Session Four and Five: Cover Blown!

Playing catch-up again. That's why I don't do this sort of thing; I keep falling behind.

Okay, as last we saw the Secret Heroes, Aqua and her friends had raided the headquarters of ANEK, a sinister research group associated with Nephilim. While there, they encountered the chilly Mister Berg, (whom Alanna promptly named "Frosty the Snowman")

Since Berg had met Aqua before, he was able to identify her. Nephilim's next logical move would be to take action against her. Problem: the girl playing Aqua was not at the next session.

So... I bent the rules of GM ethics.

The next session began with Python telling the rest of the team that Aqua had been abducted by Nephilim and organizing a rescue. It went pretty well, except that the team took out the opposition a little too easily. They managed to beat Berg and a lady ninja with teleport powers and humiliate them to boot. (Alanna squirted a tube of magenta paint at the ninja; now she calls her "Pinky McNinja.")

For session five, I decided it was time to bring back the vampires.

Fred the Vampire hunter gets a call from one of his street contacts asking to see him. When Fred meets him, the contact, apparently under some sort of mind control, draws a dagger and cuts his own throat. Suddenly Fred has a dead man lying on his feet and witnesses all around him calling for the police.

(Fred's player, recognizing how screwed he was, grinned and said, "I saw Blade III too!" Dang. And here I thought I was being so original.)

So Fred finds an abandoned building to be his new safe house and goes to the apartment where Python had the team bring Aqua. He discusses what to do with Python (who as always appears only on a TV monitor), Aqua and Alanna.

When he returns to the abandoned building, he finds company waiting: a scientist from Nephilim named Dr. Blake and three Nephilim goons including Pinky McNinja. The scientist tries to persude Fred to join them and that they can protect him from the vampires. She also tells him that the vampires themselves are nephilim, that is, genetically augmented metahumans; they just don't know it. Fred turns her down.

That's when the police show up outside. "We know you're in there! Come out with your hands up!"

Fred decides he's going to drag his motorcycle up to the roof and use it to jump to the next rooftop. Which would have been cool, had it worked. Unfortunately, the police have already started lobbing gas grenades through the windows and Fred (rolling a critical failure on his HT roll) gets an incapacitating whiff...

Backspace.

Back at Aqua's safehouse, she and Alanna get a message from Python. According to police scanners, the police have been tipped off as to Dave's location and are sending a SWAT team to get him. The girls hurry to the scene (Alanna cleverly suggests that Python set up some false alarms to distract and delay the cops) and arrive shortly after the police do. Aqua uses her water powers to burst a fire hydrant and under that distraction Alanna filches a couple gas masks so she and Aqua can sneak into the building.

They arrive just in time to see Dr. Blake and Pinky teleport away with Fred; although not before telling the other goons to take care of them. The girls and the Nephilim goons have a brief skirmish in which Alanna attempts to hop on board the motorcyle, (which you will remember, Fred had dragged halfway up the stairs), and ride off.

Rolling against her nonexistant Motorcycle skill, Alanna rolled a critical failure. The second of the day.

So I said that in her nervousness she accidentally activated her gravity powers, making the motocycle 150% heavier, causing it to crash through the rickety staircase.

In the chaos that ensued, the girls were able to get away from the goons, (who wound up getting arrested) but did have to make up a semi-plausible story for the cops. Which they did.

But what about Fred?

He wakes up in a Nephilim lab. Mister Berg is there and once again offers Fred the chance to join their organization. "What if I don't?" Fred asks. "Then Dr. Blake gets to experiment on you."

While Berg is briefly out of the room, Fred manages to break free from his bonds. He makes a McGuyver device out of stuff in the hospital room to create a distraction and flees through a back exit which leads him to a loading dock in the back of the building. There he encounters Pinky McNinja again and the two have a fight. Pinky actually does better than she did in her previous two encounters... until she rolled the third crit failure on the day.

Fred flees the building before further pursuit can catch up with him. It's a good thing Nephilim's security cameras don't seem to have captured any of his movements in the building. Funny that. I wonder if it will occur to Fred to wonder about that...

First Session: Gathering the Team

It's Wednesday already, so I'd better get around to commenting on last Sunday's game.

We actually had all five players together for a change. I was able to shepherd Kitty into coming up with an idea for a character. She's going to be a marine biologist named "Aqua Marie" with water-based powers. Not really happy with the name; on the other hand, Tim decided to call his character "Fred the Vampire Hunter".

I started the plot out establishing that each of the characters has recently discovered that they have strange abilities. Each one receives a message from an unknown person claiming to know about their super powers and directing them to come to a certain address the next day at such and such a time. (Alanna: Are you a stalker? You're a stalker!")

I had the characters arrive at the location (an empty, abandoned warehouse with a television monitor set up in the middle of the room) and meet each other. We had a fun bit when Nina, the blind violinist with psychic powers, attempted to tap into Fred's mind to see through his eyes. I had Fred roll to see if he noticed the intrusion. He did.

I told him, "You've been fighting vampires long enough to recognize when someone's trying to mind control you."

"Wait, it's daytime; she can't be a vampire!" one of the players protested.

"It's dark inside the warehouse," I replied. "The windows are boarded up and Nina's not standing in any direct sunlight."

So Fred leaped to one of the windows and ripped off the plywood allowing the sun to shine directly on Nina! Ooo! Nice and dramatic!!!

Too bad she wasn't actually a vampire.

When everyone had arrived, the television flickered on and a shadowy figure appeared on the screen.

The unknown person is Python, an NPC I've set up to be the team's patron. I intended him to be mysterious and secretive, appearing only as a voice on a telephone or a digitally blurred image on a computer screen. I decided that he has machine control powers, which would allow him to operate machinery telepathicly and mentally hack into computer systems; an ideal power for a behind-the-scenes string-puller.

Python tells them about a shadowy organization called Nephilim, whose purpose is to find powered individuals like them and use them for their own nefarious purposes. Python offers to protect the characters from Nephilim and wants to help them fight the sinister conspiracy.

(What the players don't know yet is that I plan on pulling a Xanatos Gambit with Python. He is actually a member of Nephilim himself and is plotting against them as part of his own little game. But that's a development for the future).

Unfortunately, I got so wrapped up in working on Python's character sheet that I never got around to defining his agenda. And when one of the players asked him, "So what exactly do you want us to do?" I didn't have a good answer for them.

So I had a bunch of thugs bust in carrying guns.

The fight was somewhat disorganized; I did not follow turn sequences as well as I should have; but the group held it's own. With a little coaching and suggestions from the GM, Aqua was able to do some effective things with her water powers. (Her player, Kitty, is the least experienced of the players and so I want to help her get a firm grasp on what she can do).

The thugs were defeated, and Python promised he would be in touch with the group. Fred the Vampire Hunter suggested they search the thugs for identification. A logical move. I distracted the group so that I wouldn't have to give them an answer, but I will need to decide who the thugs were working for and what ID they might be carrying before next game.

So, for next time: Finish Python's character sheet; polish up Aqua's character sheet; figure out identity of the thugs and what all working for Python is going to entail.

Assembling the Characters

Still haven't started the new Secret Heroes campaign. We spent last Sunday's session working out some of the characters.

Harold Howe (Michael): A garage mechanic with super-strength. I spent a lot of time with him getting the strength level right. He wanted to be able to lift a car over his head, like the cover of ACTION COMICS #1. But we also wanted to keep him within the 250 Character Point limit I established for this campaign. (GURPS recommends that four-color supers be built on at least 500 points, but this is supposed to be a more realistic campaign. Also, the characters are just starting out and learning about their powers. I plan to allow the players to boost their characters considerably once they have a few adventures under their belts).

Nina Thompson (Toeboi): A blind concert violinist with telekinetic powers. Wait, wait! You haven't heard the cool part yet! She also has a mind link with her seeing eye dog allowing her to see through his eyes! I had to ruthlessly cut out some of the Disadvantages the player wanted; (for example, Fearfulness and Agoraphobia); which I judged would be too crippling for her character.

Alanna Andersen (Gamera Rose): An aspiring artist who works a day job as a waitress and who can control gravity and fly. At first Gamera wasn't sure what kind of character she wanted. She had a vague idea about flight powers. Looking through the GURPS: Powers suppliment, I suggested she link flight with general Gravity Control powers. The weird thing is, when I tallied up the point cost of all the advantages, disads and skills she wanted, they totalled up almost exactly to 250 points.

(Tim's Character): Tim wasn't here this week, so we weren't able to finish his character and he still hasn't given him a name. He's a half vampire, possessing certain vampiric powers and weaknesses, but he's not actually undead. He also has an obsessive mission to destroy vampires. He's going to be an interesting character to work into my gameworld, because I'm kind of ambivalent about allowing magic in the campaign. I think I have an idea of how to make it work, though.

(Kitty's Character): Kitty, unfortunately, hasn't been to a gaming session in a while. About a month ago, she made noises about wanting a magical character, but I haven't heard any more since then. We'll see.

Now I have to start defining the campaign setting better and setting up some NPC's.

Secret Heroes: Getting Set Up

Hokay. I've discussed the general idea of the campaign with my group. Today, we're going to actually make some characters. This is currently where our group stands: my players are:

Lute: my wife, who likes to play amazonian combat monsters and nymphomaniacs. She can't do as much of the latter in our public game without grossing out our teenage daughter and her friends. Lute's planning on sitting this campaign out. She has only so much tolerance for squealing adolescents. Pity.

Tim the Enchanter: Apart from Lute and myself, he's the oldest member of our group. He's the quiet type, who usually plays clerics in D&D campaigns, but he has a wickedly dry, deadpan sense of humor. For some reason, his characters always seem to be the first ones to take damage in our games. I don't know why. It just happens that way. He says that for this campaign he'd like to play a half-human/half vampire vampire hunter. Don't know exactly how this will fit into the campaign, but since he's the first one to come up with a coherent concept, I certainly want to encourage him.

Zany Michael: He's a college student and he enjoys playing the wacky, goofball characters. He really enjoyed the Saturday Morning Rock 'n' Roll Band campaign. He's bounced the idea off me of playing a time traveller from the future, but I don't think that will work with my campaign. Some ideas work better in the context of a story than in a game, and I think this is one.

Gamera Rose: Our oldest daughter. She'll be turning 15 next week. She likes to play smart but impulsive characters. She says she'd like her character to be able to fly. Apart from that, she doesn't have a lot of clear ideas, although she says she wants her character to have some good combat skills. She feels that a lot of her characters in previous campaigns have been useless in fights and she wants to be able to kick butt with the rest of us.

Toeboi: One of Gamera's best friends and frequent co-conspiritor in her fanfics. She likes to play disturbed and twitchy. She's leaning towards a psionic character, which would fit well in the campaign. Whether or not I can get her to fit well in the party is another question.

Kitty: Another of Gamera's friends. She's a newbie, and started playing with us with the Saturday Morning campaign. She's very enthusiastic, though, and enjoys gaming. She's expressed interest in a magic-using character, but I haven't had the chance to talk with her about it in several weeks. I'm not sure if I want magic to work in this campaign. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to banish it either. I suppose I can always handwave it with a touch of Clarke's Law, but that's something I'll need to know when I build her character.

What I want each player to come up with in today's session is:

(1) What kind of powers they want to have.
(2) Who the character is
(3) How the character first learned he/she has super-powers
(4) Why the character is with the group

The Group is going to be the key to making this work, I think. Last year I ran a Victorian Era monster hunting campaing with my players and had a Charles Dickens of a time keeping them together. The characters weren't a team; they were simply a group of people who happened to know each other. Getting them to work together was like hearding cats.

For this campaign, I'm going to say that each character has been contacted by a Mysterious Personage who invites them to join this Group. The identity of this Personage and his or her Agenda will be a major sub-plot of the campaign, at least to start with. But from the beginning, the characters are going to need to come together and be willing to work together.

We'll see how things go.

A New Direction

It's been months since I've posted anything in this blog. My original intent was to stuff it full of autobiographical notes and comments about the creative process and how I do things. And maybe I will still do that if the spirit moves me.

But I think I'll try something else. I'd like to try writing a gaming blog, documenting an RPG that I'm planning to run. This is something I've tried before, a diary of a campaign; but this time instead of just writing up a synopsis of what happened, I want to write down my plans; what I intend to do with the game; what long-range plots I want to construct. And what the players do to my finely-considered plans.

I'm currently running two campaigns: a solo game in a heroic fantasy setting with my wife, Lute; and a public game loosely inspired by Josie and the Pussicats and other Saturday morning cartoons, that I run with our usual Sunday group. The Sunday game has been running out of steam and I was thinking of running a Supers campaign to replace it.

I gave the group a prospectus listing a half dozen different types of Supers settings and asked them to vote on which ones they would like to play, ranging from traditional Four Color Comic Book Heroes to Angstful Mutants to Dark-n-Gritty. The option that has the most support is one I called "Secret Heroes". In this setting, the existence of super-powers isn't generally known to the public. No code-names, no costumes, no capes; at least not to start with. The characters have recently discovered that they have Powers and Abilities above those of Mortal Men and that there are others like themselves. Now they must decide how they intend to use those powers.

I intend the campaign to be dark with lots of conspiracies and ulterior motives and things. Whether or not I can keep the tone serious is up for grabs. I have an unfortunate tendency towards farce in the best of situations, and this group skews Chaotic Silly in alignment.

We'll see how it goes...