW doesn’t want to leave a void when comic book inspired Smallville finally ends…
But, really though, I wonder how interesting a bunch of circus performer will be? Surely we won’t have Dick flying around a trapeze for 8 whole seasons? The actor would age past his origin as Robin…
Impressions: Baltimore Comic-Con 2008
I’ve been to a fair number of conventions, but this past Sunday was my first time going to a strictly comic convention and I have to say the experience was pretty extraordinary. Several of the other conventions I’ve been to have also been in the Baltimore Convention Center, and as we walked in my first reaction was that Baltimore Comic-Con was a lot lower-key than what I expected but as I’ll discuss shortly this can actually be quite a good thing. I will preface all of this by saying that we did not attend on Saturday, which can be expected to be busier but Sunday is almost always a day that winds down to a quiet end. I was not sure what to expect, and I was definitely not sure what kind of things we’d be covering as press at the event, but in hindsight it’s actually a great event to simply cover as a whole. I realized that we should let people know about the convention itself rather a few small presentations or snippet news announcements.
The convention may not have seemed like much from the outside, but it definitely filled the main exhibit hall to the brim. The hall was split almost exactly half-and-half with artists, publishers, and other people of the trade on one side and vendors / stores on the other. We started by walking through pretty much all of the artist/publisher side and spying a few people we wanted to talk to, some signatures we wanted to pick up, and several comics we wanted to buy (directly from the creators, no less)! [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Hits Podcast #12: Interview with Scott Kurtz of PvP
At Baltimore Comic-Con 2008, we caught up with Scott Kurtz of PvP fame. We talk about the D&D Podcasts, ask him about his D&D character, and get a little advice about starting your own gaming webcomic.
Critical Hits Podcast #12: Interview with Scott Kurtz of PvP (5 minutes long, 3 MB)
Two minor scoops within: they are considering putting together more of the D&D podcasts with him and the Penny Arcade guys, and Scott is considering moving to Seattle.
If you are an aspiring webcomic artist, be sure to grab his new book: How to Make Webcomics.
Heroes Season 3 Premiere: Both Awesome and Horrible
The following rant/review contains spoilers. It assumes you have watched the two part season premiere.
I finally got a chance over the weekend to watch the TiVoed season 3 premeire of Heroes. In Season 1, I had found myself watching the first few episodes, giving it a pass for most of the season, then picking it back up near the last quarter of so of Season 1 and really enjoying it. Then Season 2 was abbreviated due to writer’s strike and other issues and ended up not being terribly exciting one way or the other. (The fan theories about it were far more entertaining than what actually ended up happening.)
Season 3 is their chance to show what they can do with a full season that doesn’t have to waste any time on establishing the series. You know who most of the characters are, you know the powers, you know the big players. This is their chance to finally pull off whatever grand plots they want to towards an established audience. Did they pull it off? Well, yes and no. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: Who Reads Comics?
We should have provided an over/under on last week’s poll, I’d be curious to see who would have guessed that 52% of our voting readers are married gamers. Coming in at second is 28% of you who are gamers and single, 16% are gamers and in relationships, with only 5 votes (3%) in the gamer that doesn’t fit into one of the the above categories and 4 votes (2%) who are not gamers at all. Thanks to everyone who shared more details about their relationships (or lack thereof) in the comments!
Yesterday Dave and I spent a few hours at the Baltimore Comic-Con, which was my first time there and Dave’s third Comic-Con, so neither of us are particularly seasoned veterans (we’re more accustomed to gaming conventions). It was a very enjoyable experience and we’ll both be posting a few things about it over the course of the week, so keep an eye out for those if you’re into comics! Naturally, that leads us to this week’s Inquisition where we’d like to find out what kinds of comics our current readers like to read.
Loading ...Feel free to share some of your favorites in the comments!
Preview: "Dr. Who RPG" and "Starblazer Adventures" RPG from Cubicle 7 Entertianment
While wandering around the GenCon 2008 exhibit hall, one booth caught my eye: Cubicle 7 Entertainment, which had signs all over the booth advertising the upcoming Dr. Who RPG. I’m a huge fan of the new Dr. Who series, so I had to stop and ask about it. (I also remembered playing in a Dr. Who one-shot years ago at a convention run by DarthCthulhu that I really enjoyed.)
Anyway, I asked about the new Dr. Who RPG at the booth, and while it’s not yet available, they were running occasional demos and were able to describe in broad strokes what the game will be like. The idea is to allow any kind of game that you want to run, all under the same rules. While you can do the classic Doctor and companions, you can also have a group of companions, multiple Timelords, or a Timelord, Companion, and Tin Dog. All combination will be possible and balanced within the rules, through use of a FATE points system. [Read the rest of this article]
Memorable Death/Moments in Comics…
… done with Peeps and Bunnies.
Strange and quite clever.
My favorite after the cut. [Read the rest of this article]
"Free comic like instant courage — only find it on Internet."
A few pieces of random Watchmen mania (Watchmania?)
First of all, this is genius.
Second, a Chip Kidd-designed Watchmen extras book is awesome.
Finally, while playing around with my new video iPod, I came across a Watchmen “motion comic” on iTunes. Only the first episode is up, but it’s free, so I checked it out. I expected to hate it- it’s kind of like Watchmen as a combination flash animation and audiobook (with one guy doing all the voices.) But it’s all there, including Dave Gibbons’s art, just… moving in slightly awkward ways. But the first time Rorschach’s mask moves around, you can see why someone thought this was a good idea. The first episode contains the entire first issue… so check it out for yourself if you’re a Watchmen fan who has tolerance for adaptations. (Here’s the link that opens in iTunes.)
YouTube of the Week: I am the niiiiiiiiight Edition
A funny/strange video of singing along to the Batman theme. I predict you will either love this or hate this.
