(From “Green Lama” number 4, 1945.)

The person who can come up with the funniest replacement dialog for the following panel will win either any item they like, or a portrait, to be included in the final HeroMachine 3 application!

As usual, the rules are simple:

• No limit on entries, but all entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post;
• Keep it clean — dialog should be appropriate for late-night broadcast television;
• All entries are due by next Monday, when I’ll pick a slate of finalists that the community at large will then vote on.

Thanks once again to Glenn3’s “Say What Pictures” collection of blank dialog panels.

(Original art and characters ©DC Comics, Inc.)

I believe we had the most entries ever in a HeroMachine Character Design Contest this time around, but I’ve finally sifted through the excellent submissions, distilling the Finalists and our overall Winner for “Character Contest 41 – Art Martial“! Thanks to everyone who took the time to enter, I had a lot of fun looking through these.

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The votes are in and you the readers have spoken — the winner of Caption Contest 81 is Frankie!

This makes three pending contest prizes for Frankie, so I’ve given him the option of combining the item rewards into a custom black and white character illustration instead, if he wants. If I don’t hear from you, Frankie, I’m going to assume you don’t want any of the prizes and instead revert them to some sort of community-choice kind of thing.

(From “Sure Fire Comics” number 2, 1940.)

(From “Green Lama” number 4, 1945.)

(From “Green Lama” number 4, 1945.)

Back in the day, myy buddies and I used to run a lot of “Champions” campaigns, the points-based super-hero role playing game. One of my favorite features of that system was the idea of Disadvantages — to pay for your character’s powers, you had to choose various personal, social, mental, or physical weaknesses he or she would also have to deal with.

What I liked about it so much was that it forced you to think through your character more thoroughly than the standard 3d6 D&D style method. You had to not only worry about what they could do, but what they couldn’t, and why. A lot of times their quirks made the sessions way more interesting than they would have been otherwise. For instance, one of my main guys, Cavalier, had a Psychological Limitation that he was a reckless daredevil, which led him at one point to teleporting onto the nose of a fleeing enemy fighter. Not smart, but fun.

So my RPG Corner question for you this week is, what disadvantages have you used that you thought were the most original, unique, or fun, and how did they influence the campaign you were in?

On a related note, what do you think the Disadvantages are of your favorite published character? Obviously you have Superman’s “Vulnerability to Kryptonite” and “Vulnerability to Magic”, but do you think Batman has “Psychological Limitation: Can’t resist taking on underage boys as partners”? Or Spider-Man has “Unable to Keep a Steady Job”?

(From “Green Lama” number 4, 1945.)

Thanks again to Hammerknight for putting together this great beginners’ guide. This is part 2, you can find part 1 here.

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