2013 -- the Year of the NUELOW Superhero?

This month, we're launching our series of comics collections (each of which will have game material, unlike the Robert E. Howard series where it rarely happened), but Steve Miller (me... speaking of myself in third person again) will also be writing stats and backgrounds for a series of characters that are being created by artist Carter-Ethan Rankin.

Like so many of our other projects, this effort is grounded in material that is in the public domain. Unlike so many of our other projects, Rankin's characters are brand new. He's designing their look, naming them, giving them a basic back story, and releasing them into the public domain for everyone to use (or abuse) as they see fit.

One of Rankin's creations I find particularly striking.
But will anything I write resemble the back-story he created?

If you're familiar with NUELOW Games' output, or if you have spent any time whatsoever with me at a gaming table, you know that I have a habit of reinventing characters and places as I go--oftentimes because I know better than the original creators. (For an example of this, check out ROLF!: Bat vs. Cat, where the NUELOW Black Cat is actually quite distinctive in her background from the Harvey Comics character she is based on. And, in the forthcoming His Honor and... The Demon book, I am editing and re-writing some word balloons and captions so the Black Cat's origins are changing from the Harvey one to the NUELOW one. At least that's the plan. We'll see if I ultimately like the result and follow through.)

So... as this project goes forward, some of the characters will be close to Rankin's creations. Others will be further afield, as I just appropriate his art and yoke it to something entirely different -- like we did with all the heroes featured in ROLF!: POTS vs. PANS.

Captain Bananahammock... he'll stay pretty much as Rankin created him.

At the end of all of this, I'm hoping that L.L Hundal and I will have finished the ROLF! superhero game that she's been futzing around with for the past several months. She's not yet happy with the modifications she feels need to be done to the character generation rules. When she's ready. I'll be hitting up you Gentle Readers to see if any of you want to do a little play-testing.

In the meantime, the superheroes that will be appear here in blog posts will use the rules presented in ROLF!: Something About Superheroes (which you can download for free) and ROLF!: Mad Scientists Gone Wild!. I'm confident that whatever Hundal ultimately does with character generation in the supers game, it's not going to impact the utility and compatibility of the characters in this series (and the eventual product that will emerge from it).

(Captain Bananahammock, and both images used in this post, are available for use by anyone, with only one condition is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving them, in order that others may use this property as they wish. That said, any specific NUELOW Games text and creations surrounding the art are under copyright of NUELOW Games and myself; the character and idea are free for anyone and everyone to use. The displayed image has been declared public domain to give creators a starting point. To quote Carter-Ethan Rankin: "All rights reversed.")

Watch for the arrival of superheroes, right here at the NUELOW Games blog!