Comics By Request

Some of these outfits already made an appearance, or were on their way. I recently sprang for more Comipo clothing DLC and this is the result. Aria has been dressing up lately to ramp up efforts to promote Leo's tech, and she dragged Leo along for the ride. Jason lent Summer a nice outfit , and has looked pretty dapper himself in presenting Quill Foundation to the world. Finally, this is my version of Agent Parker, who must always look both stern and professional. There's probably a suit with Ted Waters' name on it, but he's been absent from comics so far.

Along with the suits, the DLC also came with several sets of younger kids' clothes. Unfortunately I didn't find anything suitable for Adam, since it's all tees + shorts or similar very casual stuff, nothing that Gardner might find acceptable for classroom wear. Right now I've been using a full-scale male model for him, and then just dropping him down the Y axis to make him look shorter. He's also as generically white as any other classic character. With snap assets, I can assign him a consistent skin color if a different one makes sense. To distinguish him as 'different', I gave him the swirly-eye look, which isn't 'starfield skin' or even remotely close to it, but at least makes it clear that he's not an ordinary kid. There's a few new outfits that might look better for Harry in-costume, I'll be playing around with those when I have time and feel the muse. There's nothing that looks 'classic' enough for Charlotte, but I think the snap asset I have of her, with off-color skin, transparency, and the black outline looks suitably spectral now. I tried to follow Mike's palette of browns where I could, but the program is pretty limiting. :)

Here's an example of what the new DLC includes for kid models. Context chosen for maximum comedy.

Bill G. said: Context chosen for maximum comedy.

This feature of the DLC lets me mercilessly inflict feels on Dave and other players.

Oh, I loved it. And I was more than willing to overlook some nuance, with the medium (though, honestly, you include hella nuance in some 4-panel comics). 

Bill G. said: Here's an example of what the new DLC includes for kid models. Context chosen for maximum comedy. Which calls to mind a Plotagon I've had hanging fire for an episode or four... 

Bill G. said: This feature of the DLC lets me mercilessly inflict feels on Dave and other players. Dammit, Bill... 

I held back the mega-feels version of this picture, for emergency use.

With a couple new body and clothing types, I think I'm finally able to do justice to our intrepid AEGIS personnel: Craig Costigan and agents 1337, Waters, and Parker. 1337 was tough because Comipo is still very much riding the gender-binary train, but hopefully I've configured this model where you could see it going either way.

So why isn't Alycia rooming with JC now? It looked so promising.

HA! And Alycia would, of course, be completely clueless about the situation. 

Since we have twelve days until the next game, I present the Twelve Days of Christmasks, one per day. ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... A Brand New Low Level PC

It's after midnight and hence technically the next day so HERE WE GO ON THE SECOND DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Two Troubled Loves

Nice! 

It's not an emergency, but here's the mega-feels picture alluded to earlier . Obviously this ships Jalycia in a forward-thinking way... There's a giga-feels picture which will be posted at the appropriate time.

To balance that out, here's a depiction which I think is lovely and artistic. Ships JasonxSummer, as per  potential Alycia shenanigans . What do you think, sirs?

ON THE THIRD DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Three Mensch Friends Duskshine, Nono, and Maury, from " Riding Herd " & elsewhere. The Ponies are always heartwarming to write about.

Enjoying these a lot. 

ON THE FOURTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Four Coffee Serves "Cream and sugar?" "I like it black. Like my spectral aura."

ON THE FIFTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Five Bold Kings Okay so Charlotte would technically be a Queen or a General, but it sounds like the sword found her worthy of borrowing its power somehow so close enough? Anyway, here's people tied to the Excalibur legacy in some fashion.

ON THE SIXTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Six Geeks a-Playing Since it's Monday and hence game night, we're celebrating the players who made all this possible.

Huzzah! 

ON THE SEVENTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Seven Ships a-Shipping Uh-oh, the comic has been hacked! .... Nope, it looks like Parker has apprehended the culprit. Let's try that again. I didn't include Concord-Keri since it didn't feel like a traditional ship, but we'll acknowledge her as a Cool Big Sis somehow. Did I miss anyone?

Bill G. said: Did I miss anyone? I did, but not for long! A special treat for our devoted Lincord fans , the ship that started it all.

Someone looks like they've been having a lot of fun with these.  :P I love these Bill, great work as always.  Looking forward to five remaining days. I also appreciate the lack of any Concord/Keri shipping.  I prefer them as friends (though I also recognize shipping doesn't give a damn about creator preference) and prefer the Cool Big Sis thing.  Come to think of it, Concord is slowly building quite the family of surrogate older siblings...

Mike said: Come to think of it, Concord is slowly building quite the family of surrogate older siblings... Not just Concord, but certainly him too. I'm personally looking forward to the day when Jordan gets to meet Summer in her superhero guise, with holograms, and get the whole Power Rangers/Dinosaur experience up close. The parents may be wary, but winning them over is part of the challenge, and Jordan having fun would be the payoff. :)

Bill G. said: I'm personally looking forward to the day when Jordan gets to meet Summer in her superhero guise, with holograms, and get the whole Power Rangers/Dinosaur experience up close. The parents may be wary, but winning them over is part of the challenge, and Jordan having fun would be the payoff. :) Depending on how Doyce carries forward from the last game, that may happen sooner rather than later.

ON THE EIGHTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Eight Villains Villing We've fought a few other nogoodniks, but these are the eight villains who I personally felt made the biggest impact on us. We even asked each of them their thoughts about the team!

Bill G. said: ON THE SEVENTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Seven Ships a-Shipping Uh-oh, the comic has been hacked! Oh, God, the expression on Alycia's face. Delightful.

Getting her to make that face was the whole point of that comic. So worth it.

Bill G. said: Getting her to make that face was the whole point of that comic. So worth it. Well, the final Parker panel isn't without value, to be sure.

Bill G. said: Let's try that again. Okay, now I'm trying to remember if there was a Jarlotte ship, or if it's just a meta testament to Margie and me. :-)

You shipped Jason-Charlotte at character creation and a couple times after that, like during the body swap.

Bill G. said: You shipped Jason-Charlotte at character creation and a couple times after that, like during the body swap. Jason is a veritable fleet of ships.

ON THE NINTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Nine Techs Advancing Pictured: the Link Suit, Otto, Aria, holographic and carbon-allotrope/hybrid Summer, one potential version of Summer's armored-up form (from Black Magic M-66 , picture here for the curious), and three future developments that have been talked about elsewhere ! I've really enjoyed taking a few fundamental pieces of tech (modular combination, the carbon tech, neurotech) and seeing how many different genres or approaches I can approximate. We've gone from hard-hitting Iron Man/Hulkbuster/giant-robot to shiny Magical Girl in the same few characters, and maybe future iterations will hit other genres as well.

ON THE TENTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Ten Heroes Leaguing Rather than "evil twin/doppelganger", I like the more interesting twist that our game has: the HHL has (had?) a very positive public reputation, but are shot through with scandal, human foibles, and the occasional double-dealing or malice. We had mostly good interactions with four members, but the other ten on the wiki? Not so much. Never meet your heroes.

I think there is a lot of room available for further stories with the HHL -- dealing with (helping them deal with, suffering the backlash from the public regarding, suffering the counter-reaction from some of the HHL about) their failures. Depending on what the HHL are actually doing (or not doing) at this point, at what point does the city, or AEGIS, or someone else turn to the Menagerie -- or the JHHL, or perhaps both groups being approached by different parties -- to backfill for then on a job, ad hoc or longer term? Does the fact the Menagerie has disappeared for a spell have an impact on that? If nothing else, Jason Quill has been doing some investigating -- both online routines and through some private investigation connections he had through Rusty -- into Hecate. Depending what he finds (or where he finds her), he might commission the Menagerie to go do something about her.

*** Dave H. said: I think there is a lot of room available for further stories with the HHL -- dealing with (helping them deal with, suffering the backlash from the public regarding, suffering the counter-reaction from some of the HHL about) their failures. I'm definitely okay with this, and that's one thing that drove this day's comic. I plan to take the Beacon's Drives as Radiance's first advance, and one of those is "outperform an adult hero". Rossum has a backstory involving the HHL (specifically Streak), Doyce has mentioned there's more going on there, and I'm interested in seeing that. Two of our PCs are entering the ranks of the city's "adult" heroes, and will be compared/contrasted against them. And beyond all those things, yeah, it's just interesting to see how the city sees these people.

ON THE ELEVENTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Eleven Typists Typing We don't actually have 11 people typing stuff up, but it sometimes feels like it. From Dave's thorough recaps (and more recently the in-character versions of those) to everyone's cut-scenes and side stories, it really feels like we a living, breathing, thriving world surrounding the PCs. My continual regret is that James and Margie sometimes feel under-served by these forum posts, but even then they have contributed some cool stuff, like the two talks with Mercury and A10 which I thought were amazing. In particular, Summer's real development happened here, and she doesn't feel new or unfamiliar as a PC.

I'm constantly impressed by the variety and quality of what gets posted here. I'm pleased to contribute, but it's clear that things don't stand still when I'm on vacation. :-)  I could wish for more contributions from Margie and James (because they clearly have awesome things to contribute), but I understand why we don't see that.  Overall, I don't think I've ever seen as engaged a player community in an RPG, which speaks to the players, the GM, and the setting. Good stuff. 

ON THE TWELFTH DAY OF CHRISTMASKS, my players gave to me... Twelve Months o' Masking Our first session is dated August 15 of last year, which will be slightly more than two weeks after this Monday's game. That'll mean that the session that marks the one-year anniversary will be session 50 - and that in turn means we really only missed two sessions in a year of gaming with a group of six people. That's outstandingly good. I'm in no hurry to stop the game, and I hope other people feel the same way. We'll obviously end sooner or later - but it feels like we continue to have fun, and the game world has plenty of legs. The final comic features almost all the characters I've included in any comics. It's not as elaborate as Mike's work in progress , but I'm limited by my medium. :) EDIT: Otto got shuffled to the bottom layer by accident and I missed it, so he's been restored. Sorry Otto!

Rabbit ears over Parker's head. Classic. 

So if Jason is a goof, why does he have so many ships at sea?

Harry enlists some aid for his love life.

Here's a break from shipping and comedy strips.

Bill G. said: So if Jason is a goof, why does he have so many ships at sea? Yup. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that Alycia likes Jason for all the reasons that Summer outlines -- or, as Alycia reframes it, that he isn't  a "bad boy" (which, given her upbringing, is about all she knows, for a wide array of "bad"). He's not a menace to her, and appears to care, and he's smart.  He's also exasperatingly dim sometimes, by Alycia's judgment (which has its own massive blind spots), but that's more frustrating than it is a turn-off. Of course, if you told me that Alycia finds it hard to respect/understand anyone who would actually like her in a non-transactional or un-strategic fashion, I wouldn't disagree with you. If you told me that his being "a goof" is an excuse for her not to make a scary, vulnerability-producing emotional leap of faith, I wouldn't disagree with you, either. Being the angry / snarky person all the time is a very convenient way to never risk being the nice / trusting one. Which might also explain something of her attitude toward Summer, now that I think about it.

Mike has done some amazing work on costuming for Radiance, but it's not been easy. How is that going in-universe?

Ha!

To make up for torturing Jason with Alycia-esque costuming, here's something he'll hopefully appreciate.