Under the Trophy Room

[Lawnmower Boy]

Not that anyone here needs a distraction or anything right now, but I have a Champions Universe setting-related quesdtion to put out to the assembled great minds of Herodom assembled. I've got to the point where my teen superheroes are chasing someone or something through the storage area under an old superhero team's trophy hall. (Champions Universe, right now is 2013, the team in question was active in Philadelphia from the late '50s to the late '70s. No-one ever comes down here these days but a part-time caretaker)

 

One level up, you've got the spectacular stuff that everyone sees and maybe even uses, or at least studies. You've got your art deco space ship, your replica Stonehenge, the dead tree that's way more creepy than a dead tree should be. 

 

But what's down here? In a museum, the storage area is filled with duplicates, but also the stuff that hasn't been categorised, or is just too weird for public viewing, or that the staff can't really make heads or tails of. Any ideas? Doctor Destroyer's baby pictures? A complete download of Mechanon's operating system on 8" floppies? Something else?

[Amorkca]

Panda & Racoon on ice?

[Lawnmower Boy]

That seems cruel. Though it would be for their own good. 

[assault]

Home movie footage of "Panda and Racoon on Ice"

[assault]

More seriously, lots and lots of film footage, tape recorder reels and filing cabinets full of paper. Piles of computer printouts.

 

And yes, quite possibly a copy of Mechanon's source code. Or something comparably dangerous.

 

Be careful playing the tapes of mystical chants and incantations.

 

Laboratory specimens. Don't open the jar full of oddly swirling smoke.

[freakboy6117]

records lots and lots of file cabinets filled with documents recovered from various hideouts lairs and secret labs.

[Nothere]

Strange junk of no diserenable value. Upstairs the gauntlet of Dr. Destroyer. Down here a piece of a toilet. Why? Be cause its the piece of debris that came closest to hitting the team when Destroyers base blew up.

[Lucius]

 

A locked closet that's larger inside than it is outside. Obviously interdimensional storage space but no clue what was kept there.

 

The egg of a glak.

 

An ancient statue that is actually a petrified victim of a gorgon; if restored, he speaks an archaic dialect of Greek and wants to know how the war with Troy turned out.

 

A large black slab of an unidentifiable substance that only someone with the right enhanced senses will recognize as a portrait of the old team as they might have appeared to someone who can see in the ultraviolet.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

A stuffed and mounted palindromedary

[Lord Liaden]

Taking a cue from Godzilla 2014: The technological or magical artifact(s), or egg/cocoon/spore of some alien organism, which every test has confirmed are inert and harmless... until something happens. Maybe the right PC puts a hand on the wrong thing...

[Tjack]

...And always remember, the words of Rupert Giles. "Don't speak Latin in front of the books."

[Major Tom 2009]

A strange, high-tech looking device with the words 'CONTRATERRENE CONTAINMENT UNIT' stenciled across

the front, with the phrase 'DO NOT ALLOW POWER TO DROP BELOW 20%' in red beneath it -- with a digital

timer showing how many hours are left before the 20% mark is reached.

 

 

Major Tom 2009

[sinanju]

This thread is starting to read like the Warehouse 23 random object generator.

 

What do you find in the basement of a museum? 1) Items that didn't make the cut to be displayed above, 2) items worthy of display but currently out of rotation, and 3) items still being repaired/studied.

 

1) would be lots of minion uniforms, weapons and gear captured over the years, out-of-date gear both ordinary and extraordinary, and the like. Mostly just stacked or racked anywhere convenient.

 

2) would be anything you might find in the museum, but carefully packaged for safekeeping, carefully labeled, and kept in the appropriate environment.

 

3) would be workbenches and lab machinery covered/filled with bits and pieces of weapons, armor, gear, biological samples, and so forth.

[Lawnmower Boy]

The banks of filing cabinets, film storage cabinets, and neatly labelled boxes of cassette tapes ("What are those?") seems pretty obvious to me now. I'm wondering why I didn't think of it.

 

The racks of minion uniforms is a beautiful image -and perfect for that mouldering warehouse smell. I wonder what VIPER uniforms from the early 70s looked like?

 

Dangerous artefacts, sure; but I think that any group of teen supers of this day and age would be too genre aware to handle them. ON THE OTHER HAND, I don't think that the team speedster/cyberpath/supergenius could possibly resist riffing through a few drawers of files at superspeed. So there's an interesting plot point right there.

 

A neglected, failing contraterrene unit? Well, considering that when I was trying to characterise the caretaker character, I thought to myself, "You know, this guy's a lot like how I imagine Hermit--" I don't think so. Or, at least, he'd be up at City Hall hyperventilating right about now.

 

The stuffed palindromedary is in the other wing of the complex. 

[assault]

The banks of filing cabinets, film storage cabinets, and neatly labelled boxes of cassette tapes ("What are those?") seems pretty obvious to me now. I'm wondering why I didn't think of it.

 

And tape recorder reels. Not just those newfangled cassette tapes!

 

Microfiche too.

 

A really big old computer. As well as robots that are curiously small, given that they are supposedly using the same technology... The computer may have a surprisingly sophisticated user interface.

[freakboy6117]

that reminds me of the ware house 23 basement over at steve jackson games lot of weird objects to explore http://basement.warehouse23.com/

[Matt the Bruins]

HIGHLY embarrassing outfits that were once worn by team members in the 70s, and photo albums in which they can be seen wearing them.

[steriaca]

Plans by the original members to simply pretend to be heros, and then take over the world for two hyper-intelagent mice. Oh, and cage for the mice in question.

[TheDarkness]

Hitler.

[freakboy6117]

HITLERS brain

HITLERS clone

HITLERS CLONES BRAIN!!!!!!!!

[BoloOfEarth]

Three fire extinguishers (old liquid-style, currently empty) with a silver cross painted on each one.  (Once contained holy water for going after vampires)

 

Journals from various superheroes.

 

A 1950s Soviet Army uniform with three bullet holes (but no blood).  A Russian passport is in an inside pocket; one of the bullets passed through the passport picture,

 

Boxes of court documents

 

A sniper rifle sight with a bullet hole running straight through it, and dried blood on the eyepiece.  (You know there's gotta be a story that goes along with that.)

 

A pogo stick with a red button on each hand-bar.  Pressing both buttons at the same time could either do nothing (as the mechanism is rusted), or make it bounce *really* high.

 

A box containing (rigged) dice and (marked) cards.

 

A travel alarm clock that, when wound, runs backwards.

 

An old-style jukebox with various records from the 1940s through the 1960s. (I once read a neat story where a jukebox was actually a time machine that could transport you back in time for the duration of the song being played.  Could be a neat game hook.)

 

You could always use the Mundane items from the Green Box Generator. 

[Lawnmower Boy]

Three fire extinguishers (old liquid-style, currently empty) with a silver cross painted on each one.  (Once contained holy water for going after vampires)

 

Journals from various superheroes.

 

A 1950s Soviet Army uniform with three bullet holes (but no blood).  A Russian passport is in an inside pocket; one of the bullets passed through the passport picture,

 

Boxes of court documents

 

A sniper rifle sight with a bullet hole running straight through it, and dried blood on the eyepiece.  (You know there's gotta be a story that goes along with that.)

 

A pogo stick with a red button on each hand-bar.  Pressing both buttons at the same time could either do nothing (as the mechanism is rusted), or make it bounce *really* high.

 

A box containing (rigged) dice and (marked) cards.

 

A travel alarm clock that, when wound, runs backwards.

 

An old-style jukebox with various records from the 1940s through the 1960s. (I once read a neat story where a jukebox was actually a time machine that could transport you back in time for the duration of the song being played.  Could be a neat game hook.)

 

You could always use the Mundane items from the Green Box Generator. 

 

Those are . . . curiously specific.

[Lawnmower Boy]

HIGHLY embarrassing outfits that were once worn by team members in the 70s, and photo albums in which they can be seen wearing them.

 

Okay, sure, but they were in the media. (Except for the ones who were being one with the night.) Lifesize photo blow-ups might be another matter. 

 

 

Patron saints of the night shift.

[BoloOfEarth]

Those are . . . curiously specific.

 

I'll admit, I didn't catch that the teen heroes are chasing someone through the basement storage area.  I thought they were doing a little deeper exploring.  And knowing players, they still might want to even after the chase is done.

 

Having run a side bit where my players temporarily played teen heroes exploring a 1950s hero team's deserted base, I'll tell you that they had plenty of fun exploring the museum. 

 

IMO, if you make it too general, it's just going to be "stuff" to the players.  Throw some specific details, and it will pique the players' curiosity. 

 

For example, if there's a photo album down there, and it just shows the 1970s heroes at various events, it's kinda ho-hum.  But if the players notice that in a batch of photos the cars are all 1950s models and a gas station in the background shows gas at $0.23 a gallon, they'll realize the 1970s heroes traveled back in time at some point, and might wonder why.

 

Have one of the pictures include people in the background that look curiously like adult versions of the teen heroes, and the players will latch onto it like rabid lampreys.

[Matt the Bruins]

Okay, sure, but they were in the media. (Except for the ones who were being one with the night.) Lifesize photo blow-ups might be another matter.

 

I think I was unclear. 70s outfits and pictures from the 70s of the teen characters doing the searching wearing them.

[sinanju]

An old-style jukebox with various records from the 1940s through the 1960s. (I once read a neat story where a jukebox was actually a time machine that could transport you back in time for the duration of the song being played.  Could be a neat game hook.)

 

 

There are a bunch of those stories, actually. Dean Wesley Smith writes them, and has several collections of them (among countless other short stories and longer works).