As we talked about in another thread, I've long shied away from using a few of the Crushers, notably Mocker and the Shrew.  I used to feel the same way about Marionette, but have since decided to use her as written.

And over the last few years, I've softened on Mocker as well, deciding to use the character, albeit changed a bit.

Anybody else find some of them a bit too camp for their tastes?

Interesting point, Majestic; in the games we've run over thirty-plus years, the Crushers gang has been used at multiple points, and in multiple narrative forms.  While several of them, I agree, do have comedic/parody aspects in their origin and/or characteristics, those have - at least as we've used them - been nothing much more than distraction points, such as a way to get Bull looking in the wrong direction while one of the PCs gets ready to level your basic haymaker.

Mocker has, in my brother's (and my, I hope) hands, become a rather frightening individual, both in terms of appearance and conduct.  Shrew has kicked some serious butt, and her addiction issues, on one memorable occasion, served as a moment of real role-playing interaction between her and one of the PCs who expressed an attraction to her; she basically froze up and then ran off when the PC started outlining how she could start re-engineering her life.

Temper, due to low hit points, unpredictable to-hits with his Emotion Control and attitude, has come across as more of a fall guy than most of the others - but he's definitely been the exception to the rule in this regard.

I used Temper once and maybe I twisted his powers a bit. I had him use the Emotion Control in a crowd of 200 people with a radius  attack. Since he absorbed PR points he ended up being pretty tough since he could roll with major damage

Since the Crushers were brought up I think I will be using them and leveling them up to match. If I remember most were pretty young. Let's add 10 years of experience points and see how they turn out.

Cant add 30 years or they would end up being older than most of us....

To answer ONI...

Other than Mocker (6), Fist (30) and Temper (19), the Crushers were all in their 20's. I'm not sure what ten years worth of XP means, but the main problems with Shocker and Stormlord are that they have expensive powers combined with low power points/HP.

Vulture just needs some kind of combat options - my players noticed he would target female heroes (the only ones he could lift up and drop) and after that they regarded him as target practice since he has no ranged attacks, no defence forms, never saw sneaky attacks coming (poor detection scores) and could be wrestled to the ground by most male characters (and quite a few females as well).

Temper has no defence forms, no alternate attack forms, and has a power that fills an opponent with rage - and he can be the victim of that rage. So he has to get close to his victims and then must escape even though he's not fast at all. He needs an opening, and my players never gave him one.

And Mocker. Being the leader means my players would focus on him, and being an obvious android meant that they would use powers that work better on him. What's more, because he would insult them at every opportunity, they never really held back. So, Mocker didn't last two rounds against the players and they were kinda disappointed that the leader didn't last longer ("he's all talk").

Those are just my experiences with the characters, and it's been THIRTY YEARS since I've used them. My players liked CACC because they got to test run their characters, but they don't have fond memories of the Crushers because they didn't last long enough to form lasting memories.

RAMBLE

We use a formula of "x" amount of experience points a day for characters just in general to figure out leveling up over time. I stole the idea from John and I use it for the Ravenswood when making up NPC's to see what level a Blacksmith would be at 40 years old. The "X" is based off the type of job. I tend to start the xp calculation at age 18 since all the xps gained in that time would go towards skills such as education, computers, driving, etc. The 40 year old blacksmith would have about 8K xps.

Now Super Villains would get more than 1 per day. Assume they may not be working their newest caper every day but training, beating up on low level "normals" and such would yield a higher amount. Just look at your own PC's who have been playing for the last ten years with the same character. What level are they? I would say pretty high.

If I added 10 points of agility to Bull over that time I think there would be a decent difference in him. The same could be said for all of them depending on how you sort the training bonuses with each.

Thanks Klystron.

I don't use the formula when creating actual Villains but if I want to have some type of experience for a "normal" or use it as a guide to add or subtract for age I may edit the level slightly based of that.

I guess I'll answer Majestic's question since I never did and leave it at that.

I remember going against them as a PC in probably our third adventure. I think there were 3-4 PC's against them. At the time it was fun and I would say challenging based off the fact that it was a 2/1 ratio of Villains to Hero's.

Would they present a challenge now after knowing all the powers and how best to use them, not really but back then I enjoyed them.

They also don't exist in the V&V universe.  The Preface on page three in the adventure notes this.  You wouldn't think that would be the case given their popularity.

Don't kid yourself folks. As far as Monkeyhouse / Dee & Herman are concerned, The Crusaders and The Crushers are absolutely part of "the official V&V universe". They're pretty clear about that on their rules for freelancers post.

(Nothing I've written and published is part of this "official" universe. But neither is FORCE, Enemies at Large, The Destroyers, Danger in the Depths, Power of One, Doctor Porky-lips, Sands of Time, Opponents Unlimited, Micro-Universe, Secrets of The Swamp, Into the Sub-Realm, Devil's Domain, Super Crooks & Criminals, Enter The Gene Pool, Pentacle Plot, Great Bridge, Dawn of DNA, Always Outnumbered, Terror by Night, Menagerie, Great Iridium Con, Centerville Incident, Honor, Citizen Report, Most Wanted III, Vigilantes International, Alone into the Night, Attack on the Poseidon Line, To Tackle the Totem, Citizen's Report, and more).

RAMBLE

No.

RAMBLE

I started running this for a group of mostly newbies this Friday. Good times! Yes, there are silly elements, sort of like a lot of the comics back then The players seem to enjoy the fact that things aren't all grim. I even threw in some more Crushers or wanna-be Crushers anyway, knocking over a Qwik-E-Burger because the drive-thru guy got their order wrong (always check before you leave the drive-thru).

In issue #3 of the comic series from 1986, Jack listed updated levels for the members of the Crusaders (except Laserfire, who didn't age and was still the same level).

Manta-Man: 13
Evergreen: 11
Enforcer: 9
Dreamweaver: 7
Blizzard: 6

I would say the Crushers are likely around those levels as well at that time.

Further investigation has led to the discovery that they update the Crushers too. This is as of 1986, 4 years after the module was published.

F.I.S.T. : 10th and no longer with the team
Mercury Mercenary: 9th
Temper: 6th
Vulture: went straight
Bull: 4th
The Shrew: dead from rabies
Mocker: 11th
Hornet: 3rd
Shocker: 6th
Mace: 10th
Stormlord: 9th
Marionette: 9th
Manstar: (not in the module) 1st
The Hauntress (the Shrew as a ghost): 6th.

I don't think Robin counts as having been created by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman...