Comics & D&D/d20
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MeepoTheMighty
First Post
My problem with comics is there's so much out there, and I have no idea where to get started. I feel like I don't know anything at all about comics and I'd essentially be closing my eyes and pointing - and even then I'd be in the middle of a story arc and have no clue what's going on. 
Can anyone reccomend some good comics for a newbie?
Can anyone reccomend some good comics for a newbie?
Each Cross Gen comic has a sysnops of the story so far on the back of the front cover. The past issues of each comic are also collected in graphic novels so you don't have to find all the back issues if you really want a blow by blow play.
To get a sampler, one can also get either the FORGE or EDGE monthly anthologies for $12 each which reprints the issues put out six months ago, with the older comics sometimes getting two or three extra issues so it is like getting 7 or 8 comics at half price.
Fantasy titles from Cross Gen
Sojourn (classic fantasy)
Mystic (High Fantasy)
Ruse (Victorian steampunk/pulp)
Scion (Classic Fantasy with tech floruishes sort of the opposite of Star Wars)
To get a sampler, one can also get either the FORGE or EDGE monthly anthologies for $12 each which reprints the issues put out six months ago, with the older comics sometimes getting two or three extra issues so it is like getting 7 or 8 comics at half price.
Fantasy titles from Cross Gen
Sojourn (classic fantasy)
Mystic (High Fantasy)
Ruse (Victorian steampunk/pulp)
Scion (Classic Fantasy with tech floruishes sort of the opposite of Star Wars)
pensiv
Explorer
Meepo, a good thing to do would be to go to your local comic store and peruse their graphic novel section. Find a comic you might be interested in and buy the first graphic novel, if a relatively recent series, or a recent novel of one of the longer running comics. I'm going to list some here. They aren't really related to D&D/d20, but they're good reads.
I'll always recommend The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman, to new and old comic readers. Those comics have all been collected as graphic novels, and the latest edition of those are numbered in order of publication. The first one is titled Preludes and Nocturnes. The Sandman is horror/fantasy taking place, for the most part, in the present day and chronicles several stories dealing with the Lord of Dreams and his siblings: Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium, Destiny, and Destruction.
Batman is a great superhero character as well. Recently reprinted is the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller, which regards an aging Batman recently coming out of retirement. One of the best Batman stories out there.
Another super-hero classic is The Watchmen, by Alan Moore, which is less flashy and powerful super stuff, but has a gritty, solid story, envolving the state of individuals that fight crime in costumes, and the world's failing romance with them.
The New X-Men has recently begun a story that is quite open to new readers. The first issue of that series is #114, and the graphic novel that collects the begining several issues is titled New X-Men: E is for Extinction. Theres a second graphic novel called New X-Men that's a follow up to that one and from there you'll be pretty much up to speed enough to start buying the latest comic issues. If you like that author, Grant Morrison, also pick up The Invisibles
I think that that's a good start to get into comics.
EDIT: I'm adding a list of other titles to take a look at. That is, they are quite accessible for the newbie. These are available as graphic novels unless otherwise noted.
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright
From Hell
Ghost in the Shell
Akira
Blade of the Immortal
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Lenore
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1898
Jimmy Corrigan
Saga of the Swamp Thing
Miracleman
Daredevil: Born Again
Preacher: Gone to Texas
Fables(recently started, currently on issue #4)
Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway
Black Orchid
Hellblazer: Original Sins
Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street
X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga
I'll always recommend The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman, to new and old comic readers. Those comics have all been collected as graphic novels, and the latest edition of those are numbered in order of publication. The first one is titled Preludes and Nocturnes. The Sandman is horror/fantasy taking place, for the most part, in the present day and chronicles several stories dealing with the Lord of Dreams and his siblings: Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium, Destiny, and Destruction.
Batman is a great superhero character as well. Recently reprinted is the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller, which regards an aging Batman recently coming out of retirement. One of the best Batman stories out there.
Another super-hero classic is The Watchmen, by Alan Moore, which is less flashy and powerful super stuff, but has a gritty, solid story, envolving the state of individuals that fight crime in costumes, and the world's failing romance with them.
The New X-Men has recently begun a story that is quite open to new readers. The first issue of that series is #114, and the graphic novel that collects the begining several issues is titled New X-Men: E is for Extinction. Theres a second graphic novel called New X-Men that's a follow up to that one and from there you'll be pretty much up to speed enough to start buying the latest comic issues. If you like that author, Grant Morrison, also pick up The Invisibles
I think that that's a good start to get into comics.
EDIT: I'm adding a list of other titles to take a look at. That is, they are quite accessible for the newbie. These are available as graphic novels unless otherwise noted.
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright
From Hell
Ghost in the Shell
Akira
Blade of the Immortal
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Lenore
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1898
Jimmy Corrigan
Saga of the Swamp Thing
Miracleman
Daredevil: Born Again
Preacher: Gone to Texas
Fables(recently started, currently on issue #4)
Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway
Black Orchid
Hellblazer: Original Sins
Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street
X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga
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A quick and dirty conversion of Scion.
I picked up my latest copy today and couldn’t resist especially since 1.) The roleplaying potential for the Lesser Races just expanded, 2.) I firmly think that the Scion world would be rather easy to do with current DND rules and not modification (My biggest beef on AD&D was that its campaign sets would spend most of its page count making a square peg of rules fit into a well rounded world – to muddle my metaphors.).
Races:
Players who consider Lesser Races have to be aware of the choices they have to make since the Lesser Races are in a new stage of their history. The current concepts for such a character are:
An escaped slave or servant who has found sanctuary on the Tournament Isle and is currently helping build the first nation of freemen
A bounty hunter looking for such escaping slaves
A member of a criminal band who stalks the wilderness for helpless humans and keeps away from the bounty hunters
A servant of the Heron Kingdom or a slave in the Raven Empire
In looking over the DND races, it comes obvious that the Half-Orc is going to be a racial bonus set that is going to see some major usage – especially since a main character, Exeter who is a bounty hunter, is a 9 foot tall monstrosity. So I decide to switch the Half-Orcs favored class to Ranger.
The criminal and outlaw Lesser Races seem pretty bitter about humanity creating them and their fighting style displays a lot of ferocity. So I need a race that I can make Barbarian. Except for the bounty hunter types, most of the Lesser Races seem shorter than man. So I pick the next race that’s known for it’s fighting ability, Dwarves. I haven’t seen these outlaws have a need for stonecunning, but perhaps they also scout the ruins of the Lost Age looking for new technology they can use to strike out at their human masters.
So with the short thing in mind I make the Gnome and Halfing racial bonus sets as acceptable races, though I make their favored class Commoner. Yep, the commoner class since these subraces have never had a chance to develop any real adventuring skills. It also brings home that any adventure skills they get are brand new to them.
I really couldn’t find an excuse to include the racial abilities that elves get. Perhaps I could use them to turn the Heron and Raven aristocrats into subrace. The favored class would have to change, though since the “magic” of Scion is high tech. The comic hasn’t show us a “wizard” or a “techie” character yet, though that might change soon since one character, Nadia, is from the forgotten east and has a bionic arm. On the other hand, the aristocrats are the few characters (except for the Lesser Race assassin in the last issue) who use technology. Perhaps I’ll borrow the Scientist class from Dungeon#90/Polyhedron’s d20 Pulp game. Then in their off time, the aristocrats can create all of the laser swords and holographic sighted cross bows they need.
Tech:
Tech is like a medieval version of Star Wars, so regular magic items should work, especially if they are set up like the items in the Scientist class.
Ecology:
Despite that the Lesser Races are obvious hybrids of human and animal DNA, a group was once attacked by a something that was obviously modeled after a dragon. And the SCIFI.COM page had a great article on how to make a living dragon http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue275/labnotes.html
Now if Scion would just print up a map.
I picked up my latest copy today and couldn’t resist especially since 1.) The roleplaying potential for the Lesser Races just expanded, 2.) I firmly think that the Scion world would be rather easy to do with current DND rules and not modification (My biggest beef on AD&D was that its campaign sets would spend most of its page count making a square peg of rules fit into a well rounded world – to muddle my metaphors.).
Races:
Players who consider Lesser Races have to be aware of the choices they have to make since the Lesser Races are in a new stage of their history. The current concepts for such a character are:
An escaped slave or servant who has found sanctuary on the Tournament Isle and is currently helping build the first nation of freemen
A bounty hunter looking for such escaping slaves
A member of a criminal band who stalks the wilderness for helpless humans and keeps away from the bounty hunters
A servant of the Heron Kingdom or a slave in the Raven Empire
In looking over the DND races, it comes obvious that the Half-Orc is going to be a racial bonus set that is going to see some major usage – especially since a main character, Exeter who is a bounty hunter, is a 9 foot tall monstrosity. So I decide to switch the Half-Orcs favored class to Ranger.
The criminal and outlaw Lesser Races seem pretty bitter about humanity creating them and their fighting style displays a lot of ferocity. So I need a race that I can make Barbarian. Except for the bounty hunter types, most of the Lesser Races seem shorter than man. So I pick the next race that’s known for it’s fighting ability, Dwarves. I haven’t seen these outlaws have a need for stonecunning, but perhaps they also scout the ruins of the Lost Age looking for new technology they can use to strike out at their human masters.
So with the short thing in mind I make the Gnome and Halfing racial bonus sets as acceptable races, though I make their favored class Commoner. Yep, the commoner class since these subraces have never had a chance to develop any real adventuring skills. It also brings home that any adventure skills they get are brand new to them.
I really couldn’t find an excuse to include the racial abilities that elves get. Perhaps I could use them to turn the Heron and Raven aristocrats into subrace. The favored class would have to change, though since the “magic” of Scion is high tech. The comic hasn’t show us a “wizard” or a “techie” character yet, though that might change soon since one character, Nadia, is from the forgotten east and has a bionic arm. On the other hand, the aristocrats are the few characters (except for the Lesser Race assassin in the last issue) who use technology. Perhaps I’ll borrow the Scientist class from Dungeon#90/Polyhedron’s d20 Pulp game. Then in their off time, the aristocrats can create all of the laser swords and holographic sighted cross bows they need.
Tech:
Tech is like a medieval version of Star Wars, so regular magic items should work, especially if they are set up like the items in the Scientist class.
Ecology:
Despite that the Lesser Races are obvious hybrids of human and animal DNA, a group was once attacked by a something that was obviously modeled after a dragon. And the SCIFI.COM page had a great article on how to make a living dragon http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue275/labnotes.html
Now if Scion would just print up a map.
jpayne1138
First Post
A real American hero
Image is printing a new G.I. Joe comic book, and Marvel is reprinting the old series (more than 150 issues). Now THAT is a comic worth turning into a role-playing game. And with things like d20 Modern and d20 Afghanistan out there, you would think it wouldn't be that difficult. Here's to the day when I can play Snake-Eyes.
Yo, Joe!
Image is printing a new G.I. Joe comic book, and Marvel is reprinting the old series (more than 150 issues). Now THAT is a comic worth turning into a role-playing game. And with things like d20 Modern and d20 Afghanistan out there, you would think it wouldn't be that difficult. Here's to the day when I can play Snake-Eyes.
Yo, Joe!
Prince Atom
Explorer
I was looking at CrossGen myself, except that I was trying to find a way to model the sigil's granted power first and worry about things like races later.
The only CrossGen comic to feature more than one sigilbearer as regular is Meridian. They've had some crossover issues, and one new line, Negation, has plenty of sigilbearers, but the main character isn't one himself.
Mind, I'm getting the comics over the web (except for Scion, which I'm picking up in novel form), so I'm not up to date.
I was thinking that the sigil granted a dice pool of 1d6 per character level. This pool refreshes once per day. You can use any number of dice from the pool to do various things:
*Add to die rolls. You can roll several d6s and add the result to any roll except d% rolls. Thus you can make yourself temporarily better at a skill, or do bonus damage of a certain element. These effects apply to one roll, and you must declare the use of the extra dice before you roll.
*Channel raw energy. You can just deal raw energy of a certain type; select a number of d6s and roll them. The target takes that much in damage on a successful touch or ranged touch attack. Energy resistance applies. You must choose how many dice of damage and what sort of energy you use before rolling the touch attack. You can also use energy to enhance the touch attack (as above), but dice used in such manner cannot be used to deal damage. You can channel acid, cold, fire, electric, or sonic energy to deal damage, or positive energy to heal yourself or others. Each effect is measured in hit points.
*Emulate spells. You can discover and emulate any of the spells in the Player's Handbook with the energy. You can only discover spells like a sorcerer learns them, but to cast them you only need to sacrifice one die per spell level. If the spell belongs to more than one list, use the highest level given (ignore domain levels if there are others present). The spell functions as if cast by a sorcerer of your level.
I'm concerned the last option is broken. Why channel raw energy to deal 5d6 fire damage (and use 5 dice) when you can emulate fireball to deal 5d6 fire damage (and use only 3 dice). I don't like the idea of coming up with a new class or spell list because that's not in keeping with the spirit of CrossGen -- which pretty much says anyone can be given the sigil, and can use it to do anything if they just discover how.
Some examples: Sephie (Meridian) heals others and flies all the time. Sometimes she smashes things. Ethan (Scion) heals himself pretty quickly (he came back from near death at least once) and creates a sword of energy. Sam (Sigil) can blast things apart, teleport (plane shift?), and doesn't need to breathe or wear a suit in vacuum; he is also able to manipulate objects and shape them to suit him. Giselle (Mystic) doesn't seem to use any energy by itself, but the sigil enhances the spells she casts and has trapped the various guild spirits in her (AFAIK).
Comments? I'd really like to be able to use the existing mechanics in a modified form than come up with a new system that might be very difficult to use.
TWK
The only CrossGen comic to feature more than one sigilbearer as regular is Meridian. They've had some crossover issues, and one new line, Negation, has plenty of sigilbearers, but the main character isn't one himself.
Mind, I'm getting the comics over the web (except for Scion, which I'm picking up in novel form), so I'm not up to date.
I was thinking that the sigil granted a dice pool of 1d6 per character level. This pool refreshes once per day. You can use any number of dice from the pool to do various things:
*Add to die rolls. You can roll several d6s and add the result to any roll except d% rolls. Thus you can make yourself temporarily better at a skill, or do bonus damage of a certain element. These effects apply to one roll, and you must declare the use of the extra dice before you roll.
*Channel raw energy. You can just deal raw energy of a certain type; select a number of d6s and roll them. The target takes that much in damage on a successful touch or ranged touch attack. Energy resistance applies. You must choose how many dice of damage and what sort of energy you use before rolling the touch attack. You can also use energy to enhance the touch attack (as above), but dice used in such manner cannot be used to deal damage. You can channel acid, cold, fire, electric, or sonic energy to deal damage, or positive energy to heal yourself or others. Each effect is measured in hit points.
*Emulate spells. You can discover and emulate any of the spells in the Player's Handbook with the energy. You can only discover spells like a sorcerer learns them, but to cast them you only need to sacrifice one die per spell level. If the spell belongs to more than one list, use the highest level given (ignore domain levels if there are others present). The spell functions as if cast by a sorcerer of your level.
I'm concerned the last option is broken. Why channel raw energy to deal 5d6 fire damage (and use 5 dice) when you can emulate fireball to deal 5d6 fire damage (and use only 3 dice). I don't like the idea of coming up with a new class or spell list because that's not in keeping with the spirit of CrossGen -- which pretty much says anyone can be given the sigil, and can use it to do anything if they just discover how.
Some examples: Sephie (Meridian) heals others and flies all the time. Sometimes she smashes things. Ethan (Scion) heals himself pretty quickly (he came back from near death at least once) and creates a sword of energy. Sam (Sigil) can blast things apart, teleport (plane shift?), and doesn't need to breathe or wear a suit in vacuum; he is also able to manipulate objects and shape them to suit him. Giselle (Mystic) doesn't seem to use any energy by itself, but the sigil enhances the spells she casts and has trapped the various guild spirits in her (AFAIK).
Comments? I'd really like to be able to use the existing mechanics in a modified form than come up with a new system that might be very difficult to use.
TWK
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The Whiner Knight said:
The big question is what option are you going to take with sigil bearers, one per party as in most CrossGen stuff, or a whole party?
If you prefer to have the whole party play this option, then real question become how fast do you want the party to have to Sigil power and how does that power manifest (So far, what I have seen in the books is that Sigil energies allow flight, energy blasts, protective shielding, super strength and the ability to siphon off such energies from others – so no real spell-like effects so far.)
Depending on how fast you want the party to access the Sigil power level, you could go from taking off the restriction of Favored Classes and allow free multiclassing into spell caster/psionic classes up to just granting a spell caster/psionic level with every class level earned (effectively halving XP). A template may work as well.
If the Sigilbearers are the rarity in the group, it gets trickier.
Then you might want to look into Action Dice and Spycraft psionics, or Farscape’s Control mechanic (which is similar to Spycraft Action Dice and Psionics, but in a simpler fashion where you only have to buy one book.) You could also use the d20 Star Wars classes, the conversion is either edition isn’t that hard. Even a template would work, but you would have provide an ECL for it.
Overall, when I am tempted to do a CrossGen d20 game, I don’t think about the Sigilbearers. I am more attracted to the world itself. In fact, CrossGens last couple of new series (Ruse and Route 666) don’t have Sigilbearers. At least none who we know about yet.
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