Strikeforce 7

[Originally posted 26 August 2016]

I don't like Strikeforce chapter seven. I think the original events in the game were poorly thought out (by me), and when I looked back at it to write it out as a story I couldn't make it work in any sensible kind of way.

So my options were to omit the chapter entirely or to do a major rewrite of the "real" events. Missing out the chapter wasn't actually an option -- a major group of characters have to be introduced, The Defense [sic] League of America, and as they will play a part in several future chapters this initial meeting with Strikeforce had to happen.

So instead, I went for a re-write. The events you will read are not really what happened when we played the game, I've cut out some confusing elements and given a whole new explanation for the fateful meeting, but it's covering the same ground in broad terms. Some of my changes may cause some problems down the line, but I can anticipate them and accommodate them with more minor changes in future chapters. I'm happy that the integrity of the narrative is preserved.

But I'm still not happy with the chapter I've presented. Sorry if it reads poorly, but it's all I've got.

Role-Playing Games

[Originally posted 14 August 2016]

I've mentioned more than once that this entire work of fiction is based on a game, and I'm long overdue for explaining what I mean.

Before it was a web site, the Heroes Universe was a Role-Playing Game (hereafter referred to as RPG for short).

RPGs have been around for more than 40 years, with Dungeons & Dragons being the first and probably best known example. Obviously they are games, and they involve a group of people sitting round a table and moving pieces around, but other than that they're completely different from how "traditional" board games work. For a start, they take place mostly in the players' heads rather than on an actual board.

In an RPG, players don't compete against each other, they work as a team to solve some puzzle, problem, or conflict. One of the players creates the puzzles for the rest to solve. He is traditionally called the "Games Master" (GM). Some games use different terms, but I prefer GM so that's what I'll use here.

That's an RPG in a nutshell. But that's very superficial. To understand better, we have to look at how the GM creates the "puzzles" for the players.

First, I don't mean a simple puzzle like, "Rearrange these matchsticks to make a triangle". I mean a puzzle like, "You have been sent back in time to the year 1987 where you have to stop an extra-dimensional threat from destroying the universe." Ok, from now on let's say "plot" rather than "puzzle," because that's basically what I've just described. That sentence could be the plot of a novel.

Once the GM has the plot, he needs to create a setting to put it in. So he creates a world -- he thinks up some background details about the 24th century, comes up with the idea of a super-powered police force, and so on. Next, he needs an antagonist for the plot -- let's say, a super-powerful robot from some place called "Dimension W", who is sending a signal to summon his invasion fleet. Finally, he needs to know how the puzzle can be solved -- let's say smashing the robot's communication machine is the answer, but let's make it difficult by protecting it with a force field, and furthermore having the army unwittingly helping the villain.

That's the GM's job finished. (Well, the easy part of it. He has more to do later.) All of this springs entirely out of the GM's head, of course. He's bought a rule book for the game, but that doesn't tell him what plot to use. He has to write his own plots. And he's the only player involved in the game so far; he's shut in his room on his own writing all this down ready for when the rest of the players come round on Saturday. (Being a GM is a good job for people who like writing stories. That's why I do it.)

Now the players come in. The GM describes the idea behind the game to them -- "You're police officers in the 24th century." That's literally all he needs to tell them. Well, he might need to elaborate on details, but at the moment the setting is all they need to know. He doesn't tell them the plot in advance, because the game happens when they uncover the plot for themselves.

As the GM is responsible for supplying the plot for this story, so the players are responsible for supplying the characters. The GM will ask each one of them to create a character that could fit into the story he wants to tell. Based on the background he's revealed so far, one player might say, "My character is a futuristic secret agent trained in espionage and unarmed combat", another might say, "I'm a genetically-engineered human, faster and tougher than ordinary men". Another might give the GM a complete headache by saying, "I'm a demon!" (Great, thanks, did you miss the part where I said I'm doing science fiction?)

The rule book the GM has bought will give rules that allow him and the players to define exactly what their characters can do -- how fast they are, how strong, how good at fighting or sneaking around -- but that's not the important part of the character. The important part is when the player says, "My character loves reading old comic books and always dreamed of being a super-hero, that's why he's in the super-police. Also, he makes bad puns." That is a character. That's what you need to know when you read a story: not how fast the character can run but why he's doing what he does.

Everything is ready. Then the actual play of the game starts, and the GM's actual hard work starts.

First, he describes where the characters are, why they are there, and what they can see. "Your team reports as ordered at the Institute for Temporal Studies, teleporting there [he has explained how his future world works, so they know about teleporting around the world] as a group. Two guards are at the door ... and Nightflyer's intuition is giving him bad vibes about them."

Then the players describe their actions: "I'll challenge the guards," "I'll punch one of them," and so on. That's why its called a role-playing game. Each player plays the role of a character within the game world. You try to act "in character" -- speak as you have decided the character will speak, pretend that you know only what the character should know, say that your character is doing things that make sense for the personality and motivations you have created for him. None of us are under any delusions that we are great improvisational actors, but in effect that is what we are doing.

The GM will determine the results of the players' actions (this is where the rule book often does come into play, as you might actually need to know how strong or fast the character is to decide if their actions succeed) and describe what happens next. Then the players (acting "in character") give their responses, and the story is driven forward.

While the players are acting the roles of their characters, the GM only (!) has to act the role of every other person in the universe. The two guards at the door? That's me. The villains inside? That's me. The chief of police? Scientist? Computer? All me. Everybody the players' characters might interact with in the world has to be created and acted out by the GM. Sometimes I've played multiple characters at the same time, arguing with myself while the players watch. Oh, and at  the same time I'm making sure we use the rules properly, I'm trying to be fair about allowing their actions to succeed or not, I'm weighing up the implications and deciding what should happen next if they do/don't succeed, I'm remembering what plot secrets I have and haven't told the players yet, remembering everything the players have told me about their characters, and desperately hoping I will be able to think up an answer on the spot for when the players ask me something about the world that I haven't thought of in advance.

Because obviously, although the GM knows how he wants the story to go, he has no control over what the players might do at any given decision point. Perhaps they misunderstand a clue he gives them and go the "wrong" way. Perhaps they react in a way he didn't expect. Perhaps they ignore the villain completely and spend four hours arguing among themselves. (Yes, I have have had afternoons like that.) Literally anything can happen when the characters created by the players meet the plot created by the GM.

And that's what the GM loves. Because for four or five hours on a Saturday afternoon, he and the players are literally making up a new story, set in a world he has created. We call it a game, but the truth is, it's a collaborative work of fiction.

And that work of fiction, documented over the course of almost 30 years, is what you're reading on this web site.

I designed the world, but it's not my story. It's theirs. Ours.

Unity

 [Originally posted 6 August 2016]

I've just been sorting out some formatting problems on Heroes issue 6 and thought, "Wouldn't it be a nice idea to say some words about writing it?" Don't read this post until you've read the actual issue!

First, the title: Unity. The meaning is obvious (Temple of Unity) but I liked how it fitted with part two of this storyline, Zero, which you will read in issue 7 (and also has an obvious meaning, as you will see). Is there hidden symbolism in the title? Sometimes I try to do that with the titles, but I don't think there is here. There is certainly no unity within the team... indeed, they're barely a team at all and are trying their best to fall apart in this issue.  One of James's catchphrases will become "We're not a team, we're a group." Though I'm not sure when I'll actually work that into his dialogue in an issue.

Narration is in the form of Fred's blog. It's not likely that Fred is actually publishing all this stuff in a blog on line, not when he's supposedly on the run and keeping a low profile. But it suits the narrative purpose, so let's suspend our disbelief.

Using Fred as the narrator lets "him" tell us his background. Rather than go into great detail into his "origin story", I've shown just one scene from his past, and devoted only one page to it. But it's a vital scene, and really everything you need to know about Fred is in that one page. I may have mentioned already that Fred was created by David Allan, not by me (I need another post to explain where all this story originates...), and this page is my "fictionalized" description of the background Dave verbally gave me. I think Fred is an amazingly deep and complex character, and that makes him hard for me to write, but scenes like this one just write themselves, because I can so clearly see in my head how Fred would narrate it, his voice is just so strong. And I can't take any credit for that.

In a couple of previous issues I've adopted the format of page one being a compact scene told in six panels, with page two being a single big panel to show a big group or action shot. I've done it here again, and I think I'll try to stick to it because I like how it works. Here there's no action, just a group "portrait".

In fact, there's no action in the whole issue, really. It's just a lot of people talking. The plot of this issue is actually really minimal: the group hears of some dodgy goings on, go and investigate, and Sara gets kidnapped. It's a simple story, but one with repercussions. It will become more apparent in part two, next issue, but there's more to the Temple of Unity than meets the eye. I put a lot of effort into working out the whys and wherefores of the organization, and we're only scratching the surface here. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying this encounter is the start of something that will become very important further down the line.

But although the story is important in introducing the Temple, the main thing in this issue is the relationships we start to explore. I've deliberately left a lot unsaid, and hinted at far more than I've revealed. I'm not sure whether this makes readers intrigued or annoyed, but this series is planned to run for a long time, and I want character details to unveil themselves naturally as time goes by rather than being dumped in massive blocks of exposition.

Page three. Fred handily recaps the plot so far. This may seem a bit redundant, as the previous issues are there for you to go and read, and anyway it's only been a couple of weeks so you've surely not forgotten what's happening. But the point isn't to tell you what's happening. It's to tell you what Fred thinks about what's happening. I could summarize the plot six times with six different narrators, and each one would be different. By the same token, as each character does something fairly unimportant on the next couple of pages, we get to hear what Fred thinks about each of them. This is why I like the rotating narrator idea, and I'll certainly be sticking with it. (Over in the Strikeforce story, I'm not doing that. I'm doing an omniscient third-person narrator, with random interjections by the Computer as a kind of secondary narrator. But I'm doing a lot of things differently in that story.)

Did I just say the characters are doing unimportant things? That's not actually true. They may be trivial things, unimportant to the plot, but I've chosen them to say something about the characters in every case. And that's important. Consider:

James. He's writing a journal of his adventures. We learned from his narration back in issue 2 that he learned how to be a hero from his father's journals. So of course he's writing his own journal. Everything James does is to live up to the ideal set by his father, and sometimes he interprets that need too literally. Also note that in a century when everyone's using computers and phones, James is writing on paper with a pencil. Why? Well, trust me, there are important reasons. I'm just not ready to reveal them yet.

Harry. We still don't really know -- not really -- whether Harry is real or whether Paul has multiple personality disorder. Fred thinks he knows. But consider this: where did Paul, an office-bound clinical psychiatrist, pick up an intimate knowledge of vintage firearms? It's not conclusive evidence, but I'm just throwing it out there.

Chi-Yun, the shape-shifter, is printing photographs of herself. "So I don't forget when I change." Oh my God. That's just... that idea just breaks my heart. What must that be like for her? It's... no, I can't imagine what that's like. It's awful. But as a concept, it's genius. No, I didn't come up with the idea. But I wish I had. I love Chi-Yun. There's more to her than you (and Fred) expect.

Sara. We don't really get much insight into Sara here, just her reactions  to Chi-Yun. But that's ok, her time will come. I've got a lot to say about Sara, but I'll let her say it herself (starting next issue, as it happens).

And then there's Don, steady, reliable, calm and in control. He's the driving force behind the whole narrative at the moment, though for various reasons that can't continue. I'll get to that in time...

And you know what? My word count tells me I've written 1100 words, and I've only covered the first four pages, which is ridiculous. I'm going to stop this here, and if anyone really wants me to continue with the next 18 pages you'll have to tell me. But I'm not going to do this with every issue, that would just be insane.

Heroes: A Comic?

[Originally posted 17 June 2016]

The heroes story is written as a comic. Except, if you read it, you might find an oddity. Something important is missing...

A comic book has pictures. Everybody knows that. Which makes creating a comic book problematical when you can't draw.

Until, one day, I realized that even if I couldn't draw, there was nothing stopping me from writing a comic book: producing a script without the pictures.

Why shouldn't people be able to read a naked comic-book script? After all, people buy books of Shakespeare's plays and read those in the absence of actors. A comic-book script should be accessible in exactly the same way.

In fact, a comic-book script and a play have a lot in common. Both convey most of their information in lines of dialogue. The play may contain stage directions ("exit, pursued by a bear") which tell the actors how to stage the play. A comic-book script contains directions, too, but these are to the artist, who must be told what to draw on each page.

When you don't have an artist (or a cast), the "directions" become hints to the readers, describing the action they should "see" in their minds while reading the dialogue.

That still leaves the question of why one would write a picture-less comic book instead of writing a novel.

And the simple answer is: laziness.

Writing in script format lets me write much less formally than I would normally have to. It lets me flaunt English conventions, and it lets me gloss over passages of descriptive prose (which I find quite boring to write). I'm interested in plots and characters; the stylistic baggage of a modern novel gets in the way of telling the story.

Say I have a character enter a room and find a grisly murder scene. If I were Stephen King, I would need four or five pages to describe the room, the body, and probably every drop of blood. But as I'm writing a comic book, all I need to do is leave a note for my imaginary artist: "We see a room with a dead body. It's really gross and there is blood everywhere." I leave my readers to imagine the resulting artwork, and I save myself five pages of effort!

Laziness notwithstanding, I am also interested in the form, and formalism, of comic book writing. The pacing of a script, fitting actions to panels, managing scene transitions, using narrative tricks, foreshadowing and misdirecting—these are the things I want to explore. And they can all be explored in the absence of art.

Yes, it would be nice if I knew someone who could draw. But sometimes disadvantages can become an asset. This way, I can tell my story without worrying about an artist messing it up.

So this whole thing is pretty much an experiment. Let me know if it works.

Why Superheroes?

 [Originally posted 12 June 2016]

Funny, 15 years ago this post would have been titled "What are Superheroes?" Now, half the blockbusters coming out of Hollywood are superhero films, and my life-long, slightly strange ("You're a grown man and you still read comics?") hobby has become a mainstream thing. You all know what superheroes are.

So, why superheroes? Specifically, why have I spent 30 years creating a world full of superheroes which I'm now documenting on this web site?

Comics have been a part of my life ever since I first started reading. (I was reading books too, of course. You're allowed to read and love both, just like you're allowed to love both books and films. They're different things.) The earliest comic I can remember was T.V. 21, a comic that featured television spin-off stories. From there, I went on to all the popular British boys' comics. I read adventure stories, war stories, sport stories, science fiction stories, you name it I read it in comics. I read just as many different genres in comics as I was reading in books.

Plus one extra genre that wasn't in books. When I could get my hands on exotic imported American comics (and that wasn't easy in the 70s, as distribution was spotty and arbitrary), I devoured their stories of superheroes.

You all know what a superhero is: a larger-than-life figure with amazing abilities, who fights villains and saves people. It's not a new idea. Before Superman, Robin Hood was a superhero, so was King Arthur, and obviously so were Heracles and Sinbad.

But American superhero comics did something that those old myths didn't do: they built consistent worlds. Huge, massive, self-referential worlds. In American comics, Captain America was best friends with Iron Man and they would pop up in each other's comics to help each other from time to time.

And superhero comics had been going for years, and told an ever-unfolding story over those years. Spider-Man started as a high-school student, graduated and went to college, went through several girlfriends (one of whom died, damn you Gerry Conway), and had a massive cast of supporting characters who moved into and out of the on-going story. Spider-Man's comic wasn't about a man in a costume who punched other men in costumes, it was a soap-opera about Peter Parker's life.

And one more thing: superhero stories could do anything. Superheroes could go anywhere on Earth. They could visit lost cities in remote jungles. Fly to different planets. Travel through time. Fight aliens, dinosaurs, bank robbers, or evil corporations. They could save the world from meteor strikes, stand up for persecuted minorities, or rescue cats from trees. Superheroes could get their powers from anywhere, so a wizard could fight on the same team as a genius scientist, and neither would think that was odd.

If you want to tell a big story, the superhero genre has all the tools you could ever need to do it with.

That's why I love superhero stories, and have done all my life.

Fast-forward from a boy reading comics in the 70s to an adult (still reading comics) in 1987. I'm thinking about running a new role-playing game for a few friends, and I've found a set of rules for running superhero games. How can I resist?

The problem is, if I'm going to run a superhero game, I'm going to do it properly and make a proper superhero universe. A proper, big, consistent, multi-genre, soap-opera, decades-long, complete universe. So here I am, 30 years later... and here is my universe.

Now, I've just realized I need to write another post explaining what I mean by "role-playing game". Sigh...

Welcome to the Heroes Universe

[Originally posted 27 May 2016]

Did you follow a link straight to this blog without seeing the site first? Ok, you probably ought to at least look at the home page first, or you won't have a clue what I'm talking about: www.dmheroes.co.uk.

This site has been a long time in coming.

The Heroes Universe started as a game in the summer of 1987. Me and a group of friends playing out the adventures of a group of colourful heroes, inspired by the comics we were all reading at the time. I started it, I created the world background and the basic plot, and I thought it might keep us amused for a few weeks.

Over the years our group has played, and still play, a variety of different games. But when we say the Game, we all know what we're talking about.

Three decades later, we're still playing it, and I have no idea how. My simple ideas just... grew... and grew...

I wasn't just running a game, I was writing stories. Whenever I introduced a new character to the Game, I had to have a backstory. Half the time the players would never be aware of it, but I needed to write it. So I wrote, and I wrote, and...

This is what some of those three decades of writing looks like:

I have no idea how many pages or words that is. But it has grown amorphously into an unorganized mess. Many times over the years I have tried to put it into some kind of publishable format. Sometimes I've even succeeded (which is why parts of this site may be familiar to some people). But it has always defeated me in the end.

So this site is my new attempt, and this time I shall win. I am committed to eventually putting every bit of documentation (even the parts that only exist in my head) into a readable format, logically organized, cross-referenced, and available to anyone who wants to read it. And hopefully it will be interesting enough to make people want to read it.

But what is it? And why should you care?

It's a work of fiction. Simple as that. But I've tried to present different elements in different ways. Parts of it will be written in story form, parts of it will be pseudo-factual histories and character biographies, and parts might be whatever else I think up as an interesting way to document the universe. You can read the stories by themselves, but hopefully the supporting articles will be interesting in their own right.

As to why you should care, that depends entirely on my ability as a writer. I hope I can portray the characters and the universe they inhabit well enough that you will come to love them as much as I do.

And if it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. Thanks for giving me a chance and for reading this far.

I'll keep writing this stuff even if I'm the only one reading it. After all, that's what I've been doing for the last three decades.

Re-blogging

Between 2016 and 2020 I wrote around 160 posts on an almost-weekly blog on my web site. That blog was a behind-the-scenes discussion of how and why I was creating the history of the Heroes Universe on the site. 

In 2020, I lost all motivation to continue writing. I recently re-started adding to the site, but for two years I didn't even look at it.

At some point during those two years, the antiquated blogging software I was using suffered some form of fatal crash and corrupted all the blog data on the site. I haven't been able to determine what happened, or to resurrect the blog.

So now, rather than run the blog software myself, I'm using a third-party site to host this blog. Rather than giving me less control over the blog than I would have on my own site, I'll actually have more control, as it's a newer and better-featured blogging platform (Blogger) than mine was.

But there were a lot of things on the old blog that I think are still interesting and relevant. And luckily, I have copies of most of the posts I originally wrote. So I'm going to repost them here, or at least the ones I think are worthwhile. Not all at once, but as I get time.

So for anyone who was reading from the start, a lot of the early posts on this new blog will be familiar. But bear with me. I'll eventually get into a routine of new, up-to-date, weekly(ish) posts.

For any new readers, I hope the blog is interesting, and I encourage you to comment and tell me your thoughts.

And for anyone who has wandered in here by accident and wonders what this is all about, first go and look at the Heroes Universe site, and then come back here to find out what it all means.