Roleplaying Stuff
The roleplaying game Wild Talents measures superhero settings on four color-codes axes. Red represents historical inertia, Gold the degree to which superbeings are fixed in their roles, Blue is the amount of weirdness in the setting, and Black is moral clarity. As a shorthand, then, the Wonderful World of Four Colors is Red 4, Gold 4, Blue 3, and Black 5.
In comics terms, the WW4C is very much a "Silver Age" setting.
Red 4
The WW4C is recognizably our own. Despite the existence of superheroes and other strange things, history has managed to stay mostly the same aside from some relatively minor cartographic changes. Even superscience inventions, aliens, and magic have done little to change the course of history.
Gold 4
People (and animals) with superpowers tend to become heroes or villains. It’s rare that someone will gain strange powers and not end up using them to either fight crimes or commit them, even if they intend to live a quiet life. It’s also rare for heroes and villains to switch sides, and when it does happen, it’s usually because a villain has seen the error of his ways, rather than the reverse.
Blue 3
There’s a lot of strangeness in the world, but it’s not an overwhelming amount and people mostly take it in stride. People generally don’t give a second thought to magic, ghosts, or aliens unless they’ve encountered them personally, but they also don’t spend much time denying that such things exist once they’ve seen the evidence.
Black 5
The WW4C is mostly a black-and-white world. The difference between good and evil is clear, and villains know that what they’re doing is wrong. When heroes do wrong, it’s the result of a momentary lapse, usually selfishness, and they will always try to correct it when they’ve seen the error of their ways. Even when a villain has an apparently noble motive, like protecting his country, in the end the noble motive is not the reason for the villain’s wrongdoing, but his justification.
The roleplaying game Wild Talents measures superhero settings on four color-codes axes. Red represents historical inertia, Gold the degree to which superbeings are fixed in their roles, Blue is the amount of weirdness in the setting, and Black is moral clarity. As a shorthand, then, the Wonderful World of Four Colors is Red 4, Gold 4, Blue 3, and Black 5.
In comics terms, the WW4C is very much a "Silver Age" setting.
Red 4
The WW4C is recognizably our own. Despite the existence of superheroes and other strange things, history has managed to stay mostly the same aside from some relatively minor cartographic changes. Even superscience inventions, aliens, and magic have done little to change the course of history.
Gold 4
People (and animals) with superpowers tend to become heroes or villains. It’s rare that someone will gain strange powers and not end up using them to either fight crimes or commit them, even if they intend to live a quiet life. It’s also rare for heroes and villains to switch sides, and when it does happen, it’s usually because a villain has seen the error of his ways, rather than the reverse.
Blue 3
There’s a lot of strangeness in the world, but it’s not an overwhelming amount and people mostly take it in stride. People generally don’t give a second thought to magic, ghosts, or aliens unless they’ve encountered them personally, but they also don’t spend much time denying that such things exist once they’ve seen the evidence.
Black 5
The WW4C is mostly a black-and-white world. The difference between good and evil is clear, and villains know that what they’re doing is wrong. When heroes do wrong, it’s the result of a momentary lapse, usually selfishness, and they will always try to correct it when they’ve seen the error of their ways. Even when a villain has an apparently noble motive, like protecting his country, in the end the noble motive is not the reason for the villain’s wrongdoing, but his justification.
I noted recently that work is being done to adapt "Wild Talents" to "FATE." This could prove interesting.
ReplyDeleteI went ahead and looked through the Wikipedia Listing of Disney Feature Films, which brought a couple of interesting bits to light. One was a movie titled "Moon Pilot", which aired in 1962 (between "The Absent Minded Professor," and "Son of Flubber," which posited a race of humanoid aliens living on our world, from Beta Lyrae, who are capable of interbreeding with humans.
ReplyDeleteI went ahead and looked as a comprehensive timeline of the movies that feature Medfield/Midvale College, various space aliens, and Condorman to came up with this:
1961 – The Absent Minded Professor
1962 – Moon Pilot
1963 – Son of Flubber
1964 – The Misadventures of Merlin Jones
1965 – The Monkey's Uncle
1969 – The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
1972 – Now You See Him, Now You Don't
1973 – The World's Greatest Athlete
1975 – The World's Strongest Man
1975 – Escape to Witch Mountain
1978 – Return to Witch Mountain
1978 – The Cat From Outer Space
1981 – Condorman
What do you think of this as a Timeline, keeping in mind of course the rest of the history that is posited by Disney?