The Converter

Real Name: Jamie West
Membership: Alliance of Awesomeness
Relatives: none known
Place of Birth: Dallas, USA
Base of Operations: Ironhaven, USA
First Appearance: Alliance of Awesomeness #1
Background: Jamie West likes food. He held records in eating competitions throughout the Southern US as a teenager. At the age of 21 he was diagnosed with diabetes. The eating competitions had to stop, but Jamie was offered help by a dodgy looking character by the name of Dr Hawke. Hawke said that he would be able to cure Jamie's diabetes, butt hat his treatment was experimental and not authorised. Jamie, desperate to consume his beloved fast food, agreed to the trial. Dr Hawke took him to GR-1 laboratories and carried out a procedure involving injections and exposure to radiation. The treatment did indeed cure Jamie of his diabetes, but also changed his metabolism. Now Jamie could eat as much as he liked, but would have to release the energy he gained in waves of concussive force. This had been Dr Hawke's intention all along, and the next phase was to brainwash Jamie into becoming his weapon. Luckily for Jamie, before this could happen, Aphid showed up with Tiger Girl and Leather Lass  to stop Dr Hawke who they had been monitoring for weeks. They released Jamie who was able to help them with his powers.
Jamie became the fourth member of Aphid's alliance of superheroes. and it was he who changed the name to the Alliance of Awesomeness.
Jamie adopted the name 'the Converter', and a costume sponsored by a fast food chain, in return for an unlimited supply of hamburgers, which are his preferred way to 'power up' prior to going on a mission. 

Height: 185cm
Weight: 120kg
Strength: The Converter possesses the normal strength of a man his age and build who avoids exercise whenever possible..
Powers and abilities: The Converter has the ability to metabolise food in a way that converts it directly into energy that can be expelled from his body as concussive force. He is able to tap into his body's reserves of energy as well, so that even if he has not recently eaten, he can still expend energy. As such, he always makes sure to have a decent amount of fat to draw on. Reserve energy is not able to be expelled as efficiently as freshly ingested food, and as such, the Converter prefers to eat during missions (and he does really like to eat). 
The extent of Converter's powers has not truly been tested. On one occasion he was able to disintegrate a tank after eating 5 hamburgers in a row. Another time, with no available food he was able to fight in continuous combat for half an hour, although at the end of this he had lost a considerable amount of weight. It was also notable that the blasts he used were quite weak. 

CT stats: The Converter's abilities are: Ranged long, Power Blast, Boost
Move: 6", Close Combat: 3W (weak), Ranged combat: 4W (5W with boost) @12", Defence: 3W (weak).

Leather Lass

Real Name: Emily (Emmy) Parker
Membership: Alliance of Awesomeness
Relatives: none known
Place of Birth: Wichita, USA
Base of Operations: Ironhaven, USA
First Appearance: Alliance of Awesomeness #1
Background: Emmy Parker was an all-American girl - a cheerleader, School President, valedictorian etc. One night on her way home from the library she had a crash with a truck carrying toxic waste. The exposure hardened her skin to such an extent that nothing could penetrate it. At the same time her body was now able to sustain tremendous forces with no side effects. She also gained superhuman strength.
Emmy began to use her powers to try to prevent crimes in her neighbourhood, but one incident endangered her family, and she decided to fake her death and move away in order to protect them. As a youngster Emmy had practiced with a bullwhip in rodeo, and she combined this with a dominatrix outfit that was totally unlike her character to continue to combat crime without revealing who she was. 
Aphid recruited Emmy, now calling herself Leather Lass, into the Alliance of Awesomeness, where she has remained a member ever since. 

Height: 170cm
Weight: 63kg
Strength: Leather Lass possesses superhuman strength, and can easily lift (press) 1 tonne.
Powers and abilities: Leather Lass is practically invulnerable. She can be knocked down and knocked out, but her skin defies puncture and her organs will not bleed internally. The toughness of her musculature has given her superhuman strength. Leather Lass is well practiced with a bullwhip, and uses this in combat with criminals. 

CT stats: Leather Lass' abilities are: Strength, Ranged short, Resilient
Move: 6", Close Combat: 2W and 1R, Ranged combat: 3W @3", Defence: 3R .

Tiger Girl

Real Name: Shen An
Membership: Alliance of Awesomeness
Relatives: none known
Place of Birth: Anshun, China
Base of Operations: Ironhaven, USA
First Appearance: Alliance of Awesomeness #1
Background: Shen An was born in the People's republic of China to a family that already had two children. She was abandoned by her parents and subsequently found by Priests of the Tiger Temple who had uncovered a prophecy that the Great Tiger Spirit itself had given a child to the world. Transported into the wilds of Yunnan, Shen An was raised in the Tiger Temple by the priests and taught the ways of the mystic Tiger Warrior. As she reached maturity, the Tiger Temple was betrayed to the Communist government, and was assaulted and destroyed. Shen An was told by the priests to flee and to fulfill her role as a great protector of the people. 
Shen An set herself up in Hong Kong, combating corrupt officials and the Triads who she saw as menaces to the people. Eventually she was caught and locked into a prison for reeducation to serve the People's Republic, but escaped with the help of Aphid when he recruited the Alliance of Awesomeness to halt the schemes of the terrorist criminal, Mothron. Since then she has remained an active member of the Alliance, fulfilling her role as the avatar of the Great Tiger Spirit, and slowly learning to play nicely with others. 

Height: 175cm
Weight: 76kg
Strength: Tiger Girl is possessed by the strength of the Great Tiger Spirit, and can easily lift (press) 500 kg.
Powers and abilities: Tiger Girl is possessed by the Great Tiger Spirit, which gives her superhuman agility, strength, senses and reflexes. She has trained in the martial arts of the Tiger Temple, and is a skilled warrior. At times of stress she can lose control of her bestial self and go into a battle rage, but is learning to control this aspect of herself.

CT stats:Tiger Girl's abilities are: Strength, Agility, Rage, Martial Arts
Move: 6", Close Combat: 2W and 1R + 1 reroll (+1 red dice during rage), Ranged combat: nil, Defence: 3W + 2 rerolls.

Aphid

Real Name: Matthew (Matt) Hayes
Membership: Alliance of Awesomeness
Relatives: none known
Place of Birth: Fargo, USA
Base of Operations: Ironhaven, USA
First Appearance: Alliance of Awesomeness #1
Background: Matt Hayes is an experimental scientist who was searching for a way to allow humans to photosynthesise like plants. Having experimented on hamsters and squirrels he thought he had managed to achieve his ambition. His next step was to replicate the process on a human, and decided to try it on himself. The process worked and Matt began to photosynthesise. This discovery would mean the end of world hunger.

Then his hamster exploded.

It's body could not cope with the amount of energy that it was creating. Matt calculated that he had a very short timespan to find a way to regulate energy creation. He built a regulating device that would enable him to siphon off excess power and shunt it into another dimension. Upon donning this device the shunt not only siphoned off energy, but 50% of Matt's mass. He shrunk to 3' in height. Unable to remove the device for fear that he would explode, Matt has been trapped in his shortened form ever since. However, he added to the design, and the regulator system allows him to tap into extra photo-synthesised energy and project it as energy beams from his gloves. He also found that the energy gave him enhanced strength.
Matt became a crime-fighter under the guise of the Aphid, and it was his idea to collect similar misfits to form the Alliance of Awesomeness.

Height: 90cm
Weight: 40kg
Strength: Aphid possesses the strength of an adult male twice his size who regularly engages in intensive exercise.
Powers and abilities: Aphid has implanted cells that enable him to photosynthesise directly in order to power his body. The process creates excess energy which means that Aphid needs to wear a regulator to keep himself in check, otherwise he might explode. A part of the process shunted Aphid's body mass into the other dimension as well.  The regulator shunts unwanted energy into a parallel dimension, and has the ability to shunt it back in large quantities that are emitted in the form of energy blasts from the gloves in his suit. It can also be channeled through the regulator to give Aphid enhanced strength, enabling him to have the same physical strength he had before his mass was shunted. This enables him to move quickly and leap further than most normal human beings.
If the regulator is removed, Aphid returns to his natural size, and energy begins to accumulate. It is unknown how long Aphid has before the energy accumulation becomes terminal. He has managed not to explode for 24 hours without his regulator, although he went into a coma after 12 hours.

CT stats: Aphid's abilities are: Science!, Ranged long, Power Blast, Agility
Move: 6", Close Combat: 3W, Ranged combat: 4W, Defence: 3W + 1 reroll.

Stats: R= red dice, W= white dice

The Official Handbook of the NDC Universe

What is the NDC Universe?
The NDC Universe was created by Nate and Dan sometime in 1988. It consisted of a few original creations that were inspired by the fantastic run of comics in the 1980s, particularly X-Men and X-Factor, but with plenty of Avengers and Fantastic Four in there too.
Our first team was Delta Wave, and characters invented for that team included Aphid, Speed, Dust-Master and Aura. All of these characters are still around, although some have had substantial changes.

Alliance of Awesomeness #1 - Aphid in the background

My daughters got in on the creativity. Super Wonder was my 6 year old's superhero

Somewhere in the mid-90s the comic creativity tailed off, but we had a stack of drawings and ideas by then that would have made some fantastic comics if we'd ever got around to it. Fast forward to a couple of guys in their late 30s who have wargaming as a major hobby, and the discovery of single Heroclix from places like Strikezone online and Troll and Toad. The first instinct was to collect the figures of our favourite Marvel and DC titles, but a couple of years later I decided to convert up a couple of our early creations. With the discovery of the Clobberin' Time rules by Alan Saunders, we began to design characters and play games with our own creations, in our own superhero universe. It's an obsession that I just can't shake now.

What is the Official Handbook?
One of the highlights of the 1980s was the existence of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition. Dan and I spent hours pouring over the origins and powers of the characters, using them as a basis when designing our own. Now that we have to design the power stats of our heroes and villains for gaming, it's important that we put the time into documenting them properly.

The handbook will have basic information about the characters that have been entered, photos from games, drawings, and the stats that we have given the characters for the Clobberin' Time rules. In between there will be games posted featuring the NDC Universe in action. It's probably as close as we'll ever get to creating real comic book series'!

Hopefully people will enjoy what we create, but if they don't, it's still fun to build a blog around our world.

Nate