Monday, February 20, 2012

Digging into the discount comics bin

Like most folks I'm having to watch my budget closely these days, and as a result my gaming purchases have taken a serious hit of late.  I still go to the "local" comic/game shop when I can (the only one left in town now), they recently put out several big boxes of old comics for 25 cents a piece! Woo Hoo!  I found several cool looking comics, I'll be talking about more of them later, but one that gave me some surprising fodder for gaming was this one. Warheads, its a Marvel UK short lived series from the '90s.

The plot is perfect for an RPG Campaign.  The Warheads are mercenaries working for a secretive group known as MYS-TECH.  This powerful multinational (planar?) corporation has found the secret of accessing and somewhat controlling wormholes via techno-magic and sends these mercenaries through portals to other worlds/dimensions/times to steal alien tech and artifacts for the company to use for some serious profit, supposedly the mercs get a percentage of the cut, but the characters receive limited training and die off pretty regularly, 3 died in the first issue alone. Sounds pretty OSR doesn't it! "Oh Sh*t Run!"
     There's more to it but that in and of itself sounded pretty darn cool to me. 
Seems like a great way to put together a mix of different characters, all low-level with a reason for being together and going out to get their butts kicked. Throw in some guns, alien tech, magic, monsters and you've got the makings of a fun campaign!
Now to decide on the mechanic? I first thought maybe Stars Without Number which could work fine, and has a nice Psionics System, I considered Terminal Space (and that would definately be cool) but for some reason and folks may think I'm crazy for this, I'm thinking about using the X-plorers RPG!  I mean the basic premise behind X-plorers is your a team of Troubleshooters sent out to "Fix" stuff.  Heh heh heh.
Anyways just thought I'd share my rambling thoughts.  Needless to say I was quite please with my .25 cent purchase.  

8 comments:

  1. That does sound like an awesome campaign. As much as I love X-P, I'd go Terminal Space.

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  2. It is hard to go wrong with a .25c comic, but that issue sounds like a gem for mining ideas. I remember those marvel UK books from the 90s. There were a number of them if I remember correctly. Were the some kind of alternate marvel universe?

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  3. I love your excitement. Twenty five cents is a great deal. Woohoo.

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  4. That's a great deal. Sounds like a fun read and a gold mine of gaming inspiration. I haven't seen a 25 cent comic since 1968. :)

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    1. That kind of inspiration is always welcome, Bill! You can't have too much of this. :)

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  5. BlUsKrEEm yeah, narrowing down the right mechanic/system is a struggle for my Gamer ADD... hmmmm what to run this with? Argh!
    Jason, there were several different lines, in fact they apparently glutted the market back in the day which is partly why the lines were discontinued. Actually they were in the main Marvel Universe.
    Whisk, Thanks! Always a pleasure to have you dropping by. : )
    LuckyJoe I don't remember seeing actual 25 cents cover price comics, I think they were 35 cents when I started collecting. : )
    Spielmeister, Thanks!! Good to see you around, been missing you blog posts!

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  6. I ran a WarHeads Campaign this back in the beginning of the 00s.I used Werewolf The Apocalypse & Mystech as a rival to Pentex. The best source of info. is here http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix2/warheadsmuk.htm
    Damn you Bill! Now I might have to dust off my notes & get this goin'!

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  7. Needles, I would love to see your campaign notes from your old campaign that sounds like a blast! Sorry for distracting you! LOL
    Well not really! : )

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