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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shadow" data-source="post: 1447000" data-attributes="member: 16760">Hey folks.  Sorry it's been so long getting the latest Shadow episode up... SP's been deathly ill, and I've been harried beyond belief in my job - I'm a tutor at a university, and finals week can get pretty hellish!  But now spring break is here, a blessed week-and-a-half of relaxation, and I thought it'd be fun to explain a bit about the Shadow's origins.  (Note that there's an oblique minor spoiler about the Shadow's latest adventure in here - the one right after the capture of Matt - so you might want to read that first.)As I think I've said before, the Shadow was my very first superhero character.  I'd played D&D before, but that's it.  Nor even that extensively, as I had no regular group to play with.  I was introduced to Champions by the versatile SuentisPo, who I met my sophomore year in college - and though I tease him often, he's still bar none the best GM I've ever met, in any genre you care to name.  (Except horror.  Not because he's not good at it, but because he's SO good at it that people refuse to let him run it.  Well, that, and the unholy light that enters his eyes every time he suggests it...)  But superheroes are a favorite of his, and it didn't take long for him to convince me and Loren (a childhood friend of mine at the same university) to try it out.I chose to emulate the "historical" Shadow for several reasons.  First, well, I'm just That Kind Of Guy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  When it comes to gaming, anyway, I'm devious, smooth-tongued, and sneaky - I'm not that way in real life, honest!  (While I love playing wizards because magic fascinates me, I do a great rogue.  In fact, my best D&D character of all time is a gnomish thief-illusionist named Thrimble... but that's for another thread sometime.)  I've been a big Superman fan since childhood, but I just couldn't see myself playing somebody like him...  A power set suited to my personality and habits was a must.Second, I have fond memories of my Dad telling me about the radio stories he'd listened to as a kid.  He was especially fond of "The Shadow" - though I've since found that his memory deceived him in a number of details. (It's ironic that many of my readers are much bigger Shadow experts than I am myself!)  My Dad, for example, was the source for the "rare African herb" that gave the Shadow his power to cloud men's minds... an error that is by now so ingrained in the character that I keep it around even though I know it has no bearing on the radio hero.Anyway, the Shadow has gone through a number of incarnations over the years... He's always been an Alex, but not this Alex, if you see what I mean.Shadow I was thrown together with two other superheroes all unwitting in a short-lived campaign.  He produced his first immortal line in that first scene...  Bear in mind that he is the only one of the three with a backstory of crimefighting; the other two had either only recently decided to try it (the wizard) or had only recently come into his powers (the werewolf).Picture this:  It's a dark alley late at night.  The Shadow is tailing a two-bit hood, hoping to get a lead as to his master's whereabouts.  He's visible;  I can't remember why, probably his mental invisibility required effort back then.  Anyway, the other two PC's happen to be in the same alley independently, looking for suspicious activity.At that point, SP rolls several handfuls of dice for perception and Shadowing checks (as you can imagine, I've gotten ribbed a lot about the name of that skill over the years...  And yes, Alex always had a lot of it).  When the dust settles, he informs me of what the Shadow is cognizant of:The hood seems blissfully unaware that he's being tailed.  PC #1, a scrawny little guy in a suit (the wizard) is rather ineptly attempting to tail the Shadow;  he doesn't seem to be aware that the hood is even there.  Meanwhile, PC #2, a burly guy in an overcoat (the werewolf) is rather ineptly attempting to tail the wizard.  He, for his part, doesn't seem aware of either the hood OR the Shadow.  Finally, the wizard, despite the werewolf's ineptitude, has no clue he's being followed himself.The Shadow's response to this parade?  "What is this, Amateur Night?!"  (Followed shortly - after the howls of laughter died down - by the Shadow invisibly slamming the wizard up against a wall and demanding to know what the heck he thinks he's doing.)It was also in this game that it was established that the Shadow was of a distinctly empirical bent;  he refused to believe in magic, insisting it had to be explicable somehow.  (This from a telepath!)  The wizard PC hadn't been able to come up with a codename for his character;  the Shadow dubbed him "Mr. Wizard" (after the old science show) and it stuck. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Anyway, that campaign only lasted a couple adventures... but I enjoyed playing the Shadow so much that I recycled him shortly after in another game.  Shadow II was a sometime associate of a fairly conventional superhero group (he's not much of a joiner).  He didn't really fit in with that sort of setting, but I had fun anyway.  Major plotline:  A villain named Nighthawk, a thorn in the Shadow's side, proved to be his long-lost younger brother.   (Note that SP and I deliberately designed the current campaign with nostalgia in mind.  Many of the intriguing facets of previous Shadow games have been allowed for here - for example, this Alex has a long-lost (half-)brother as well, who might conceivably be up to mischief.)It was also in this game that the Shadow encountered his trademark villain, his nemesis:  The mentalist known as Hexmaster.  He was considerably tougher on the mental plane than the Shadow;  it took all my wits (and the brawn of the rest of the group) to take him down.  He was a recurring villain, along with his two henchmen, Mutater and Leech.  (He had a third goon, a brick named Ogre, but he was never a real threat to an invisible mentalist.)  The Shadow was very leery of them both - Leech, a drainer, was absolutely fascinated by the Shadow's powers and wanted to steal them.  Mutater, for his part, with a little time and effort could shapeshift enough to spray choking clouds of uber-skunk musk around... being invisible doesn't help much against area attacks, I'm afraid.   It got to the point where the Shadow would turn invisible at the mere sight of either of them and start maneuvering... which prompted Leech, that creep, to say, "Dang!  Why's he so shy?!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I fully anticipate that SP is saving these guys up for the current campaign once some of the current story arcs die down - and I'm both eager and terrified to see how he'll do them in gritty modern fashion, rather than over-the-top four-color.  (Think about it - a GM with SP's horrific bent could do some really nasty, scary scenes with a shapeshifter in particular. ... Er. I just realized.  That barbed ape-thing might just pass for Ogre...  Eep!)Shadow III was in another short-lived but fun game.  Loren (who had played the werewolf against Shadow I) was playing a mystical master of dreams.  It was at this time that it was established that Alex was a scientist;  his disbelief in magic became a firm characteristic.  The two were quickly established as foils, arguing about this topic.  (This is a subtext to Alex's ribbing Hal about the "magic" phone that outsiders won't have picked up on.  You can bet that SP did!)Shadow IV was, again, a member of a fairly standard group.  Hexmaster turned up again, but the big adversary (not exactly enemy) of the group was Gravitar, who was basically Magneto to our X-Men.  Well, him and the Purifiers, an anti-mutant group.  The Shadow developed a distinct distaste for their combat robots;  his invisibility wouldn't work on them.  Memorable scene:  We're trying to stop Gravitar and his gang from robbing a warehouse... Gravitar slams us all to the ground with his gravity powers and declaims, "Alas, the tragedy that my fellow mutants should oppose me, even when I try to rob the Purifiers!"SP was a bit taken aback when the whole group said in near-unison, "This place belongs to the Purifiers?!  Well, why didn't you SAY so?!"  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  We did demand proof of his assertion, and his plans for what he wanted to do with the stuff he was stealing, but once we were satisfied, we merrily helped him rob the place. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Gravitar became a useful contact for the group thereafter (he turned out to be the British ambassador to the US), although we did often have to oppose him in earnest.  (I suspect, though I'm not sure, that this was where SP gained some key insights into what could be done with reluctant adversaries and friends whose interests don't always align with those the PC's.  At any rate, those insights later blossomed into one of his finest NPC's ever: Amazing Grace.)  Also on this occasion, the Shadow stole an energy pistol from the Purifiers, and was quite fond of using it thereafter - I think that touch of high-tech was what inspired me to create Hal Garrity later on.At this point, the Shadow went on the back burner to simmer.  I started playing a new superhero character, the Phantom (no relation to that silly guy in purple) who proved to be my longest-running PC ever (and in one of SP's longest-running campaigns ever), and until recently I would have said he was my "best".  (Not counting an online character I played on a MUSH for seven years, a knight in Roger Zelazny's world of Amber - but that's not quite the same.)  Years later, most of the gaming group was dispersed, save for the three who had always been the central core:  Me, Loren, and SP.  And we still wanted to game, but the dynamics of the smaller group sometimes proved a challenge that stretched me and Loren as players, and SP as a GM.Anyway, we played a couple fascinating duo campaigns - one involving the Phantom and his friend Erebus (alone, rather than with the rest of their "Shadow-Force" group).  I even had a couple short but very memorable solo campaigns with SP, that seriously stretched both our ingenuities.  (We learned that one can get a LOT more into character development in a solo setting.  There's no problem, after all, with one player getting all the attention! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  But soon we were in the mood for something new.We had fond memories of one of the last campaigns of the full group - a GURPS Psionics game in which SP had experimented with a gritty, "realistic" modern setting and found that he was scarily good at it.  (The group were psis on the run from the government, who wanted to control their powers.)  Furthermore, the "Dark Champions" supplement had just come out, and SP was all afire to try it out.Well, thought I to myself thought I, who would make a better Dark Champions character than the Shadow?  He'd never really fit into a traditional four-color group anyway - too much of a loner, too much given to sneakiness and recon.  And so Shadow V was born.He was a new creation from the ground up.  For the first time, I created a fully-fleshed backstory for him.  (I'd learned a lot - both about him, and about gaming - since the time he'd gone on the back burner.)  His wife Jennifer was detailed.  His career was fleshed out.  Perhaps most of all, I gave him a teenage son, David.  Loren - an award-winning author - chose to create a character based off of one of his own memorable short stories, "The Fix".  (Type "Loren Cooper" into Amazon and check him out - I promise you won't be disappointed.  If you think I write pretty well, I assure you that he's completely out of my league.)That campaign - for some reason, we usually call it 'the Shadow game', or sometimes 'the Dark Champions game' - was pure magic.  One of the best I've ever played in.  The Shadow and the Forbidden shared pathos, grit, ruthlessness, humor, and in the end, an abiding warm friendship - two extreme loners who managed to forge a bond.  They complemented each other well as crimefighters, as well - the Forbidden is a truly frightening melee opponent, especially in a "realistic" world, while the Shadow can turn your brain to mush just by looking at you.  (And worse, you can't even SEE him looking at you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />A lot of the power of the campaign flowed from Alex's sometimes-rocky relationship with David as well.  Perhaps it shouldn't have, but it came as a complete shock to me when SP revealed that David had inherited mutant powers - super-strength and regeneration, among other things.  (But, "David I" was not an instinctive fighter like David II is.)  There were some very painfully interesting scenes in which David got caught sleeping with his girlfriend (not Twyla - this girl, Wendy I think her name was, has since moved with her family out of LA).  Alex is rather straight-laced about that kind of thing.Amazing Grace was a major factor in this game - and she IS amazing.  You haven't seen her in all her glory, yet.  And perhaps you won't any time soon, because the really interesting part was wondering what the hell she was up to, and whether she could really be trusted or not.  She was a character that you just couldn't help liking, even though you suspected you probably shouldn't.  She's courtly; she may be a prostitute, but she carries herself like a queen.  And she's just plain sweet!  She might poison your wine, but you'd enjoy her company while you drank it.  She's like that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The Shadow's first meeting with her was hilarious - to me, not to him. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  He was investigating an organized crime ring, and suspected that she was involved somehow.  (He had no idea at this point that she was a telepath too.)  He's skulking about her house, and comes upon her typing away at her computer.  So he tries to slip into her mind... and she notices."Well well, who's there?"  SP rolled way too many dice of Mind Control, and it seized the Shadow hard.  (Her abilities work much better on men than on women.)  She gently extracted from him his codename and his purpose for being there, but didn't pry into anything else.  (That would be rude.)  Except for one thing.  "Since you're in my home uninvited, I think it's only fair that you take off your mask.  Don't you agree?"  Yes, she managed to force Alex to show his real face to her.  "Thank you.  It's been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, and do come again... though you can knock like a civilized person next time, all right?"It was strangely inoffensive, because both I and the Shadow knew perfectly well that she could have done a lot worse to him.  She became an on-and-off contact for the Shadow and the Forbidden.  And to give you an idea of how inimitable she was, when a shapeshifter impersonated her, the two of them saw through the disguise right away.  The shifter had her physical form down, but just couldn't pull off her sense of style;  she was tawdry, overdone, rather than, well, graceful.  I think it's a supreme compliment to a GM, frankly, when your players can tell when one of your NPC's is being impersonated without any obvious clues!Unfortunately, the campaign came to a crashing halt when SP made a fatal misstep - he dangled Rose in front of the Forbidden.  Alas, John had no other motive for fighting crime than his life-hunger.  We had a final climactic adventure in which David was kidnapped and tortured, which drove Alex into a killing frenzy.  (There was no mercy.  None.  N-o-n-e.  He is NOT a guy you want to make really mad, as Johnson is gonna find out.)  Grace was instrumental in locating him and helping us recover him;  and she sat up with him for hours in the hospital.  But in the end, John shook hands with Alex and wished him a good life, then fled with Rose into the Sierra Nevada.  He'd never once mentioned the Council;  that was all backstory.SP and I did a scene between Alex and David over the whole Shadow 'night life' thing, but didn't have the heart to continue the game without the Forbidden.  The group moved on to other things... mostly we got consumed with work and the other tedia of real life.  (Except for SP, who has the good forture to live with four other gamers, the lucky dog!)  Occasionally we got together for a one-off, but that was it.Fast forward several years.  My gaming starvation was reaching epic proportions.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  (I'd given up MUSHing a couple years previous as it was just plain too addictive.)  D&D 3e came out and the three of us discussed it excitedly - it reawakened a lot of nostalgia for the old days.  (We'd given up on D&D out of contempt for the system, or rather the lack of a system.  d20 was something of a revelation.)  But none of us had time to do anything about it.  (The three of us did make a point of going out together to see the Shadow movie when it came out, though, for old times' sake.)Then Loren discovered Mutants & Masterminds, and loaned the book to us.  We were in awe.  Champions the way it should have been from the beginning!  Simple, elegant, flexible, masterfully done.  We just had to do SOMETHING.  What?  Well, Loren ran one fun game of M&M, but hasn't had time since to continue it.Finally, SP got a new cell phone account that gave him free minutes in the evening.  He offered me a solo game in the evening, one night a week.  I leapt at the chance.  We agreed we wanted to play M&M.  What setting?  We agreed further that we were getting really nostalgic for some of our old games.  SP:  "I'll give you a choice.  We can revive the Shadow game, or one of our old solo games."  Well, I just had to play the Shadow again.Shadow VI proved remarkably easy to design in M&M.  Champions had always strained at handling mental invisibility;  it was doable, but it just never felt right.  With M&M, it was a breeze!  (And had the happy side effect of also easily expanding Alex's power to make other people and things invisible too, as well as letting anyone he wanted see through the illusion - which had been a problem in the old days.  We chalked this up to growing experience since the Forbidden left.)  But as I wrote up his background, I had the itching sense that I was missing a piece to the puzzle.  What made Alex tick?  Why was he the way he was?It came to me in a flash of blinding insight.  I suddenly realized that Alex was not in control of his powers.  Never had been.  He put up a good simulation of controlling them, but really he was only containing their raging power, thinning his shields selectively to let them rush out on someone else.  Why, though?   It was clear that this had been shaping his entire life since childhood - it explained why he was so stiff, so formal, so reserved.  Why should he be so out-of-control, though, when other telepaths like Grace were not?  Partly, no doubt, because he'd had a really hard life.  But that couldn't be the whole story.The next insight was when I remembered how sickle-cell anemia works, as well as other genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis.  Having one sickle-cell gene is actually good for you;  that's why it persists in the population, otherwise it'd die out quickly.  It's having two that's deadly.  Thus I came to write the "Genetics of Psionics" - which also showed me that Alex had to be sitting on a raging volcano of power.  He had to be a really good and strong man, despite his obvious crotchets, to contain it without being destroyed by it.  That, and... Of course.  Jennifer must have been immune to the vibes that had alienated him from his peers.  What did that say about David?  And so on... by that point, Alex's father's powers (and their psychological effect on him) wrote themselves.  (SP's dictum that the new Shadow universe had only psi powers inborn helped here.)The next blinding insight was that Alex had been changed by his time with the Forbidden.  He was no longer content to be a loner;  he wanted company.  Plus, the original game had taught me that having reliable information sources was a must.  The M&M "Minions" feat beckoned.  So did the "Sidekick" feat.But the juices didn't really flow until I took those ideas and put them together with an idea for a character who'd been knocking around in my head for a long time.  A scrappy Mexican kid with a good heart, named Carlos.Carlos was originally intended as a "sidekick" of sorts for a online character of mine, an elderly Dominican priest on EndlessMUSH with mystical powers.  Brother Jordan was merry, wise, insightful, fun to be around... and 800 years old, though he didn't tend to mention that much. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Anyway, Brother Jordan befriended a college student in the California university town the MUSH was centered on, and the player and I hit it off.  I'd already been thinking that Brother Jordan needed a foil, and the idea of Carlos was born... I suggested it to this other player, he really liked the idea (he turned out to be Brazilian in real life, and said he'd never actually played a Latino character and was looking forward to it), but unfortunately it never came off;  he had to leave the MUSH, which shortly thereafter fell apart.The original Carlos was a homeless street rat of about twelve.  He had an innate gift for seeing to the heart of things, which was why he loved Brother Jordan on first sight.  (Jordan was a bulwark against the supernatural forces of evil.)  Suddenly I realized that gift could have an interesting interplay with a guy who could turn invisible.  And... that if I made him a few years older, I could introduce some really powerful dynamics of jealousy and insecurity with respect to David, as well as exploring just what "family" means to a guy who can read minds.  From there, the idea of him being a gang member was completely inevitable;  his story wrote itself.Once I had that much, I produced the rest of the campaign material in a creative frenzy.  Isn't it great when stuff flows out of you like that?  I don't think I have EVER created so many interesting NPC's in so little time - and I wasn't even the GM! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />   I think I'm proudest of Hal Garrity - I must have really hit a nerve, because when I described him to SP, he instantly caught on to the bizarre ways the guy's mind works.  The way SP plays him is EXACTLY how I envisioned him from the beginning.  I'm also very proud of Maria Volanti, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of her.SP also does an incredibly fine job with Carlos - the only exception being he (SP) knows no Spanish, and so doesn't pepper in a few words and phrases the way I did in "A Night Off".  Also we haven't really developed the banter angle as much as I would've liked, but heck - it's not like they haven't had PLENTY on their minds lately! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The final crowning touches came in "A Night Off", which taught me a lot about Alex that I hadn't yet known.  I learned he likes to cook, and is good at it.  I learned that Alex's heart has unexpected depths of love, but that he's terrified of hurting the ones he loves.  And I learned how badly he needs boundaries between his Alex-life and his Shadow-life.  The hat on the banister knob became the symbol of his need to separate the two lives, and a warning of the consequences of mixing them.  I learned that the drug he uses is not really necessary, but purely psychosomatic - a crutch to let him believe that he's just an ordinary guy in his "real life".The rest you know.  It's been quite a ride, hasn't it?</blockquote>

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