Super-Soldiers And Super-Spies For Fate Accelerated.

Many of you probably know that I am a fan of the Agents of SHIELD show on ABC. With the Captain America The Winter Soldier movie coming out tomorrow, I decided that I needed to put up something inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe that was gameable. This mini-setting for the Fate Accelerated rules (although you can just as easily use it with Fate Core) hits the spot that I was looking for. It gives a Gm the starting framework to build a campaign using the Cinematic Universe as an inspiration, while creating your own adventures.

You can download the PDF over here. Let me know what you think either here, over at G+ or on Twitter.

J.J. Armes: The Original Real Life Super-Hero?

Over at the website grinding.be. Klint Finley has put together an interesting history for J.J. Armes. Who is J.J. Armes?

The first real-life superhero may have been J. J. Armes, a private detective who has been active in El Paso since 1958. His super power? A gun implanted in one of his prosthetic hook that he could fire with his biceps — without using his other hook.

Forget Phoenix Jones, J.J. Armes was doing this back in the 70s and he even had his own line of toys.

I had a J.J. Armes action figure as a kid. Did I realize that this was based on a real person? Hell no! He had hooks for hands, for crying out loud! How cool was that?

Real life is always going to be stranger than fiction, and I think that the Life and Times of J.J. Armes demonstrates that. This also demonstrates how real life can inspire your role-playing games. I can't think of a better NPC for a modern espionage or military game. Just look at this quote from the Wikipedia page:

In 1958, after briefly working as an actor in California and returning to El Paso, Armes started his private investigative agency, The Investigators. In 1978, he launched The Investigators Security Force. Designed as a mobile patrol and security service, this branch of the organization served the community for a number of years until the patrol division was discontinued. Today, The Investigators Security Force specializes in domestic government contracts and industrial security management abroad.

How is that not readily made for a campaign? Why aren't you stating out J.J. Armes in your favorite RPG right now?

h/t to Bleeding Cool for the piece that reminded me about J.J. Armes.

Using The Internet To Help With Your GMing

Google rolled out a new toy on Google+, the ability to take G+ posts and embed them anyplace that will allow embedding HTML code. This can be cool for sharing things, but it will also have the potential for abuse as we start to see an upswing in "Ha! Ha! Look at what this idiot said" posts on blogs.

However, it is a good way to share gameable information. For example, I shared this post earlier today on Google+:

+Dirk Puehl's post gives GMs a great inspiration for an NPC. Marie Laveau can be used as the basis of an NPC in any variety of campaign, from fantasy to historical to even modern horror. The great thing is that the NPC doesn't have to be Laveau in order to inspired by her. Looking for a strong female character with connections to the occult world? There you go. File off some the specific details, or change them enough to fit into your game world, give her a new name and you have a brand new and fleshed out NPC for your game world.