The Last Hurrah (adventure for your use)

[Crackerjacker]

The Minutemen, disgraced superhuman champions and former enforcers of the Reagan administration, who have been in hiding for more than a decade, are out to commit suicide, taking the world with them in a nuclear hellfire. They beleive that as former retainers of the late President, that this is the only way they can redeem themselves as soldiers and true americans.

In order to accomplish their apocalyptic honor killing, the Minutemen must gain the access codes to the Juggernaut, a nuclear weapons command center that only President Reagan and his closest staff members knew of, that has long since become defunct. This is the reason behind the kidnappings of former Reagan presidential staff members, in hopes that one of them has the codes.

Should the PC's actively investigate the kidnappings they will likely catch the Killing Joke in the act, but he'll use his powerfull projected hallucinations (in a GM fiat move) to escape. He's not really meant to leave any sort of evidence they can follow, being an veteran commando bent on the success of his mission. Instead he's just meant to give them a face to place behind the kidnappings. Research or inquiry of him should fairly easily find news articles, photos, and dossiers concerning The Joke, a member of the Minutemen, Reagan's personal supergroup during his long presidency. Like the rest of the Minutemen he was suddenly and mysteriously deactivated from duty officially and never heard from again. Even more thorough investigation should find that the Joke has been living off the grid and the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service have a secret order for his immediate arrest and detention should he ever be found.

Research into the Minutemen will inevitably lead clues about their old meeting places and methods of operations, which will have them paranoid. The PC's at this point have become a problem that needs to be dealt with firsthand. At the moment they are least expecting it, in their private lives and secret identities one or more of the PC's will be attacked without warning and without mercy by one of the lesser members of the Minutemen accompanied by a squad of American Glory shock troopers. This situation is meant to be dangerous, and hopefully the other PC's will find a way to get there and aid their comrade in time. If that is impossible, have a simmilar but larger wave of American Glory troopers (mooks) attack them on their way.

If the one PC is knocked out and kidnapped, and/or if they or the other PC's detain and question a American Glory trooper they should be able to gather the location of the next meeting to be held by the Minutemen. At this point the PC's should be visited by a suitable investigator type NPC hero who can explain this all better. The background story is that the Minutemen went rouge and tried to seize America's nuclear weapons for immediate use against the rest of the world, thinking it was in their President's wishes. Instead they were apprehended by a international supergroup and while the whole thing was kept under wraps it traumatized the Minutemen so much that despite each of their escapes (except one casaulty) they never made contact with Reagan again. Only his recent death has caued them to reunite for this one last mission, the last hurrah. Most imporantly the NPC should reveal that they are almost certain that the Minutemen now have the former staff member with the access codes to the Juggernaut, and that it is imperitive to intercept this information and stop this meeting.

So the PC's, accompanied by an NPC hero, will ambush/stake out a meeting in a suitably abandoned part of your campaign's city. Here for the first time all the members of the Minutemen, and a small legion of American Glory troopers, will be present together. They also have one kidnapped politician (and maybe one the PC's depending on how the earlier situation went) in tow. The other politicians are talked about as being kept elsewhere as insurance.

No matter wether the PC's just listen to the meeting or wether they crash it, they will either hear the location of the Juggernaut and follow, hoping to stop the Minutemen there, or will get in a massive brawl and the leader of the Minutemen, the telekinetic brick Justice, will escape and fly off to the discussed location with the access codes. If the PC's just jumped in and brawled then at some point the remainign American Glories will surrender/flee, and all the remaining Minutemen will either be incapacitated or flee as far as they can, abandoning their misison. The NPC hero will take care of getting the knocked out Minutemen/glories arrested and retreiving the kidnapped politicians, sending the PC's to stop the Minutemen from launching the nukes.

The location of the Juggernaut to be overherd or followed to can be underground, under the ocean, or in space; either under, near, or above the hero's city, which is why the Minutemen were meeting there. The Juggernaut is an impenetrable fortress, but Justice has left all the doors open behind him, now just in a mad rush to activate the nukes. This should be a tense situation in which every second matters to the PC's.

When the PC's finally confront Justice in the control they might try to talk him down, or just get in all out brawl. Even if the second is the case the combat should be interspersed with the veritable manifesto of Justice and his reasoning and motivation for launching the nukes. He truly beleives himself to be a patriot, and is also one of the most powerful superhumans on earth, this shouldnt be a run of the mill brawl. Justice will not just try to win the fight, his only goal is the launch the nukes. If he can do that at some point during the combat, he will. After that he will give himself up, certain, listless, and releived in the completion of his mission. He will just give up. Now it is up to the PC's to do the impossible, to stop the apocalypse.

The rest of the situation shouldnt be beyond the capabilities of you, the GM. Wether missiles are intercepted, the Juggernaut main computer hacked into and shut down, or whatever, the PC's should be able to prevent or at least avert the nuclear missile launch. After this wether the public becomes aware and the PC's are lauded, or wether it is all kept under wraps is up to you as well.


for reference, the Minutemen are:

Justice, the leader and square jawed t/k flying brick
The (Killing) Joke, a psychic hallucination projecting commando
US Law, a regenerating psycotic captain america type
Nightwatcher, a batman type that has transmutation powers, often during the environment into other materials rather than transmuting his foes directly.

The American Glory troopers shold be guntoting thugs, weak powersuits, or even American-commando ninjas, whatever kind of mooks you need.

[Crackerjacker]

45 reads, no comments?

[ghost-angel]

doubt our group would run it, but it looks intrigueing... I'd like to know what Justice's manifesto actually is, or did you leave that up to us to insert into our own games?

[Kirby]

45 reads, no comments?

Hmm... well, I could cite the misspellings and grammatical errors, but since there is no spellchecker, that just wouldn't be polite.

As far as the story of the post itself, I'm guessing they're not taken to it. Think about it, Reagan was a great president (IMHO, the best since FDR) and the theory is that these guys will honor their president by mass suicide? That just doesn't jive. Then there's the secret weapon that "only [they] knew of...." That interferes even with my suspension of disbelief.

If you wanted to keep the same concept of mass murder on a nuclear weapon/missile scale, I have two alternates for you:

1. "They" found Saddam's chemical weapons (those he didn't use on his own people or on Israel). Either buried in the desert, or soled/stored in another country. Either a villain group wants to hire U.S. villain muscle to protect it in whatever country, or they can't launch it, so they want to smuggle at least one inside the U.S. and need local villains to assist. Eventually the heroes find out.

2. Since the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Russian (and other former blocs) do not have the money to keep all their nuclear missile facilities protected and many have disappeared into the black market (which is true in the real world). Some villain group/organization has one (or more) and needs U.S. villains for the same reasons found in alternate #1.

Maybe that will help your idea. An option is to have a foreign group already have these weapons and threaten their respective areas (Eurostar for Europe, VOICE for China or anywhere in Asia, etc.) unless their demands are met. If not, they detonate the weapons. Now it's time for the heroes to stop them. Villains too powerful? That's okay, other hero teams are trying to stop them and failed (penalty of death, perhaps?). I hope this helps.

[Crackerjacker]

That would violate the whole idea of the plot. The Minutemen are perhaps my favorite among the villain groups Iv created, they were Ronald Reagan's enforcer supergroup of conservative, nationalistic, and in some cases outright violent/racist/delluded superhumans, that together were worldbeaters.

In my own setting it's public knowledge that they went mad and tried to take/destroy all the world's nuclear weapons sometime during Reagan's second term, it was a global crisis. Since this wouldnt fit in so easily to everyone's campaign I altered it for this adventure.

In my universe most of the Minutemen escaped capture after their defeat, Justice flying off into space and the others going into hiding. After Reagan's death they reunite in order to complete their final mission, a sort of last hurrah for patriotism, going out with a bang. Because even when they went mad with power, and even in exile, they felt like they were serving President Reagan. Thats the core idea behind them. Its what makes it so cool and interesting in my eyes, and not just another terrorist supervillain group.

And the Juggernaut was Reagan's paranoid insurance policy in case of nuclear war. His contingency plan.

[Superskrull]

Hmm. Sorry, I can't use this. My problem is a combination of it being too dark for the tastes of most of my gaming group and simply establishing elements in a campaign world I'd find too difficult to take seriously. It's too big a rock with too many ripples to integrate.

[Chuckg]

Oh joy. Yet another hate-filled political rant disguised as a gaming scenario. Like we all needed another one of those.

Feh. Never thought I'd be nostalgic for the damn Authority thread...

[Kirby]

That would violate the whole idea of the plot. The Minutemen are perhaps my favorite among the villain groups Iv created, they were Ronald Reagan's enforcer supergroup of conservative, nationalistic, and in some cases outright violent/racist/delluded superhumans, that together were worldbeaters.

The plot seems to violate the whole ideals of Reagan. <Sigh> My guess is that no one who has read your post is really interested in something so blatantly political-bashing mixed with the opposite of Reagan's theme. That could be why there were 45 views and no posts, and now 86 views with seven posts, three of which are your own.

It's your game and you can run it like you want, but take our responses (and lack thereof) as some consideration, though you know your players better than us.

[Crackerjacker]

I can understand that it's bassically something that to feelr ight you would have to have the certain events to of occured in your universe, and there should be other events leading up to this. It's like a feature-film or two hour long special episodes of the JLA cartoon. So in that sense I am thankful for comments.

On the other comments however...

I'm sorry I thought to use a president (who was a controversial one mind you, but yeah, a beloved one) who was already the patron of a supergroup that went rouge in my universe, Im sorry that I used his death in a creative way for something that sounded exciting and wasnt at all in bad taste. Oh wait...Im not. As far political rant...I'm not of the age where I remember Ronald Reagan. I know some things about him, so I'm not just uncharacteristically doing things, but listen to this... the idea of Reagan having showy, superpowerfull supers (as opposed to more lowkey and well...sane ones) seemed to fit perfectly. As I understand he was all about boasting, showing everyone else in the world that America was boss, and ect. In fact I'v had the concept of the Minutemen liked very much by a lot of people. And now, just because Reagan died a week ago, an interesting plot idea for my universe that I wanted to alter so I could share it with others, is suddenly some sort of political rant disguised as an adventure? I dont worship the ground Reagan walked on but I certainly have no particular political feelings against the guy.

Bottom line is I dont feel like I have anything to answer for, and the flaming or threadcrapping here is not my own, but others. I'm glad that the people that actually read it had opinions, and for the most part that leads me to beleive that even after people are'nt being too stupid in the "Honor" of somebody's recent death, they still wont be able to use so easily in their own universes.

But I'll tell you this- it would lose all purpose, originality, and uniqueness if you just had Eurostar or somebody like that try to activate the Juggernaut. It just wouldnt work.



"Hmm. Sorry, I can't use this. My problem is a combination of it being too dark for the tastes of most of my gaming group and simply establishing elements in a campaign world I'd find too difficult to take seriously. It's too big a rock with too many ripples to integrate." -Skrull

This is a useful response, and I appreciate it. I even appreciate Kirby's original one, even though I'm not going to use it. The others... are not good examples of how to respond. If you have only something like that to say just dont say anything at all.

[Trebuchet]

It's a real shame you couldn't apply such formidable scenario-writing talents to designing a scenario that isn't so patently anti-Reagan and stereotypical conservative bashing. ("...former enforcers of the Reagan administration"? "the Minutemen went rouge [sic] and tried to seize America's nuclear weapons for immediate use against the rest of the world, thinking it was in their President's wishes?" Who except a die hard left-wing ideologue really believes that Reagan, with his vast enjoyment of life, would have plausibly wished to trigger a nuclear holocaust? Why didn't you just have them all wearing swastika armbands for the Teflon Führer? It would have been less obvious.)

Having one of Reagan's former proteges go mad and decide to trigger Armageddon might have been plausible, and properly tragic. (You might even have had this character with a powerful psychic bond to Reagan, so as Reagan's Alzheimer's progressed this individual also progressively lost his grip on reality but his powers were not affected. Then the other aging members of his superteam tried heroicly to stop him but failed.) But by making the entire team out as fugitive lunatics you merely confirm your clear prejudice that anyone associated with Reagan must have been some kind of nutcase. That's pretty sad IMHO.

[Hermit]

I won't talk about the political side of things, though I do find it all a bit... unplausible. Mostly it just doesn't fit my universe.

[Crackerjacker]

It appears that I am not the one who has overly strong political beleifs one way or the other.

And the idea is that the Minutemen went mad with power, and in some ways tried to "pull an authority", which united the whole world, Soviet Union and USA against them. And I'm not saying that in my setting Reagan wanted a nuclear hellfire...the Minutemen are Cold Warrior fanatics. Theyre the equivalent of Jack Chick or Al Quaida, but to American cold war nationalist policy, not Christianity or Islam.

[Trebuchet]

It appears that I am not the one who has overly strong political beleifs one way or the other.

And the idea is that the Minutemen went mad with power, and in some ways tried to "pull an authority", which united the whole world, Soviet Union and USA against them. And I'm not saying that in my setting Reagan wanted a nuclear hellfire...the Minutemen are Cold Warrior fanatics. Theyre the equivalent of Jack Chick or Al Quaida, but to American cold war nationalist policy, not Christianity or Islam.

Yes, but then I'm not designing a Champions scenario with Bill Clinton as the Manchurian Candidate and then pretending I "don't have anything personal against him," am I? I've never pretended not to be conservative. And this sentence - The background story is that the Minutemen went rouge [sic] and tried to seize America's nuclear weapons for immediate use against the rest of the world, thinking it was in their President's wishes.- pretty well puts the lie to your phony assertation that you didn't think Reagan was some kind of warmongering nutcase. The Minutemen would hardly have thought Reagan would have approved of seizing and using the world's nukes unless he would have (or at least the scenario's author did). One psycho believing that is plausible; not so an entire team and umpteen flag-uniformed goons. If Reagan had even theoretically been that irrational and powermad (and he must have been, because in your absurd scenario he had personal "enforcers" during his tenure in office.) he would never have relinquished Presidential power in the first place.

Do you describe US government superteams in your Champions game under Democratic administrations as "enforcers," or as "official government-sanctioned teams"? Quit pretending you're not trying to make political hay out of Reagan's death with this entire scenario. At least try to be honest about your biases. You're not fooling anyone.

[Kirby]

On the other comments however...

I'm sorry I thought to use a president (who was a controversial one mind you, but yeah, a beloved one) who was already the patron of a supergroup that went rouge [sic] in my universe, Im [sic] sorry that I used his death in a creative way for something that sounded exciting and wasnt [sic] at all in bad taste.

Well, the bad taste is an opinion, not a fact and, to me and some others, it was in bad taste. Reagan wasn't really a controversial president, unless by "controversy" you mean not of both major political parties. Or even the Iran Contra scandal which was done behind his back (though you could say the controversy was him not firing enough of the people involved - but that just wasn't him).

Oh wait...Im not. As far political rant...I'm not of the age where I remember Ronald Reagan. I know some things about him, so I'm not just uncharacteristically doing things, but listen to this... the idea of Reagan having showy, superpowerfull supers (as opposed to more lowkey [sic] and well...sane ones) seemed to fit perfectly. As I understand he was all about boasting, showing everyone else in the world that America was boss, and ect.

Not really. The closest you could argue on this is the nuclear weapons program, but Reagan [/B]hated[B] nuclear weapons; however, he understood that the U.S. could outspend the U.S.S.R. in keeping with the Containment Policy started after WW2. I lived during his presidency and I don't recall him showing who's boss. His "boasting" was to Americans about America.

In fact I'v [sic] had the concept of the Minutemen liked very much by a lot of people. And now, just because Reagan died a week ago, an interesting plot idea for my universe that I wanted to alter so I could share it with others, is suddenly some sort of political rant disguised as an adventure?

That's what it pretty much sounds like, whether intended or not. And if you wanted this to be a plot idea for your universe, again, that's fine keep it there. Recall, though, that your title includes the parenthetical phrase "adventure for your use." Most of us are responding why we don't like it and wouldn't use it -as is- in our own campaign. You didn't mention that these were villains you had used, so we couldn't assume it, even if we guessed at it, though I myself didn't get that impression.

I dont [sic] worship the ground Reagan walked on but I certainly have no particular political feelings against the guy.

I don't think anyone here worships Reagan, we just don't like the concept of your plot regarding him. It doesn't work for our use.

Bottom line is I dont [sic] feel like I have anything to answer for, and the flaming or threadcrapping here is not my own, but others.

I don't believe anyone was flaming you. You weren't called any degrading names. One person responded what your plot looked like to most of us, which came across that way because of how you phrased it. We didn't ask you to "answer" for anything. Again, we let you know that we wouldn't be using it.

...that leads me to beleive [sic] that even after people are'nt [sic] being too stupid in the "Honor" of somebody's recent death....

See, now this is "flaming or threadcrapping." This might get people to start attacking you as opposed to them critiquing your adventure idea.

But I'll tell you this- it would lose all purpose, originality, and uniqueness if you just had Eurostar or somebody like that try to activate the Juggernaut. It just wouldnt [sic] work.

I'm pretty sure "originality" and "uniqueness" are close to the same (except where Dr. Pepper is concerned ). I think the plot would be more usable if you had those villains as opposed to the Minutemen. After all, until your post, I had never heard of the Minutemen you described, and I'm pretty sure every Champions GM knows of Eurostar.

The others... are not good examples of how to respond. If you have only something like that to say just dont [sic] say anything at all.

This could be a case of the pot calling the kettle 'black.' Before you get upset at people for their responses, remember that you made the post of "45 reads, no comments," which could have been a sign (though there is no requirement that we have to respond). Now that you have responses, you don't like them. Be careful what you wish for.

Not every thread is going to be a "hot" thread. And not every post or response is going to be favorable. If people don't respond, just move on. If they don't respond the way you want, treat it as advice: something to heed, but you aren't required to follow it.

I hope this helps.

[ghost-angel]

It's obvious this scenario would fit into the creator's world very easily - the Minutemen are obviously delusional and insane.

As for Reagan's boasting - well, the only thing I can think of that puts him into "insane crazy" mode is when he tested the microphones for a press conference with 'My fellow Americans I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever, we begin bombing in five minutes." - and even then you hear the press laughing.

Reagan, like all presidents who forced a lot of change through (and even world leaders) he was hated and loved by different parts of the population.