Category Archives: Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

Pandemonium: ICARUS

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I’m not going to point out how far behind I am on blogging, anymore. It’s pretty much a given. I’ve got four more game reports to get up after this one, and a new Pandemonium game this Friday, so I want to get the report of the last session up before that.

Anyway.

We added a new character last session: Maker, a young man who developed nanotech, loaded himself with nanocolonies, and then had his tech stolen by Chimaera Systems. I figured that a good way to introduce the new character would be to have him approach the others ((Famous as the Heroes of Gotham after they saved all the citizens on the bridge a couple of sessions ago.)) and ask for their help in getting the ((Very dangerous.)) nanotech back from Chimaera.

Maker was able to tell them that his lab was at the Bleak Island Research Facility ((Colloquially known as Monster Island.)), so the group started plotting a way to get in and find the tech. They built up a number of assets to use in play, and managed to make a moderately stealthy entry to the site.

After dealing with some minor complications on the upper levels, they made their way down to the lab where Maker’s research was being examined and exploited. The project had been labeled ICARUS, and they found ICARUS PRIME, the first Chimaera test subject, ready and waiting for them.

I had reskinned an Iron Man datafile to act as ICARUS PRIME, with a few minor tweaks. This made for pretty tough character, and I gave him some assets and resources based on him being on his home turf. In addition, I had a pretty full doom pool – eight or nine d8s and d10s.

And here’s where I learned the secret ((Well, A secret, anyway.)) of the doom pool. Big dice make the players feel time pressure – if I’ve got a d12 and a d10 in the pool, the players pull out all the stops to make things happen now, before I manage to get the 2d12 I can use to end the scene ((I don’t always just end the scene when I get the 2d12 – it can be too easy to rack up the dice and that makes it just feel cheap.)). But, with a large number of smaller dice, you can make the villains you’re running just nasty! Lots of d8s and d10s mean that I effectively have a whole heap of plot points to roll more dice, get higher totals, make counterattacks, and generally mess with the heroes.

Now, I’m sure that this isn’t revelatory for everyone. I mean, I speculated about using the doom pool for pacing in a post way back here. But this was one of the first times I really started getting it. The shape of the doom pool – number and size of dice in it – creates different kinds of concerns and pacing for the heroes, and suggests and allows different kinds of tricks and benefits for the Watcher.

The upshot of this is that I’m going to be looking for different ways to use the doom pool to create interesting pacing and challenges in the game. I’m curious to see how it works out.

So, this Friday, it looks like it’s going to be a small group – three out of five heroes – and they’re going to resume their hunt for Whisper, the Phage Worms, and the Chant.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Pandemonium: Chasing the Chant

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I’m behind on posts again ((Well, still, really.)). We’ve got the next session of Pandemonium tomorrow night, so I need to get the post of the last session up tonight.

Now, in my last Pandemonium post, I talked about how I was looking at restructuring some of the gameplay to help speed up the combats. I did the extra prep ((Coming up with pre-rolls for the non-starring characters, with totals and effect dice for the standard things they do.)), got it all typed up, and was feeling both smug with getting it done and eager to see how it would work in play.

And, of course, my players decided to go chasing after a completely different thread that I had mentioned the session before kind of in passing ((That’s not quite right. It’s a thread tied to Inquisitor’s backstory, and I had been neglecting it, so I gave him some info about it as a side thing in that session.)), a thread that I hadn’t prepped at all. I thought for a brief moment about saying that I wasn’t prepared for that and asking them to continue with one of the other threads ((Which I think is a fair thing for a GM to do. And I just erased five more sentences from this footnote, so I think this may merit a post of its own.)). I didn’t really want to do that, though, because I’m trying to revive the game after a long dormancy, and that means getting the players interested and excited again.

Instead, I told them that I hadn’t prepared this part of the game world, and that I’d be improvising madly while I ran it. I asked for their indulgence if things went a bit off the rails, or if I needed to ask for a short break to look something ((Like, say, a datafile that I could reskin to be an appropriate villain, for example.)) up. They agreed, so I took a deep breath, and jumped.

I learned something interesting in doing that. I learned that MHR is not nearly as hard to improvise in as I had thought it would be.

The thread they wanted to chase was a series of murders, each with a larger number of victims, that sounded very like the psychic parasites – phage worms – that Inquisitor had chased from his dimension to this one. They’re called the Chant, and their leader is a creature called Whisper. Phage worms burrow into living creatures, and use the lifeforce of their hosts to power their psychic abilities. When they wind up fully depleting the host, they find another one, leaving behind a withered, aged husk.

Whisper had been using his abilities mainly to pull more phage worms across into this dimension to help build an army that he can then lead back to conquer his home dimension. Inquisitor had come here to make sure that didn’t happen. When he saw the murder files with a pattern that only he recognized ((Obtained by Artemis, who has joined the GCPD in her civilian identity.)), he brought the other members of the Guardians in on the case.

Through some investigation ((Honestly, I don’t remember all the details of what they did, but they did stuff that worked.)), they managed to track down the latest batch of phage worm hosts to an abandoned tenement in the Narrows. Our heroes managed to clear most of the squatters out before things went to hell, but things did, in fact, go to hell. There was a pitched battle that started a fire, and lots of collateral damage, but the heroes were true heroes, making sure that the innocents in the building all got clear.

But things were not really going their way and, when I finally ended the scene with 2d12 from the doom pool, I brought the building crashing down on them, with Inquisitor winding up in the basement with a shadowy, huge, misshapen figure gloating at him – Whisper.

That’s where we left the game.

We’re adding a new player tomorrow night. His backstory has given me the hook for the session and a way to get everyone involved. It should be fun.

Now, for a bit of musing.

One of the things I discovered as I ran MHR as a seat-of-the-pants improvised game is that I’ve been thinking about the way the system works a little incorrectly. At least, a little incorrectly for me.

I have a tendency, when running MHR, to fall back on the mechanical aspects of it a little too readily. I ask for a lot of rolls, and let the players use their effect dice to build assets and stunts and resource dice that they can use later. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does lead to a lot of rolls. And rolls in MHR can be slow.

Running with fewer solid stat blocks meant that I called for fewer rolls, because every time a character builds a dice pool to roll, I have to build one to roll against them. Not having the stat block meant that I was reluctant to call for a roll because of the slowdown it would cause as I figured out the Watcher character’s dice pool.

And it worked just fine.

When I did need to make a roll and I didn’t have a solid stat block, I eyeballed things and grabbed a handful of dice based on stuff I made up right at that moment. I pulled in stuff already established in the game – scene distinctions, the nature of the character, etc. – but then I just tossed in a couple more dice – usually d8s, sometimes d10s – to make it a respectable pool.

And it worked just fine.

Now, I wouldn’t do these things in important scenes – fighting the adventure’s big bad, for example – because that cheapens the victory for either side. But for lesser things – mooks, minor actions, stuff like that – it’s something to keep in mind to keep the game flowing.

But the really interesting thing that I learned by doing this improv session is that the powers aren’t necessarily mechanical constructs of the game ((Of course, they are mechanical constructs of the game, but they’re not just that. At least, they don’t have to be.)). They are more in the nature of narrative cues for both the player and the Watcher. Same thing with the SFX – actually, same thing with pretty much any die on the character sheet.

What does that mean? It means that I need to remember Vincent Baker’s brilliant advice: “Say yes or roll the dice.” The dice are there to provide the flavour for the characters’ awesomeness, and as long as the player is holding to the spirit of the character, it doesn’t really matter if the rulebook description of the power says that it can or can’t do something. If it’s something that would look awesome on the page of a comic book, and it makes sense for a character like the one being played, then go with it. Don’t get mired down in the minutiae of the building of the dice pool – get excited about the narrative and description the player is building into the game.

It’s a valuable attitude shift, I think. We’ll find out tomorrow night if I can maintain it and use it effectively.

Pandemonium: Swarm

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Things have been kind of busy around the old homestead, here, with pressure and stress coming from both the personal and the work sides of life. It’s meant I’ve been neglecting… well, a number of things, but the Pandemonium campaign is the one that most needs addressing.

This particular session of the game took place back near the beginning of August. Since then, I canceled one game due to illness and just haven’t gotten around to scheduling another. Now, a two-month gap in play is a danger sign for a campaign ((Campaigns have momentum. If you lose it, it can be very, very hard to get it back.)), so I want to get this post up and try to schedule the next session ASAP.

The play summary for this session is, because of the gap, a little sparse on detail, so I’m going to lay out the events I remember in point form. I invite the players to add to ((Or correct, if I got something wrong.)) this list in the comment section.

  • Things started with our heroes interrogating Sparky, the prisoner from the previous adventure, at Artemis’s apartment ((And what could go wrong with one of Magus the Maggot’s minions knowing where Artemis lives?)).
  • They didn’t seem to make much of an impression on the cocky ((Also brainwashed.)) young kid, so they let him go. Not without putting a ((Mystical, I think?)) tracking device on him to follow him home.
  • Warlock scried on Sparky’s meeting with Magus, and saw a couple of his other henchmen there. One of these henchmen was decked out like a vodun priest, and he seemed to be able to detect the magical spying. Warlock, however, reached through the the link the priest was creating, and rendered himself undetectable by the priest. EVER ((It was a really, really good roll.)).
  • Artemis and Inquisitor used some of the Orrakachu tech to create a device for detecting dimensional incursions ((“Hey Rick, can I make a device to help us find dimensional incursions?” “You mean an Adventure Plot Detector? You bet!”)).
  • They used the detector be on the scene when an incursion happened on one of Gotham City’s bridges, unleashing a horde of insect-like incursives ((I used the stats for the Annihilation Horde from the late, lamented Annihilation event book that almost got published.)).
  • There was some crossed communication during the fight, when Artemis was able to shut the incursion down, but had to hold off because a couple of the others had – willingly or unwillingly – gone through the rift to the alien dimension.
  • On the other side of the rift, they found lots and lots more of the insect creatures, as well as some giant bugs that seemed to be controlling the actions of the smaller ones, in a cliched-but-effective insect hive mind kind of deal.
  • Vastly overmatched, they retreated, shut down the incursion, stabilized the bridge ((Which was near to collapsing at this point.)), and got the surviving civilians to safety ((Escher had got an early start on this bit, using her mind control almost as soon as she arrived.)).
  • The very public operation, saving people from alien bugs and preventing a bridge from collapsing, prompted the gang to use some XP to cement a Heroes of Gotham d6 permanent resource for the team.

So, that was pretty fun.

Now, let’s talk about some of the difficulties I’ve had running this game.

For all the parts of it that I love, MHR has two main flaws as far as I’m concerned: combat can be slow to run, and it can take a significant amount of time to prep for a game system.

I’ve talked about the speed of combat before. Because villains and heroes share the same stat makeup and mechanics ((For the most part, anyway.)); and because each turn requires the creation of two dice pools, two rolls, and two sets of calculations; and because of the way the initiative system works; there can be a significant ((Over an hour, at one point.)) time period between a character’s turn. This is just an artifact of the system. The fact that there are active defense rolls can help mitigate that, but if a character is just not a target, that doesn’t really come into play.

On our annual trip down to GenCon this year, Clint and I were talking about this, and he suggested that, for the non-boss villains, it might be faster to give the character a set roll and effect die for the stuff they do. That would cut down a lot of the time the Watcher uses to build dice pools, many of which are just the same from turn to turn, anyway.

Now, coming up with the the average for the kinds of mixed dice pools used by MHR is complex. Sitting down with dice, scratch paper, and a calculator, I could probably have roughed things out eventually, but then I discovered this Firefly RPG Dice Pool Calculator. It’s not ideal, because it doesn’t take into account the idea of the effect die, but it’s close enough for my purposes.

I’ve been struggling with how to assign an effect die ((Necessary for the basic mechanics.)), how to adjust the total based on spending doom dice ((A nice-to-have requirement for the mechanics.)), and how to assign 1s to the roll ((Not crucial, but some powers key off the opportunities represented by the 1s.)). I know just enough about probability math to recognize that the simple ideas I have for this won’t be accurate reflections of the actual probability, but not enough to be able to properly model these elements simply and elegantly.

Then I realized that this was a game, not a math paper or computer program, and I could stop sweating it so much.

Thus, I have come up with the following simple rules to address these issues:

  • Effect die is the second largest die in the pool. For a pool of d10 + d8 + 3d6, effect die is d8. For a pool of 2d10 + d6 + d4, the effect die is d10.
  • Adding a doom die to the roll increases the total rolled by a number based on the die type. d6 = +1, d8 = +2, d10 = +3, d12 = +4. This is far from accurate ((For most dice pools, the straight bonus is a significantly larger boost than probability dictates.)), probability-wise, but it’s simple, quick, and isn’t too nasty for the PCs. We’ll see how it goes.
  • 1s will be assigned based on the Average # of Jinxes on the calculator. For example, a dice pool of 4d8 has an average number of jinxes of .50, so every second time I roll that pool, it will be assigned a 1 for the characters to buy, recorded as 1/2. This means that there won’t be multiple 1s in these pools very often, but again, it’ll speed things up without unduly screwing over the heroes.

So, that means that, for a troop of Orrakachu soldiers with a dice pool of 1d10 + 5d8 for their attacks, the attack line will look something like this:

Orrakachu Soldiers Attack Pool Total 14, Effect Die d8, 1s 2/3.

Again, this is not mathematically sound as far as probability goes, but I really care less about that ((A lot less, in fact.)) than I do about making things run smoothly and a little more quickly in combat. Things are a little weighted in favour of the villains this way, but I figure that will balance with the fact that the players will quickly figure out the numbers they have to beat for their rolls, and will use that knowledge to finesse things a bit as far as spending PPs and other tricks go.

And, of course, I won’t be using this method for the big bosses or for smaller fights. Just to help me run larger, more complex combats.

The downside to this approach is that it feeds into the prep time of the game.

Prep time for MHR is not overwhelming like D&D, but it’s also not trivial, like Apocalypse World. Because it’s a comic book game, one of the assumptions is that there will be interesting superhero battles, and that can involve some fussing about ahead of time. Mook-type opponents are very simple to stat up, but any real opponents requires some thinking and tinkering to build something appropriate.

For the most part, I look through the large number of stat blocks available both in the MHR books and online, find something that fits, and reskin it. On occasion, I use the random datafile generator that MWP released to create something brand new. Both these methods are somewhat time-intensive, though; it’s not like I can throw together an impromptu session quickly.

Now, to use the average roll method outlined above to speed up play, I will have to put in some more prep time, converting the stat blocks to have the averages reflected. That’s not a huge deal, but it is an extra demand on my time which, right now, is at a premium.

The way I try to address this is by prepping some utility stat blocks and fights whenever I prep a session’s stats. I make a scene or two that I don’t think will get used in the current session ((But which might.)) and can be easily repurposed for another session. This usually means I tie it to one of the side plots, and produces the useful effect of creating a stockpile of themed scenes that I can later turn into a primary plotline for a session or three.

It doesn’t make things faster, prep-wise, but it does mean it’s a little more efficient in producing results that can help reduce prep down the road by front-loading the work.

Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff I’ve been thinking about with Pandemonium. I’m going to send out some e-mail to my players to try and book the next session – that’s when I’ll find out for sure if the game has lost too much momentum, or if we can salvage it.

I’m hoping it’s not dead yet. But if it is, it’s my fault for leaving it hanging.

Pandemonium: Against the Maggot

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I am waaaay behind on the blog. There are five posts that I want to get up before GenCon next week, so things are going to be busy here the next several days. It also means that some of the play reports may be a little sketchier than you’re used to seeing here. That’s a product of both me rushing to get things done and the fact that some significant time has passed since the actual play session.

Sorry about that.

Now, here’s the first post. One down, four to go.

There was a big gap between the first session of Pandemonium and the second ((Thank you, heavy work schedule, and life schedule, and leaky bathroom ceiling, and bronchitis.)). On the one hand, that sucks because it’s easy for games to lose momentum with big gaps in play, especially in the early phases. On the other hand, it gave me some time to build in reasons for the stuff that happened in the previous session so that, when our heroes started investigating what was going on, I’d have stuff for them to find and learn.

First thing I needed to do was decide who the incursives ((“Incursive” is the word that came up during setting creation to describe extra-dimensional beings who have entered Gotham City via a dimensional incursion. It was a nice example of natural development of terminology, so we kept it.)) selling the tech were. Also, what they wanted, and what the tech was.

It was around thisabin-sur time that I found Names: The Story Games Name Project ((This is an absolutely great book for coming up with a bunch of names for games, as you might imagine from the title. I heartily recommend it to gamers and writers.)), and started looking through it for good alien names. There’s a section called Orrakachu that had names with the right sound to them ((Also a table entitled Weird Honorific that’s just awesome.)), so I decided the incursives were from the Orrakachu Hegemony, and started pulling names from those lists. A bit of web searching led me to a picture of Abin Sur from the Green Lantern movie that I liked for the look of the Orrakachu.

As far as the tech goes, I thought it would be interesting to make it three suits of Orrakachu battle armour, so that’s what I did.

The background on the Orrakachu was pretty basic, but I needed at least a little in case the heroes went looking for it ((And they did, so well done me!)). I decided the Orrakachu were controlling, but not necessarily warlike or evil, incursives. Their MO was to come to a new world, destabilize it, and then persuade the controlling powers of the world that they need to join the Hegemony as a junior member, ceding control to the Orrakachu.

I also came up with why they were selling this stuff to Magus the Maggot and his Styxx gang, and why Magus was co-operating with them, but the characters haven’t figured that out, yet, so I’m not talking about that here. You’ll just have to wait to find out when they find out.

So, with the backstory figured out, we were ready to go. When I ((Finally.)) got the players together in a room and we got to play, they started digging into the mystery of the previous session.

One of the cool things they started doing was co-opting elements of the setting, such as one of the dirty cops from last session, into resources for themselves. I love when characters start interacting with the setting they created and using it for their advantage – not only does it help make the world seem more alive and vibrant, but it also gives me tacit permission to use the things from the setting to make their lives interesting ((Which often means “more complicated.”)).

Anyway, they found out the above information about the Orrakachu, and they did some testing of the Orrakachu tech ((Netting them some nice assets, as well as potential new powers if they decide to go that way.)). They even arranged for a meeting with Magus the Maggot to find out what was going on. That’s where things went a little wrong for them.

Sure, Magus was happy to meet with them. He even set up a location in the Catacombs to do so. But Magus was still a little miffed about not getting the tech he paid for, and also not getting back the money he paid for it. Our heroes had both, and didn’t seem at all inclined to give any of it to him. Thus, the best course for him was a nasty ambush.

I played a little dirty with this fight, partly because the fight in the previous session had been deliberately easy so as to let the players get used to their characters and the system. One of the players had created Magus and his gang as part of her background, and some of the stuff she created made me think of the Purple Man‘s abilities, so I re-skinned him for Magus. I re-skinned a couple of other Marvel characters for Styxx enforcers, and gave them all a few assets in place to reflect their preparation for the fight. Then, I opened with Magus breaking down Escher’s control over her telekinesis ((Activating her Uncontrollable limit. I rolled really well for his attempt, and then gave the player the option of rolling a reaction, or letting him activate the limit, for which she would gain a PP. She chose the PP.)), which blasted all the heroes into different corners of the room.

The fight was pretty tough for the heroes, and I seem to recall almost taking out two of the characters ((Well, at least one.)). In the end, Magus and one of his enforcers fled, all his low-level thugs were taken out, and the heroes managed to capture one of the enforcers ((That’s right, isn’t it guys? You caught Sparky?)). So, the heroes were victorious, but it wasn’t an overwhelming win. And the grudges on both sides have a chance to grow.

And just as I’m writing this, I have remembered that I promised to send some e-mail to a couple of players who want to rework their Milestones ((Character creation in MHR is really easy, but it lacks the kind of structure a lot of players expect from an RPG. The trickiest part of character creation is coming up with Milestones, because they have to both suit the character concept and the campaign. So, that means we need to tweak them sometimes.)). That’ll happen tonight, folks. Sorry about the delay.

Anyway, Saturday is the next game. I’m looking forward to it.

Pandemonium: Gun Bust

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Last Friday was our first session of my new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign, Pandemonium. We had previously done a setting creation session, and a character creation session, and now we were finally getting to play.

In between the completion of the character creation session and the actual play session, there was a fair bit of work getting the characters finished and tweaked, and getting the setting bible finished ((If you want a copy of the final setting bible, you can download it here.)). I am really pretty pleased with the way the setting and characters turned out. And I’m especially pleased that we got the feedback loop going. You know what I’m talking about – ideas from the setting inform the characters, and the development of the characters fleshed out the setting.

You’ll notice that, in addition to the actual setting elements, I’ve added a few extra sections to the bible:

  • Milestones. These are simultaneously one of the coolest and one of the slipperiest elements of the game. Using them is absolutely great in helping characters bring up the issues that they are most interested in during play, but coming up with good Milestones is tricky. So, I created a couple specific to the setting, and stole several others from various published MHR products, tweaking them as necessary. The plan was that the players could either pick from the list or use the ones in the bible for inspiration ((They wound up doing both, so score.)).
  • Experience. Unlike most other RPGs, experience in MHR is best spent, not in “leveling up” your character, but in unlocking various campaign resources ((In my opinion, of course, which I will defend. First, the source material doesn’t generally have the heroes getting stronger, or faster, or whatever – the heroes change, but mainly they weave themselves more into the world, learn more, make contacts, etc., rather than leveling up. Second, bigger numbers on your sheet don’t mean the same thing in this game as they do in other RGGs – the way the balance works in play, there’s just not the huge benefit to big numbers that you see in, say, D&D. Third, it’s just more interesting to have your character be owed a favour by a pandimensional deity than to go from Flight d6 to Flight d8.)) ((That was a really long footnote. There may be a whole blog post lurking in there. Have to think about that.)). This section spells out how to spend experience points, including listing an assortment of campaign resources at various levels of expense and utility for characters to spend their XP on.
  • Pushes, Stunts, Resources, and Assets. One of the things that I had a lot of trouble keeping straight in my head during the Civil War game was the differences between all the ways you could get an extra die to roll in your die pool. I wound up playing very fast and loose with it, and that really contributed to the power-bloat that caused me problems in the game. So, this campaign, I spelled things out so we were all ((Except there were a couple of times in the session that I couldn’t remember how one of them worked – whether it lasted for a single action or for the scene – and just glossed over it because I didn’t want to take the time to look it up. But I can brush up on that before the next session.)) on the same page with how these things worked. I also added the idea of Flashbacks, stolen from the Firefly RPG, to allow the characters to fill in some backstory in order to boost the die they get for what they’re doing.

Eventually, I’m going to get this stuff up on a wiki, but at least I got it out to the players in time for them to read it before the game.

Anyway, when people showed up, I spent some time running through the basics of the mechanics for the game. Once that was done, I dropped them right into the action scene.

With the time spent at the start of the game talking rules ((Two of the players were veterans of the Civil War game, and the other two hadn’t played since I had run the playtest when the game was first released. The fact that I had been doing some things wrong in Civil War meant that everyone – including me – needed to be taught or retaught the rules.)), and the fact that the initial session of a new game is always going to be slow as people learn the system, I picked a very simple first action scene. They had found out about a weapons buy by the Styx, a local street gang, at a warehouse in the Narrows. A group of Styx gang members were meeting some mysterious weapons sellers, with local corrupt cops providing security.

To help learn about the way that Resources and Assets work, I told the characters that, though they were at the warehouse and the buy was about to go down, they each had a chance to set something up retroactively. So, Warlock conjured a ring of tiny watcher lights to keep an eye on the warehouse, Escher put together a pouchful of sleep gas bombs, Artemis ((Who decided she had infiltrated the warehouse while the rest of the heroes were outside.)) sealed up the main doors with her telekinesis, and Inquisitor wired some nightvision goggles into his helmet. Once that was done, I explained how the turn sequence worked, and let them choose who was going to start.

Opposition-wise, I had put together simple stat blocks for the gang members and the police. There were five in the gang mob, and two mobs of three cops each. For the sellers, I used the Kree soldier stat blocks from the Annihilation event book ((I am so glad that I at least got the .pdf of this book before the line ended. It’s a brilliant book, with lots of useful stats and some great new pieces of rules, like vehicles, timed actions, and racial power sets.)), and threw in the Kree Captain as a boss. Now, I didn’t describe the sellers as Kree ((In fact, I really didn’t describe them much at all, except to say, “Yeah, you can tell by looking at them that they’re not from around here.” If they are interesting enough for the characters to pursue, I’ll have to come up with some details.)), but people could see the stat blocks I was looking at, so I explained that I was just looting the stats, not the details.

I also added a short list of things that I could spend Doom Pool dice on, ranging from reinforcements for the various factions to an explosive dimensional breach occurring. This was to make the Doom Pool more threatening to the players, which in turn increases the tension of the action, and seemingly raises the stakes of what’s going on. Also, it lets me spring some cool stuff on the heroes.

The heroes sprang into action and, through good planning and being awesome ((As well as through the fact that I deliberately created fairly easy opposition for them.)), they managed to triumph. All the cops were taken out – including the reinforcements that got called in, the gang members were all mind controlled, and the boss seller got chased back to his home dimension. Pretty much right at the moment the warehouse collapsed into the water. Everyone scrambled for safety at that point, though Artemis took the time to try and snag the bag of money they gang had brought to the buy ((She succeeded, by the way.)).

We wrapped the evening up at that point. I went over the XP stuff again, because it’s easy to forget to track such things during the game. Overall, I was really quite pleased with how quickly everyone got into the swing of the game. Not just the way they picked up how to build dice pools but, more importantly, how to do crazy, cool, awesome stuff – stuff that you’d see in a comic book or action movie – and use the system to support that. So, kudos to my players for that.

I sent them e-mail a few days later, asking them to think about what loose ends from the first session – or from the setting bible in general – they want to pursue. That’ll give me some direction for building the next session’s adventure.

Next session is in about two weeks. I’m really looking forward to it.

Pandemonium: Coming Together to Fall Apart

By | | Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Pandemonium, What's he playing?
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After we ended our Ashen Stars one-shot, our group decided to try out a Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign. The proposed frame was a street-level campaign set in Gotham City. Upon discussion, it seemed we had a big enough diversity of views on what that meant that I felt it would be a good idea to have a game-building session to make sure we were all on the same page.

Hot on the success of the game-building session for Sundog Millionaires, I decided to use the exact same set-up: start with a Want/Do Not Want list, come up with the elevator pitch for the game, then use the Fate Core game-building method to flesh things out. It’s not a perfect fit, simply because, with Fate Core, you come up with aspects, and there are no aspects in MHRPG. But there are distinctions, which are close enough ((Both functionally and philosophically.)) to substitute.

When we got together a couple of weeks ago, we ran through things. We wound up with a street-level game, but less focused on the common gangs, organized crime, and low-level villains. One of the players really wanted a kind of interdimensional city ((Inspired by the city of Cynosure in the Grimjack comics.)), so we talked things out, and decided that our Gotham City wasn’t the DC Gotham City. We’re still using the Gotham City map I found online, and the name of the city, and the gothic comic book feeling. But no Batman, no Commissioner Gordon, no Joker, etc.

The main threats in our Gotham are the rampant corruption ((Similar to the Gotham of the early Batman days.)) and two linked threats: dimensional incursions, and a turf war between the native Gotham gangs and some extra-dimensional terrorists. Our heroes are among the first people in the world to develop powers, and there is no superhero culture as is usually found in most comic book universes. While the concept of superheroes exists in our Gotham, they are relegated to comic books and cartoon shows. No one actually uses the word to describe themselves in real life, no matter what their powers may be.

While we don’t have the whole setting nailed down, here’s a link to the current version of our setting bible, for the curious.

The next week, we got together again to do character creation. I had asked all the players to come with a solid idea for a character – background, powers, concept, etc. – but not to worry about any of the stats and numbers until we got together. There was a lot of talk early on that MHRPG didn’t have a character generation system. This is not true, but the system is a lot less structured than most people are used to ((Especially from a superhero game.)). Creating a character is more art than science, because there are no real constraints on the process beyond, “Do what’s right for the character.”

This is because most game systems put the mechanics for game balance in at the character generation stage – everyone gets the same number of points, everyone gets to choose one races and one class, everyone gets to pick X items from a list, etc. This gives everyone a character that ((Ideally, if the game design assumptions are solid.)) has equivalent mechanical weight and strength. This mechanical equivalency is then assumed to grant each character equal chances for coolness during play ((Which is really the only reasonable measure of game balance that I ascribe to.)).

In MHRPG, balance happens in the mechanics for taking action. It allows each character opportunity to shine, to do things their way, and show off what they’re best at. It allows Thor to share the stage with Daredevil, and for each to have their own cool moments. They will be very different moments, but they will be equally cool – and the type of cool will be dictated by the type of coolness you decided to build into the character.

What this amounts to is that character creation is mostly about eyeballing a concept, and pulling in the numbers and mechanics that you think best. The section about it in the main rulebook focuses on the idea of modelling an existing character from comic books, but it can easily be used to create an original character. The key, as the rulebook says, is to know as much about the character as possible. For existing characters, that means knowing their books. For original characters, that means a solid character concept.

The lack of a more traditional structure for character creation, and the more-art-than-science nature of it, meant that I really wanted to do things as a group. We started by talking out the concepts, and then walking through the assigning of affiliation dice and picking distinctions. Moving on to the power sets and power traits, I had imposed a few constraints.

One of the challenges I had in running my Civil War mini campaign was that it was difficult to come up with serious challenges for the heroes without either cheating or using so many villains that it becomes far too cumbersome to run. Faced with that, I wanted to limit the overall power of the characters ((This also helped reinforce the idea of the street-level power level of the game.)). I restricted the number of power sets for the characters to two and, within each power set, I set a limit of one d10 power trait ((I wound up saying that the character who was taking a single power set could have two d10 traits. Why? Because, even though I consciously know that balance happens in play rather than in character generation, I and my players still have the knee-jerk reflex that we need to impose fairness at chargen.)), and no d12 traits.

Once we had the basics roughed in, and had talked about SFX, Limits, and Milestones, things were at the point where one-on-one time with each player was necessary to flesh out and finish the characters, so we stopped there for the evening. Now, we’re filling in the rest of the characters via e-mail and, once we get those sorted, we’ll start play.

And here’s our roster of characters for this game:

  • Warlock, a student of the mystic arts who has found a set of magical armour that boosts his power. Unfortunately, when his mind occupies the armour, his body lies helpless and unconscious.
  • Escher, a new psychic suffering from PTSD, torn between caring for those whose minds have been damaged by encounters with the dimensional incursions and punishing those who would prey on the weak and damaged.
  • Artemis, an expert in finding things, with contacts in both this world and the extra dimensional marketplace of the Bizarre.
  • Inquisitor, an extradimensional cop from the Enclave, hunting down Whisper and the rest of the Chant, incursive terrorists from his home.

Stay tuned for more information once play begins.

Civil War: We Are Gathered Here Today

By | | Civil War, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, What's he playing?
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***Spoiler Warning***

My group and I are playing through the Civil War event book for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, from Margaret Weis Productions. While the course of play may not follow the event book – or the comic books – precisely, there’s going to be a certain amount of stuff that does conform to the adventures and comic series.

In short, if you don’t want to know what happens in Civil War, don’t read these posts. Or the comic books.

***You Have Been Warned***

Friday evening was a very interesting session of our Civil War campaign. It was the marriage of Black Panther and Storm in Wakanda, and the Guardians went to celebrate, politic, and recruit for their anti-SHRA campaign. It wound up being a session entirely of roleplaying ((Well, there was one punch thrown, but we’ll get to that.)), which was a nice change from the usual combats that exemplify superhero games.

Now, that’s not to say that I dislike combats in superhero games; quite the contrary. The reason you play a superhero game is, I believe, to have all the awesome excitement and spectacle of reproducing the comic book fights. But a steady diet of combats not only gets boring, it doesn’t accurately reflect the way most comic books tell their stories these days. So, I was pleased to have a whole session of talking to people and character exploration.

Volcanic decided to stay on Volcano Island to safeguard the civilians there, along with Cyber and Daredevil. The rest of the Guardians – Jumpstart, Mega Joule, The Doctor, Luke Cage, and Spider-Man – took the GX-1 to Wakanda for the wedding. At the hotel, they found a whole bunch of other heroes gathered around, and got to do some schmoozing. Some highlights from the evening:

  • The Doctor chatting with Tony Stark and getting the information that a) he’s not as drunk as he seems, and b) “normal” MGH shouldn’t have done what it did to Nitro and Declan.
  • Spider-Man and Human Torch going out to take pictures (and ogle the women, in Johnny’s case), and Spidey talking Torch into joining the Guardians.
  • Mega Joule laying hands on Namor and getting punched. He soaked up the punch, and called the Sub-Mariner rude for striking another guest ((Mega Joule’s kinetic control let him take the punch without damage, and he spun his counter-attack as doing Emotional Stress instead of physical. Very nice.)).
  • Jumpstart warning Reed Richards that, unless he started paying attention to how she was feeling about this whole SHRA mess, Susan was going to leave him.
  • The Doctor finally finding someone who understood how he feels about the SHRA: Cyclops. Though the mutants at the School aren’t in much of a position to help, Cyclops promised to take in any Guardians who needed refuge, and gave The Doctor some contacts in Mutant Town who might be interested in helping.
  • The Doctor and Mega Joule convincing Hercules that fighting the SHRA would be glorious and noble, and thus convincing him to join the Guardians.
  • Sub-Mariner coming to Volcano Island and arranging an alliance with Volcanic, the “King” of Volcano Island.

Of course, the centerpiece of the evening was T’Challa calling together the Guardians and the pro-SHRA forces (represented by Captain America, Reed Richards, and Hank Pym) to try and talk things out. This went about as well as you would expect. Cap is still sore at Jumpstart over the whole insubordination, betrayal, and (possibly) treason thing, so he was less than receptive to the talks right from the start. Reed decided he’d had enough once The Doctor essentially called him a Nazi ((Note that this happened before his little chat with Jumpstart.)).

Once Cap and Reed walked away from the table, Hank Pym explained that this was just a courtesy to T’Challa, and the last chance for the Guardians to surrender with some dignity. He said that the anti-SHRA was doomed, thanks to the new weapons and resources that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been developing, and that it was no longer a question about right and wrong, but about pragmatism – the resistance was going down, and anyone siding with it when that happened was doomed.

When Hank walked away after his little speech, T’Challa thanked the Guardians for being willing to talk and stay at the table. He let the Guardians know that they were welcome in Wakanda, and he would provide a safe haven for them if needed. He also gave them a number of Wakandan nanotech medkits to help with their humanitarian efforts. So, it wasn’t a complete loss.

Then, I got completely blindsided.

Volcanic, who had been back at Volcano Island but was getting periodic updates from the Guardians in Wakanda, climbed into the freshly-finished GX-2, and flew to Wakanda. Not to attend the wedding, but to surrender himself to Captain America for trial.

The reasoning behind this ((I think. I’m viewing it from the outside, and haven’t discussed this with Clint, yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m at least partially right.)) is that Volcanic knows that fighting S.H.I.E.L.D. and the pro-SHRA heroes isn’t going to do much to get the SHRA repealed. Only lessening the fear of the populace and forcing a vote in Congress is going to do that. With S.H.I.E.L.D. controlling most of the information about the situation, the only way to get the counter-arguments out to the general public is a highly-publicized trial.

I’m cool with this, though it’s a huge departure from the published event book. I don’t really care about that so much, really. But it is a factor, because departing from the stuff provided in the book means more prep time for me, so I wanted to make sure that the player was really committed to this idea before accepting it. I had Cap make a demand – Volcanic would have to agree to have his powers neutralized for the duration of his confinement.

Volcanic had a problem with that – see, he accepted the mantle of these powers to remove them from the Volcano God of Volcano Island, and prevent the Volcano God from running amok and sinking Manhattan. If he gives up or neutralizes the powers, they would revert to the Volcano God, and that would be a big problem for the eastern seaboard. He agreed to surrender the powers, but only if Cap would accept them to keep the Volcano God under control. Cap agreed, and we ended the session with a splash page of Volcanic reverting to his human form, Dr. Nick Burns ((Yeah, yeah. It’s comic books. If you can have Ben Grimm and Sue Storm, you can have Nick Burns.)), and Cap turning into a towering mass of lava ((We glossed over the wedding itself. It was a lovely wedding.)).

Now, before the next game ((Which is scheduled for November 15.)), I have to do a few things:

  1. Talk to Clint to get a feel for his ideas about what controlling the mantle of the Volcano God is like for Cap.
  2. Figure out how I’m going to handle the trial of Volcanic.
  3. Get some feel from the other players about how they want things to proceed.
  4. Decide whether the trial is going to be the big showdown for Act II – or even for the entire event.
  5. Check to see if the group are spending XP to unlock Human Torch and Hercules as playable heroes.

Yeah, Clint through me a curve ball with his decision that may change the entire rest of the campaign. I don’t mind, though. I love it ((I didn’t always love it. It took me some time to figure out that saying yes to crazy player plans always led to the best play. I don’t always say yes, even now, but I always wind up wishing that I had.)) when player actions and decisions have the kinds of far-reaching effects. It just means that I need to take a little time to figure out how to respond ((That’s usually the reason I say no. No time to figure out how to handle the coolness.)).

Anyway. I’ve got about two weeks to sort this stuff out.

Then we’ll see what happens.

Civil War: Rescue

By | | Civil War, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, What's he playing?
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***Spoiler Warning***

My group and I are playing through the Civil War event book for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, from Margaret Weis Productions. While the course of play may not follow the event book – or the comic books – precisely, there’s going to be a certain amount of stuff that does conform to the adventures and comic series.

In short, if you don’t want to know what happens in Civil War, don’t read these posts. Or the comic books.

***You Have Been Warned***

Last Friday, we got together for the latest session of our Civil War game. We had a full house, which was great, because the plan was to locate and rescue Spider-Man, who had been captured last session. Seeing as the Guardians had been seen helping Aunt May and M.J. escape S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, Captain America had a pretty good idea that the Guardians ((And especially Jumpstart.)) would come to Spidey’s rescue.

And he was right, of course.

Now, in the three weeks between the last game and this one, we’d worked out a system to allow the Guardians to recruit and use other heroes. First of all, they had to have a hero willing to work with the group – that’s pure roleplaying. They’ve had some success with this, with Luke Cage and Daredevil ((The Danny Rand Daredevil.)) joining them, as well as Cyber, an original hero who used to be an NPC associate of Volcanic ((He built his lab assistant a power suit to keep her safe when she decided to go underground with him.)).

Once someone is well-disposed to the Guardians, they can be unlocked as playable characters for 10 XP. Each scene, the players can decide which character they want to play from the pool, which includes all the unlocked characters plus the players’ original characters.

The players can bring extra characters along for the scene, but each player only gets to play one character – playing multiple characters would really slow things down ((There are lots of things that I love about MHRPG, but it is not a fast game. Quite the opposite.)). Instead, extra characters become assets that the group can use, rated at the hero’s highest die. So, you can have a Luke Cage d10 asset if you bring Luke Cage with you on a mission.

Because Captain America had a good idea the Guardians were coming, and had time to plan and set things up, I pulled off the gloves in setting up the opposition for the rescue mission. Spidey was being transported to 42 via a small convoy of special APCs with Doomtech augmentation ((S.H.I.E.L.D. got a whole bunch of Doomtech thanks to the Guardians, way back here.)). The point APC held Battlestar and a squad of Cape-Killers, the tail APC held Arana and another squad of Cape-Killers. The middle APC held Spider-Man, Venom, Captain America, and another squad of Cape-Killers. Falcon, Sentry, and the Green Goblin were on high watch, flying above the convoy.

I also gave the pro-SHRA forces a few assets for the situation:

  • Captain America’s Plan d12
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. Co-ordination d10
  • APC d10

I also gave Captain America a Reed Richards-built insulator harness for facing Jumpstart ((It added the Insulator Rig power set, with Electrical Absorption d10, and the Gear limit.)), gave Stun Blaster d10 to a couple other guys.

So, yeah. A pretty tough set-up. Of course, experienced Watchers will already see what I’ve done wrong.

Waaaaaaaay too many characters. After all the talk about how I didn’t want the players running multiple characters each, I loaded up my plate with a total of seven heroes and a whole passel of extras. It made things threatening, sure, but it made them very, very slow for me, and thus for the players.

But we’ll get to that.

We started with the gang hacking the S.H.I.E.L.D. computers ((AGAIN. I told them that their S.H.I.E.L.D. Computer Back-Door Codes d12 was going to be used up on this attempt, no matter how well they rolled.)) to find out where Spider-Man was being held. They found that he was being moved the next night to something called 42, and they found the route, but no details about any escort.

They put together a plan ((I shut down one aspect of the plan that would have either had me running two parallel action scenes or completely restructuring the scene I had planned. It wasn’t a good feeling, squashing what was actually an interesting idea, but I did it for the sake of expediency. Sorry, Erik.)), picked a spot to ambush the convoy that was well away from civilians, and set up a few assets of their own, like Conveniently Collapsing Building d10 ((I think it was actually called something else, but can’t remember it offhand, so this gives the general gist.)) and Ambush d10. They all played their regular characters, but brought Cyber, Luke Cage, and Daredevil along with them, using the system I discussed above.

The start of the battle was everything I wanted it to be. The ambush worked great, but the heavy resistance meant that the Doctor and Jumpstart both had stress on them pretty much right out of the gate. They dropped Battlestar and the Green Goblin pretty quickly, as well as a few of the Cape-Killers, and took all three of the APCs out of the fight before the end of the first round.

And that’s when I noticed that, even though they had been careful about the action order and everything, I still had about four groups of bad guys that had actions at the bottom of the round, which would lead into the bad guys getting to go again at the top of round two. Now, as far as tactics go, that’s awesome, but as far as play experience for my friends, it sucked, because it would be a long wait for their turns.

In retrospect, what I should have done is picked a couple of good heroes to run, and threw in the rest as assets, just as I was having the players do. That would have allowed me to build the strong resistance and given everyone a good, challenging fight, while still keeping things moving at a respectable pace.

But I hadn’t done that. So, I screwed with the action sequence a little bit to bring things back around to the heroes, who implemented Operation: Grab Spidey and GTFO. This involved them grabbing Spider-Man and running for the GX-1. This retreat was, obviously, under fire, and the Sentry was heavily involved in that. As the heroes were already leaving, I used 2d12 from the doom pool to end the scene with the arrival of the Void.

The Void and the Sentry duked it out, destroying a couple of city blocks and killing some bystanders ((Which was kind of a dick move on my part. The Guardians had gone out of their way to pick a mostly deserted area, and did everything they possibly could to limit civilian casualties. Why did I do it? Mainly to make sure that the idea that heroes are dangerous to civilians retained validity.)), and incidentally preventing pursuit. The Guardians brought Spider-Man back to Volcano Island, reunited him with his ladies, and started planning the next phase.

Because we had spent part of the beginning of the game session deciding on the three questions they get to ask about AIM, because of the AIM database they liberated a couple of sessions ago, and my stupid decisions that made the combat scene go so slowly, that was about it for the evening. There was some strategizing and socializing after that, and they paid the 10 XP to unlock Spider-Man as a playable character, and then they went home.

Now, I’m going to send them the answers to their AIM questions via e-mail, hopefully this weekend, and that should determine where they go next. They’ve also got their invitations to a wedding in Wakanda that might interest them, and the question about what 42 is.

We’ve got three more sessions on the calendar before Christmas, which should bring us up to the end of Act Two. Then the gloves really come off.

I’m looking forward to it.

Edit: I incorrectly used ATV instead of APC in all the instances above, because of dumb. I have corrected that. Thanks to Erik for pointing it out.

Civil War: Allies

By | | Civil War, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, What's he playing?
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***Spoiler Warning***

My group and I are playing through the Civil War event book for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, from Margaret Weis Productions. While the course of play may not follow the event book – or the comic books – precisely, there’s going to be a certain amount of stuff that does conform to the adventures and comic series.

In short, if you don’t want to know what happens in Civil War, don’t read these posts. Or the comic books.

***You Have Been Warned***

After a four-month hiatus ((Summer is always difficult for scheduling games and this year was worse than most.)), we finally got back to our Civil War campaign this past Friday night. Because there had been such a gap in play, I made sure to reread my blog posts about the game, the Civil War event book, and the MHRPG core book. In doing so, I found a couple of little things that I had missed in the rules and decided to implement.

One of these is the rule that, if a character fails in a reaction roll but has a larger effect die than that of the action roll, the action roll effect die is stepped back one. This didn’t have a huge effect on play, but did add another level of strategy to the dice mechanic.

The other rule, though, I think is going to cause significant change in the way things have been going. That is the rule that you cannot use a plot point in the action that earns you that plot point. You can use other plot points, but not the ones you just earned by taking a d4 on a distinction or by having the GM buy off the opportunities you roll. This seems like a little thing, but it changes the flow of the plot point economy, and invalidates some of the tricks my players have used to pump up their totals and effect dice.

Now, I didn’t set out to nerf things for my players, but I’m not that sorry to see it happen. I’ve been finding it difficult to confront them with challenges that they can’t just walk over, and a large part of that has been how good they are at managing the plot point economy. That said, I’m feeling a little guilty ((Not guilty enough to relent, though.)) about taking away that bit of mechanical mastery they’ve acquired.

Anyway, I introduced these rules in this past session, and the gang ((Well, most of the gang. Erik wasn’t able to join us.)) had a chance to come to grips with them.

But on to the actual play.

We picked things up with a recap of the previous session, and then I had Spider-Man call the gang and ask for help. They had previously tried to recruit Spidey to their cause, but had been unable to do so. Still, the Doctor had given him a little token that he could use to contact the Guardians should he need them, and that’s what he used now. The Doctor was unavailable, being on a shamanic inner journey assisted by some very special mushrooms he grew himself ((If this doesn’t work for you Erik, we can retcon it.)), so the other Guardians were drawn to the Doctor’s room to find him catatonic and a hologram of Spider-Man’s head shouting to see if there was anyone around listening.

Spider-Man was concerned that, as Captain America knew who he was, and he was living in Avengers Tower ((“Spider-Man is living in Avengers Tower? Isn’t that place overrun with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents now that Stark has gone anti-SHRA?” “What, you think that S.H.I.E.L.D. will let him live anywhere else until he registers?”)), with two people that he wanted to keep safe ((M.J. and Aunt May, of course.)), he was going to be the first hero outed, with his loved ones arrested and imprisoned, unless he caved in, registered, and unmasked. He wanted some assistance in getting the two civilians somewhere safe ((Like Volcano Island, f’rinstance.)), while he distracted his guards.

The Guardians agreed to help out. Mega Joule, Jumpstart, and Cyber headed over in the GX-1 in stealth mode, while Volcanic prepared an underground escape route nearby. Spidey burst out of the tower while the GX-1 hovered invisibly over the landing pad, which was full of Cape Killers. The Cape Killer took off after Spidey, as did a number of Thunderbolt agents, including Venom.

Our heroes took the GX-1 up to the window that Spider-Man had departed from and found M.J. and Aunt May inside, surrounded by another unit of Cape Killers, Lady Deathstrike ((Who’s healing factor really pissed the players off. “Man, that’s no fair!” “Can’t you do the same thing, Mega Joule?” “Well, yeah, but…”)), Taskmaster, Jester ((Man, Jester just could not catch a break in this battle. Every roll he made, he screwed up, doing more damage to himself and his team than to the good guys.)), and Bullseye. The good guys had the element of surprise on their side, thanks to the GX-1’s stealth technology, and stormed in with some decisive opening moves. The way things fell out in the action sequence, however, the heroes wound up sucking up some nasty hits while they got M.J. and Aunt May out of harm’s way.

But they managed to rescue them, and with Volcanic’s escape route ((He’s set up an asset of Foolproof Escape Plan d12+.)), they got away clean. Spider-Man, unfortunately, was captured and outed.

The action scene ran a little slower than usual, partly because we were rusty, and partly because the new rules took some getting used to, and partly because the battle was harder with the new rules. So, with the game at a good pausing point, I ran a couple of follow-up scenes to lay some pipe and reward the characters.

First, Luke Cage contacted Mega Joule, whom he had made a connection with way back during the Stamford cleanup, and signed on with the Guardians, along with Danny Rand. Then, Iron Man tapped into the Guardians’ base communications net, and told them where they could pick up a shipment of Stark-tech to help the fight.

Everyone was in a pretty good mood about how things had turned out. Except for the bit about Spider-Man in custody.

But they plan to do something about that.

Civil War: Taking AIM

By | | Civil War, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, What's he playing?
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***Spoiler Warning***

My group and I are playing through the Civil War event book for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, from Margaret Weis Productions. While the course of play may not follow the event book – or the comic books – precisely, there’s going to be a certain amount of stuff that does conform to the adventures and comic series.

In short, if you don’t want to know what happens in Civil War, don’t read these posts. Or the comic books.

***You Have Been Warned***

This session almost didn’t happen on Friday night. That is to say that, instead of Civil War, I had scheduled a one-shot AD&D 1st Edition adventure for a group that consisted mostly of the Civil War game, with one additional player. That additional player wasn’t able to make it, so we decided to play Civil War instead ((Why am I bothering to tell you guys this? Well, mainly so that I can assure Chris and the rest of the guys that the AD&D one-shot will still happen.)). What this mainly meant was that, not having planned on another Civil War session before my upcoming vacation ((I’m going to Ireland on Friday for three weeks.)), I had a bit of a scrabble to get my prep work done for the game.

We had ended the last game with the Guardians in the secret AIM base below Ground Zero in Manhattan. Our heroes had just dealt with a couple of squads of troopers and a few scientists, and the emergency lights and klaxons had started, with a PA announcing that the destruct sequence had begun. That’s where we picked things up.

The Guardians decided they had three main objectives at this point: clear the people from the complex ((And preferably confine them for later prosecution.)); shut down the dangerous, overloading, high-energy experiments; and stop the destruct sequence to keep it from reducing lower Manhattan to rubble. Two of these issues were represented by the situational distinctions Overloading Experiments and Panicky Scientists Everywhere!, while the destruct sequence was represented by a countdown die ((Among the many things that make me sad about the end of the MHR license is the fact that the Annihilation event book, with all it’s cool new tricks, won’t be printed. Still, the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide is coming, so that’s good.)). To take care of these, the gang split up.

Jumpstart, with the help of a lightning sprite summoned by The Doctor, went looking for the main computers to shut down the destruct sequence. They found the sealed main computer room, but it was guarded by Bushwacker.

Now, to make the whole AIM complex scene more interesting, I went looking through the published MHR books looking for tech-based villains that weren’t already serving some purpose ((Or serving some time.)) in the event. I grabbed a few of these, and beefed them up a bit. I did this by giving them some AIM-provided assets and, to avoid the problem I ran into previously, I wrote these down on post-its and stuck them to the cards representing the villains in the turn order. So, Bushwacker had the assets Sniper’s Perch d10 and AIM-Tech Camouflage Field d10, and Living Laser had AIM-Tech Photonic Capacitor Harness d12 ((“How does he wear…” “It’s unstable molecules. Go with it.” “Is it just pots of glow-in-the-dark paint?” “I SAID GO WITH IT!”)) when he pounced on Megajoule.

So, The Doctor and Jumpstart managed to get into the computer room and shut down the destruct sequence, though they took some roughing up from Bushwacker ((Who managed to escape custody at the end of the session, thanks to his AIM-Tech Camouflage Field d10.)) in the process.

Meanwhile, Volcanic and Mega Joule concentrated on shutting down the overloading experiments – Volcanic using his scientific and technological expertise, and Mega Joule using his Universal Off Switch (aka Kinetic Blast). Volcanic did a good job on that, but Mega Joule was distracted by Living Laser trying to mess with him. That didn’t last too long, though; Mega Joule took him out with a single counterattack followed by his own attack. Then he moved on to helping delay the destruct countdown, because Volcanic had managed to cut the power to the labs and shut down the Overloading Experiments distinction.

Volcanic moved on to clearing out the scientists, herding them into a big rock cage adjacent to one of the subway tunnels a few levels up above the base for later disposal. One of the scientists he was shoveling away like this screamed, “No! It will get out!” as he was swept up, which made Volcanic pause beside a large, sealed metal door.

And that’s when the tentacled horror ((From Civil War: Fifty Stat Initiative event supplement, pFS73. I bumped up the die types on all its ratings by one step, because I’ve found that the PC heroes are pretty damned tough.)) came bursting out and tried to eat him. Volcanic made himself a big lava sword and hacked at it until it swallowed him, then he cooked it from the inside.

At that point, the AIM base was empty and stable, and we called it a night ((We had started somewhat late, and I had to work the next morning, so it wasn’t as long a session as I might have otherwise run.)). As people were packing up, we did a little talking about the aftermath of the raid: how it would definitely boost their credibility when it came to attracting more anti-registration folks to their cause, how it would – once again – show up S.H.I.E.L.D., and how they had some limited access to the AIM computers for a little while before S.H.I.E.L.D. swooped in.

To simulate this last point, rather than roll out hacking attempts or spend plot points for assets based on it, I told the group that they could ask me three questions about AIM and I would answer them, and that would represent the datalooting of the AIM base mainframe. They’re going to discuss it via e-mail and put together their three questions for me before the next session. If they get them in early enough, I may even do up some handouts or other in-game props to represent what they find.

And then, to lay some pipe for the next few sessions, I told them they saw a news announcement of Captain America telling all unregistered heroes that, unless they stepped forward in the next twenty-four hours and registered, S.H.I.E.L.D. would ((In a spectacular dick move.)) begin releasing their secret identity information to the public. That got everyone all riled up again, just in time to close down for the evening.

I’m looking forward to seeing where things go from here.

On a Related Note

Margaret Weis Productions has recently announced that their license for producing MHR has been terminated. That means no new MHR products will be released.

I want to say thank-you to the crew at MWP who worked on the game. I think the system is a triumph of design, that the way you built the event books was inspirational, and that the products you put out to the public are beautiful and useful. You should all be very proud of what you’ve done.

I’ve enjoyed playing and running the game immensely. It has got me reading Marvel comics again – I’m still a DC guy at heart, but now there are some Marvel titles ((Outside the Ultimate continuity; I always liked the Ultimate continuity.)) that I follow faithfully. The game books got me interested in picking up The Siege and Annihilation back issues, as well. So, for at least one gamer, the cross-marketing plans for Marvel have been fulfilled.

I want to say a special thank-you to Cam Banks, who has been a great ambassador and advocate for the game. He’s been friendly and approachable, both in person and via e-mail. He’s over at Atlas Games now ((Where, in the before times, some of my own writings were published.)), but still keeps his hand in on Cortex Plus – I hear he’s just finished the system design work on the new Firefly RPG, for example.

So, thanks for everything, folks. The game’s not dead – I’m still running it. And I plan to running it ((And even hopefully playing it.)) for years to come.