Okay, I suppose it's about time I started showing off some of my characters... I'll start with my three 20+ characters, all of whom are currently members of the Freedom Society, and each of whom now has five costumes, including one FS uniform. However, since I'll be posting all five costumes for each,
and providing some background for each character (which I tend to think add something to the costumes, in a way), I'm going to devote a single post to each of the three, starting with... the Verdant Vowel!
The Vowel is a difficult character to recreate in a game of this sort (in terms of his abilities, not his costume, which is very easy), and I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how well I've been able to replicate him, and how well he plays (for now, at least). Yes, he's my single most challenging character to play, but that perfectly fits the character, and, so far, he's quite playable- I just have to use my head somewhat more while playing him than I do for my other characters- which is exactly the way it should be.
The Verdant Vowel is, in actuality, a usually-unemployed actor, who originally developed the character in an attempt to break into PBS children's television. Before he could get to his audition, he found himself having to use the costume and identity to prevent a crime, to save some people, bluffing his way through and convincing the criminals that he was a real superhero, full of "vowelish might". Realizing that he could help people more as a mysterious super-hero than as a character on TV, he continued to use the identity in this way, training himself to... well, not exactly the peak of human perfection, but he's in pretty good shape, and has taught himself some fighting, athletic, and acrobatic skills, at least to an above-average extent. He uses these skills, plus his wits, survival instincts, acting and performance abilities, shear force of will, knowledge of literature, and dumb luck, while portraying the character he's developed for the role, an exaggerated, verbose, overconfident hero-type whose dialogue tends to sound like it was written for a '70s comic by a bad Roy Thomas imitator. Much of the time, he either bluffs his way through, letting his enemies think he's a real super hero, or his apparent personality causes his foes to think he's an incompetent fool, leading them to underestimate him, Unfortunately, sometimes he gets a little to into his role...
In CO, I made the Vowel arse a combination Might (for the punches)/ Unarmed Martial Arts character, with the occasional other ability (I gave him Ego Placate from Telepathy, to simulate enemies underestimating him). Since I decided to stick to the concept, his super abilities are Ego and Presence, and the skills I gave him were all based more on the skill names than on the actual attributes involved- he has Agile, Lasting Impression, Jack of All Trades, Academics, Impresario, Showmanship, and Acrobatics. I've spent a lot of his points on advantages, rather than power ranks- he's not supposed to be super good at anything, but he's got a lot of clever tricks up his sleeve. The only ability he has ranked to three is Lightning Reflexes, because I figured that the combination of his being basically agile and his dumb luck would effectively give him that. Oh, yeah, and his travel power is Acrobatics, and I actually purchased the power advantage for that...
Anyway, somehow, it all works. every now and then, I start having a lot of trouble getting him through missions, and I start thinking that maybe I've reached the limits of how far I can take him as a viable character- but it never lasts. And, even without engaging in the role-playing aspect- I've mostly been soloing him, anyway- he's just so much fun to play. His exploits are always edge-of-the-seat, think-fast adventures, and a surprising amount of the time, they work out very much like a Verdant Vowel story.
Anyway, here are the pics. The first is his standard costume, created originally by MJB, and altered slightly by several other people since then;
The next three are based on alternate costumes or versions, designed by various other people- really happy with the way the first and last came out, especially;
Finally, since I had the extra slot, I did a Freedom Society team uniform for him. Since he
is, after all, the Verdant Vowel, the color green and the letter A had to be prominently involved, so I basically gave him the super group uniform, changed the dark blue to equally-dark green and the yellow to egally-light green, replaced the winged symbol on his chest with his usual "A", put the wings in the belt buckle instead, and gave him a star-themed cape (not very visible in the picture), which was as close as I could get to including the sybol on the belt of the standard uniform. I gave him a slightly different mask from any of his other costumes, just becasue it looked better with the outfit. It was only what I was clipping the screenshot that I noticed that the outfit looks kind of like a Green Lantern outfit...
Anyway, that's it for now. Next up will be Brain Boy, who was actually my first FS member.
