In Which The Warlock Creates a Comics Conception...

In designing Cold Steel Wardens, my original intent has always been to emulate the Iron Age of Comics.  Heck, it's in the name of the game!  I wanted to build a game that focused on the investigative aspects of being a masked vigilante, on the moral dilemmas faced with putting on a mask, and on the brutality of street-level combat.

But, how would I know if I had accomplished my goals?  How could I determine whether these aims were successful?

I spent yesterday evening writing up a series of pre-generated characters for my upcoming session of CSW this weekend, as part of the Wittenberg RP-Guild one-shots.  While I started with two of the characters that originally inspired the game--the PlatinumChick's gunslinger, CheapShot, and DigitalKat's psionic paralegal, Scheherazade--I quickly had to come up with some archetypal Iron Age characters of my own.

Gender-swap good ol' Nightwing
and you've got a brand new Hero!

So where did I turn?  Right back to the source material, of course.  Within a few hours, I had recreated a female version of Nightwing, struggling to escape the shadow of her overbearing mentor, a Rorschach-ian private detective, and something of a mash-up between John Constantine and Kitty Pride, among others. What better way to measure the success of my ability to emulate the Iron Age than to rebuild some of the era's classic characters in my brand new system?!

And, truly, I was astounded at the result.  After each character was finished, I passed off the character sheet to the PlatinumChick, who simply smiled and nodded.  As I finally put the finishing touches on the last of the characters, I asked her "Which one are you planning on playing?" fully believing that she was going to gravitate towards her old character.  I was surprised, however, to hear her say that she was more interested in Sawbones--the aforementioned Shadowcat/Hellblazer mash-up.

It's then that I knew--I had knocked it out of the park.  And it's now time to take things to the next level.

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