New Bronze City is full of interesting people.

Here's another friendly NPC type for New Bronze City, my Bronze Age superhero setting. Actually it's premature to call it a setting. It's more of a setting concept with one or two finished ideas attached. I previously statted up an NPC called Space Geezer, who was inspired by a panel in an old issue of ROM. The character below was actually my daughter's idea, which makes me prouder than you can possibly imagine.

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Karate Gorilla
Oomoo of Karate Island

Fighting: Incredible (40)
Agility: Good (10)
Strength: Remarkable (30)
Endurance: Remarkable (30)
Reason: Excellent (20)
Intuition: Good (10)
Psyche: Good (10)

Health: 110
Karma: 40
Resources: Poor
Popularity: 0

Contacts: Oomoo is on good terms with the Secret Masters of Karate Island. He's also friendly with the staff and regular's at Louie's Diner, where he is currently employed.

POWERS

Climbing: Karate Gorilla may move 4 areas per round when climbing. He can hold on materials rated up to Good difficulty, including trees and most forms of urban landscape.

TALENTS

Martial Arts A, B, D. Tumbling. Acrobatics. Oomoo is fluent in several languages and well-versed in the liberal arts of many nations. He is also one of the best fry cooks in the city.

BACKGROUND

No one knows the circumstances that led the Masters of Karate Island to teach a gorilla the martial arts. Speculation at Louie's Diner maintains it was a bet. The source of Oomoo's superior intelligence and education is also a mystery, as is the secret ingredient that makes his meatloaf so tastey.

Oomoo is normally a laid back guy who is happy to work his shift at Louie's and relax in his appartment with some tea and the newspaper. But don't get him angry or he'll bust out some ape-fu on you.

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So there you have it. Karate Gorilla is a little more SpongeBob SquarePants than would fly in a serious campaign, but for New Bronze City he'll work just fine. I tried googling up a good drawing of a gorilla in a karate outfit, but the internet let me down just a little bit. Fortunately I did find this PhotoShop jobbie:

The joys of ROM #24, part 2

In issue 24 of his book, Rom teams up with Nova to defeat some Skrulls, who are attempting to conquer the planet Xandar. Rom fights the Skrulls alone while Nova, an Earth kid with Xandarian superpowers, seeks to free the Champions of Xandar from imprisonment. Things look desperate for Rom, but the local populace decides they aren't going down without a fight.

Holy crap, but that old guy with the mustache is awesome! And the eyebrows! And the outfit! Why this guy doesn't have his own 12-issue miniseries is beyond me. It's a tragedy that his only appearance in the mag is this one panel. This unnamed Xandarian reminds me of half the oldsters in my Masonic lodge: tough as leather and not taking any crap from the likes of you!

In fact, I so dig this dude that he served as the inspiration for the first fully statted character in New Bronze City!

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Space Geezer
Gee-Zar of Zandaria, pensioner from the stars

Fighting: Incredible (40)
Agility: Good (10)
Strength: Typical (6)
Endurance: Poor (4)
Reason: Remarkable (30)
Intuition: Excellent (20)
Psyche: Remarkable (30)

Health: 60
Karma: 80
Resources: Excellent
Popularity: 0

Contacts: Space Geezer is on good terms with many of the old guard of the Zandarian Space Corps. Locally he has limited but friendly contact with the Zandarian Embassy to the UN.

POWERS

Inhuman Grumpiness: Once per day Space Geezer may attempt a Psyche FEAT to enter a fit of righteous fury, boosting his physical abilities for 1-10 rounds. A red result boosts his Fighting, Agility, Strength, and Endurance by two ranks. A yellow result boosts the same stats one rank. After the period of enhancement all of Space Geezer's physical abilities drop to one rank below normal for 1-10 minutes. A green result boosts a physical stat of Space Geezer's choice by one rank, but with no subsequent rank reduction. If the Psyche FEAT yields a white result nothing happens but Space Geezer cannot attempt further Grumpiness for 1-5 hours.

TALENTS

Marksman, Martial Arts A & C, Pilot (including spacecraft), Military, Leadership

EQUIPMENT

Ultrium Swagger Stick: Space Geezer occasionally carries a metal cane of alien design. It is made of an unearthly alloy of Amazing material strength. When wielding it in hand-to-hand combat Space Geezer does +1 rank of damage. The head of the cane contains a laser emitter capable of doing Excellent damage at a range of 4 areas. The power of the laser is variable and can be turned down so as to light cigars or toast bread.

BACKGROUND

Gee-Zar served 8 terms with the Space Corps, the mighty military machine of the Zandarian Star Empire. He's seen fighting all over space, participating in most of the colonial wars of the last three decades. When Sergeant Major Gee-Zar reached mandatory retirement age he pulled a few lucrative mercenary tickets and then opted to settle down on a shiny little planet outside of the major interstellar trouble areas. His pension keeps him very comfortable on this backwater world and his only trouble's nowadays is the occasional local hooligan in need of a drubbing. And frankly, Gee-Zar enjoys the workout.

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Incidentally, if you look back up at that panel you'll see that old guy's left fist is behind the blonde woman in the foreground. But there's a second purple gloved fist on the left side of his body, completely visible. I think the penciller intended the visible fist to belong to the dude to the left, the guy in the green. The colorist's decision to make that guy's fist purple confuses the image and almost makes it look like the elderly gent with the mustache has two left arms. That confusion actually worked to my advantage when I tried pulling the old guy out of the panel with a paint program.

Always remember...Yeah, I'm digging up a year old meme here, all for a character I just made up. I have no shame.

The Paul Czege Effect, Part 2

In part 1 of the Paul Czege Effect I described how Our Hero Mr. Czege came up with a hella-tight technique for distinctive and flavorful supers campaigning. In brief he recommends constructing your own super naming conventions so that you don't end with a world filled with the likes of Fill-In-The-Blank Man and Captain Whatever. It's a great idea, but Mr. Czege forgot somewhere along the way with great powers comes a great responsibility to be awesome, and instead chose to use his technique to support serious, mature superhero gaming. Think about that for a minute. Serious, mature superhero gaming. Let's ask our good friend Captain America what he thinks of serious, mature superheroing, shall we?

Oh, that's right. He's too busy punching the crap out of Hitler to be able to weigh in on this issue.

(Man, that cover never gets old.)

As regular Gameblog readers already know, I don't do serious or mature in my gaming. I save that crap for when I put on a tie and got to work. For me, a game has to pass the Three Trashmen Tests to be good: Is it loud at any volume? Is it annoying to grown-ups? And most importantly, is it stupid? Any game that says 'yes' to all three question is aces in my book.

Fortunatelty, Mr. Czege's basic technique ("new naming conventions") can be put to work in support of non-serious, immature play agendas. Just for grins, I'm going to outline the naming conventions of New Bronze City, a setting I just made up. New Bronze City is meant to sorta evoke Marvel Manhattan circa 1979 or so, without being tied down too much to its inspiration.

Rather than stick to one single rule like Czege's "all names must have prepositions", I'm going to build my naming conventions as a series of Do's and Don'ts. In the section below I'll be dropping the term 'Element' a lot. Don't freak out. I'm not trying to beat you with some new jargon. It's this simple: Superman's element is 'super', Captain America's element is 'America', The Hulk's element is 'hulk'. Got it?

New Bronze City naming conventions

Don't name your super Element Man, Element Woman, Element Boy, Element Girl, Element Lad or Element Lass. Man/Woman/Boy/Girl are too bland. Lad/Lass makes me think of Silver Age DC.

Do name your super Element Guy, Element Gal, Element Dude, Element Chick, or Element Kid. Guy and Gal work best with whitebread types, while the cool cats use Dude and Chick.

Don't name your super [Military Rank] Element unless your character actually holds that rank in a military. Similarly, avoid things like King Element unless the character actually is royalty.

Don't name your super Captain Element, ever. Captain is just overplayed, man.

Do name your character Mr. Element or Ms. Element.

Don't name your character Doctor Element unless they have actual medical skills. Too many civilians will assume you're a medical doctor, like that one time Higgins from Magnum PI ended up delivering a baby because he mentioned that he was a doctor. Doctor of Mathematics, that is.

Do name your character Professor Element if the super in question is some sort of egghead. No one cares if they are really a professor or not.

Don't name your character The Element unless they are really, truly badass. If you think you can stand up to The Doom or The Bat you can use The Element. Otherwise, don't go there.

Do call yourself Element [Name] where [Name] is a relatively short and common civilian name. Examples: Zombie Joe, Atomic Rodriguez, Amazing Heather.

So that's how you name the characters in New Bronze City. It's a little quirky, a little retro, and noticeably different from just another Marvel of DC ripoff setting without being so far off the beaten track as to confuse players.