Blue
Jun 19th, '03, 07:19 AM
I said I'd post when my first game came to fruition. That day was last Saturday, but I've not had time to post a long post. So here goes...
THE SETUP:
Our heroes have been hired by the City of Lazarus, whose spiraling super-crimewave is a scourge on its booming economy. The young city has lost its team of superheroes and these are the replacements...
-Rodeo Clown (A highly invulnerable, brick-like combatant with a rope entangle and a linked STR drain)
-Duplicity (Energy Projector whose attacks are "focused emotional blasts". When he takes damage the first time he splits into two men with differing personalities, who both fight for the same cause, but will not work together, each having opposing powers to one another)
-Thok (Alien "Illithid". Yup, a mindflayer sympathetic to humans, come to warn them about his race)
-Hunter (Amnesiac woman with tremendous physical skills, raised in the city's sewers by roving bands of nomads)
-Orland (Russian immigrant boy with a savant like knowledge of a little bit of everything and startling speed)
-Rift (Time traveller, come to our time to stop an interruption in the timeline that would have destroyed him, now marooned here)
-Dr. T (German scientist, student of mutant powers)
-Gabriel (Born into a mafia family but somehow gifted with angelic powers to work against them)
-Geoff Gardiner ("Steampunk" scientist, able to build mechanical steam powered robots, armor and weapons)
-Billy Ray (Body Guard, Secret Agent, Martial artist type)
-L.A.W. (Judge with armored robes, gavel, and mental powers)
Together they are THE NEW SENTINELS.
SCENE ONE:
The team assembles, tours their new superfacility centrally located in the city of Lazarus, and meet the NPCs. Before the meeting gets too far there's already an incident THAT I CAN'T DESCRIBE (It is part of the "Champions Battlegrounds" Playtest document). I'll just give the action highlights without much description of the actual scenario.
LAW has a great use of Presence to perform crowd control on the citizens and herd them out of danger.
The Alien Thok nearly is shot by a cop when he teleports nearby and scares the crap out of him. The cop is convinced not to fire by another hero and simply retreats in fear.
An explosive device is set off by two of Geoff Gardiner's robots, saving the heroes any damage.
A villain has a blast manipulating the ferrous targets (robots, a vehicle, etc). He hurls robots (for no damage) and turns a vehicle around and runs it back into the crowd of heroes by lifting it magnetically.
The enemy bricks are easy targets for the three people on the team who have some form of mental power. They are easily manipulated.
One villain gets the heck out of dodge (using invisibility).
Three villains are ultimately captured and one is reduced to 0 BODY and has to be saved from bleeding to death.
ALL THAT MAYHEM = 13 Seconds of game time. It was a four hour fight that lasted 13 Segments. But it was fun!
DOWNTIME:
They visit the city's infamous "THE KEEP" super-prison. They are told all kinds of horror stories about the villains and shown the facilities. They meet the warden, who has an office filled with glass cases containing deactivated devices of villains kept as trophies. They see the Lechter-like villain simply called "The Doctor" because no one has been able to figure out his real name yet. He has reportedly escaped execution when the means of execution failed. (The government is deliberately vauge on how it failed and what was tried).
SCENE TWO:
(This one is not from Champions Battlegrounds, it is the original starting scenario I wrote before I got the playtest doc.) Enroute home, they get a distress call. Some armed thugs, far better armed than thugs should be, have seized two floors of an office building downtown. The heroes respond.
The heroes split up. Thok levitates up the side of the building to mind attack them through the window.
A hero notices that one of the helicopters overhead is from a station far too small to actually have a helicopter (Area Knowledge and Perception roll). He radios the police to keep an eye on it.
Some land on the roof and move down the stairwell.
Some come up the other stairwell from the bottom. The fight begins when resitance is encountered on the stairwell.
The thugs seem to each have a different special weapon. Some are rounded up easily. Some are more trouble.
Best Sequence: Thok is mindcontrolling one villain to fire at another whent he third one shoots him through the window. He is a low DCV mentalist and having a wound already begins to fall. Duplicity leaps out the window and flies down and grabs him. The same villain then leans out the window and shoots duplicity, splitting him in two! The black duplicity flies the alien safely to the ground. The white duplicity flies back up and KOs the villain. It was nicely choreographed, featured that cool fortuitous mid-air split, a mid-air grab manuver, and kept Thok from being a stain on the sidewalk.
Dr. T. spots someone in the restroom using N-Ray vision. Billy Ray goes in and seizes the individual who then proceeds to play up that he is deaf and mute. Despite my best sell-job, Billy Ray doesn't fall for it. This means that the individual (wearing an illusion) is not able to activate his time-activated explosive which builds up power over every segment he is not touched. Instead Billy Ray and LAW disperse his illusion and he is KO'd. Paranoia saved the day.
Problem: They have been intercepting radio communications from some of these guys. It apepars they are not just working in this one location. The copter from earlier has gone off to another local where the police have seen the copter trying to airlift individuals from a pharmaceuticals building downtown. It seems this fight was a ruse while the real crime was taking place across town. It was only that good perception roll and the timely capture of the villains here that enable them to start off toward the other scene.
It was 2am at this point so we called it a night. We only play every two weeks so the next game is a week from Saturday.
Mechanics went pretty well. Using my spreadsheet to track the actions of everyone helped. I had a good time and the players seemed to enjoy it.
I didn't mention every action, and there were lots, so it may sound like some folks were inactive, but that was hardly the case.
I'm not as rusty at this as I thought I was, and I look forward to next time.
THE SETUP:
Our heroes have been hired by the City of Lazarus, whose spiraling super-crimewave is a scourge on its booming economy. The young city has lost its team of superheroes and these are the replacements...
-Rodeo Clown (A highly invulnerable, brick-like combatant with a rope entangle and a linked STR drain)
-Duplicity (Energy Projector whose attacks are "focused emotional blasts". When he takes damage the first time he splits into two men with differing personalities, who both fight for the same cause, but will not work together, each having opposing powers to one another)
-Thok (Alien "Illithid". Yup, a mindflayer sympathetic to humans, come to warn them about his race)
-Hunter (Amnesiac woman with tremendous physical skills, raised in the city's sewers by roving bands of nomads)
-Orland (Russian immigrant boy with a savant like knowledge of a little bit of everything and startling speed)
-Rift (Time traveller, come to our time to stop an interruption in the timeline that would have destroyed him, now marooned here)
-Dr. T (German scientist, student of mutant powers)
-Gabriel (Born into a mafia family but somehow gifted with angelic powers to work against them)
-Geoff Gardiner ("Steampunk" scientist, able to build mechanical steam powered robots, armor and weapons)
-Billy Ray (Body Guard, Secret Agent, Martial artist type)
-L.A.W. (Judge with armored robes, gavel, and mental powers)
Together they are THE NEW SENTINELS.
SCENE ONE:
The team assembles, tours their new superfacility centrally located in the city of Lazarus, and meet the NPCs. Before the meeting gets too far there's already an incident THAT I CAN'T DESCRIBE (It is part of the "Champions Battlegrounds" Playtest document). I'll just give the action highlights without much description of the actual scenario.
LAW has a great use of Presence to perform crowd control on the citizens and herd them out of danger.
The Alien Thok nearly is shot by a cop when he teleports nearby and scares the crap out of him. The cop is convinced not to fire by another hero and simply retreats in fear.
An explosive device is set off by two of Geoff Gardiner's robots, saving the heroes any damage.
A villain has a blast manipulating the ferrous targets (robots, a vehicle, etc). He hurls robots (for no damage) and turns a vehicle around and runs it back into the crowd of heroes by lifting it magnetically.
The enemy bricks are easy targets for the three people on the team who have some form of mental power. They are easily manipulated.
One villain gets the heck out of dodge (using invisibility).
Three villains are ultimately captured and one is reduced to 0 BODY and has to be saved from bleeding to death.
ALL THAT MAYHEM = 13 Seconds of game time. It was a four hour fight that lasted 13 Segments. But it was fun!
DOWNTIME:
They visit the city's infamous "THE KEEP" super-prison. They are told all kinds of horror stories about the villains and shown the facilities. They meet the warden, who has an office filled with glass cases containing deactivated devices of villains kept as trophies. They see the Lechter-like villain simply called "The Doctor" because no one has been able to figure out his real name yet. He has reportedly escaped execution when the means of execution failed. (The government is deliberately vauge on how it failed and what was tried).
SCENE TWO:
(This one is not from Champions Battlegrounds, it is the original starting scenario I wrote before I got the playtest doc.) Enroute home, they get a distress call. Some armed thugs, far better armed than thugs should be, have seized two floors of an office building downtown. The heroes respond.
The heroes split up. Thok levitates up the side of the building to mind attack them through the window.
A hero notices that one of the helicopters overhead is from a station far too small to actually have a helicopter (Area Knowledge and Perception roll). He radios the police to keep an eye on it.
Some land on the roof and move down the stairwell.
Some come up the other stairwell from the bottom. The fight begins when resitance is encountered on the stairwell.
The thugs seem to each have a different special weapon. Some are rounded up easily. Some are more trouble.
Best Sequence: Thok is mindcontrolling one villain to fire at another whent he third one shoots him through the window. He is a low DCV mentalist and having a wound already begins to fall. Duplicity leaps out the window and flies down and grabs him. The same villain then leans out the window and shoots duplicity, splitting him in two! The black duplicity flies the alien safely to the ground. The white duplicity flies back up and KOs the villain. It was nicely choreographed, featured that cool fortuitous mid-air split, a mid-air grab manuver, and kept Thok from being a stain on the sidewalk.
Dr. T. spots someone in the restroom using N-Ray vision. Billy Ray goes in and seizes the individual who then proceeds to play up that he is deaf and mute. Despite my best sell-job, Billy Ray doesn't fall for it. This means that the individual (wearing an illusion) is not able to activate his time-activated explosive which builds up power over every segment he is not touched. Instead Billy Ray and LAW disperse his illusion and he is KO'd. Paranoia saved the day.
Problem: They have been intercepting radio communications from some of these guys. It apepars they are not just working in this one location. The copter from earlier has gone off to another local where the police have seen the copter trying to airlift individuals from a pharmaceuticals building downtown. It seems this fight was a ruse while the real crime was taking place across town. It was only that good perception roll and the timely capture of the villains here that enable them to start off toward the other scene.
It was 2am at this point so we called it a night. We only play every two weeks so the next game is a week from Saturday.
Mechanics went pretty well. Using my spreadsheet to track the actions of everyone helped. I had a good time and the players seemed to enjoy it.
I didn't mention every action, and there were lots, so it may sound like some folks were inactive, but that was hardly the case.
I'm not as rusty at this as I thought I was, and I look forward to next time.