Heroes vs Krampus: help?

[Hermit]

I think it would depend on the players and their out of character holiday lore

 

I know a few of mine wouldn't get it if I said it out loud "Scamper" toys etc

[Jagged]

I know you said Krampus is not "evil Santa" but perhaps he still has access to some of Santa's powers? Maybe he can access the same slow time dimension that allows Santa to deliver all the toys in one night? 

 

Maybe Santa's little helper grants the heroes the same access so they can save St Nicolas as well as the world? 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

Skamper isn’t bad. Kids scamper about all the time. If a player has a dnpc, then they are begging to be put into the situation.

[BoloOfEarth]

18 hours ago, Hermit said:

I think it would depend on the players and their out of character holiday lore

 

I know a few of mine wouldn't get it if I said it out loud "Scamper" toys etc

 

That's true.  I just won't put the toy giveaway into the news sheet I give them beforehand.  Though I'll bet they point out that "scam" is the first part of the word.  They are pretty paranoid.  (No idea how they got that way, either.  )

 

Also, the players eventually figuring out that Skampur Toys might be related to Krampus could be their way to find and confront Krampus at the end.  So I think I'll keep it Skampur after all.

 

15 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Skamper isn’t bad. Kids scamper about all the time. If a player has a dnpc, then they are begging to be put into the situation.

 

Only DNPCs in the game are a teenage sister (the family is well-off financially), and a "girlfriend of the week."  I could have the GOTW volunteering to play elf for the toy giveaway.  Or get dragged along when Krampus stuffs her drunk-driver sibling into the sack. 

 

The teen sister was kidnapped by DEMON last adventure, so I'd rather not use her again this time.

 

Thinking about the whole thing further, since it's Krampus' raison d etre to punish the wicked, I'm not sure he'd necessarily consider "rescuing them" to be a good deed.  But if a (relatively) innocent person is dragged along with each of the wicked, and Krampus wants to see if the heroes go in to rescue the innocents, that's good enough for me.  For example, a prison guard tossed in along with a serial killer, a sibling accompanying the drunk driver, etc.

 

Thank you, all, for your suggestions and comments.

[steriaca]

Any hope for turning this into an adventure? Having stats on Krampus will be cool, along with any other evil Christmas beast. 

[BoloOfEarth]

Gearing up to run this tomorrow. 

 

I'm not really going to stat out Krampus, as the main combatants are going to be the Unjust.  As I mentioned, Krampus will cut and run as soon as the heroes arrive, but leaves his extra-dimensional sack behind.  I plan to have a magical image of him make a pronouncement about the wide-spread evils of the world and his plan to push the big red "reset" button.  He'll even cite non-heroic things that the heroes have done -- Maker stealing villains' tech, Malarkey hacking government and corporate computers, Circe reading peoples' minds without consent or a warrant, Shadowboxer using his "shadow sight" to spy on people, etc. -- in the course of their crimefighting careers.  Basically, accusing them of taking the easy path whenever it presents itself.  Which, to be honest, they have done a lot in the past.

 

There will be "dark elves" in the sack-dimension tormenting the "wicked kids", but they'll basically be a speed bump for the heroes.  I plan for an evil elf to suggest that the heroes leave the truly wicked behind -- with that being the real test of the heroes' mettle.

 

I decided to go ahead and have the Skampur Toys gift giveaway in the news, but involving Snak Attak!, Boston University's teen heroes.  The actual news item will be about the toys being stolen while the two teen heroes supposed to be guarding them were screwing around.  Since one of the PCs (Honey Badger) is dating the co-leader of Snak Attak! (Pop Tart), this allows some fun roleplaying of her outrage at her teammates' stupidity.  Here's the news article:

Snak Attak!  Members Snooze,
Boston’s Poor Kids Lose

Boston – Big Mac, co-leader of Snak Attak!, admitted Wednesday that his teammates were asleep during the prior night’s theft of hundreds of donated toys from BostonUniversity’s fitness center.  The gifts had been donated to Toys-For-All, a holiday charity event co-hosted by BostonUniversity and New England-based Skampur Toys.

      “Chips and Powder Puff were supposed to be guarding the building and the gifts, but apparently they fell asleep,” said Big Mac.  “We are still investigating whether their sleep was natural or induced, as well as who was behind the thefts.”  He left immediately after his brief statement, refusing to answer reporters’ questions.

      Spokesmen for both the university and Skampur Toys were harshly critical of the teen crimefighters in the wake of the theft.  Skampur Toys CEO Stephen Kampur said Thursday’s planned gift giveaway to Boston’s underprivileged and homeless children would be delayed for two weeks as more toys are collected.  “It’s a shame,” Kampur said, “but this year’s Toys-For-All will be just a shadow of what we’ve done in past years.”

 

 

And when the heroes later learn that the Unjust grab Pop Tart along with Chips and Powder Puff when she's giving them a dressing down, tossing all three in the sack, that will add motivation to the heroes. 

 

One thing -- I'm not sure who will be responsible for the toy theft.  Maybe Foxbat, planning his own gift giveaway in another city?  DEMON, trying to hurt the holiday spirit?  Black Harlequin, just because he can?  Suggestions are welcome.  But I should decide who beforehand, since the PCs are likely to get involved as they've worked well with Snak Attak! in the past.

 

[steriaca]

I wouldn't do Black Harliquin, basically because Chips and Powder Puff are in one piece. Foxbat is a doable, as is Professor Robert Steriaca ("It says I steal the toys in the damm adventure suppliment. Who am I to deviat from the script."). But note that, ultimately, this is the distraction from the main adventure (The Professor will even tell your heroes that).

[Lucius]

35 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

One thing -- I'm not sure who will be responsible for the toy theft.  Maybe Foxbat, planning his own gift giveaway in another city?  DEMON, trying to hurt the holiday spirit?  Black Harlequin, just because he can?  Suggestions are welcome.  But I should decide who beforehand, since the PCs are likely to get involved as they've worked well with Snak Attak! in the past.

 

 

VIPER, because they have so many agents all over the world and so many of them have families and someone in the hierarchy decided it would be nice to provide a present for all the VIPER kids?

 

But I like the idea of it being DEMON. There could be significant symbolic and thus arcane value in "a gift given in complete unselfishness" and nothing is more unselfish than a donation meant for a child the giver doesn't even know.
 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Or a palindromedary might have eaten them.....

[Ninja-Bear]

Could DEMON be stealing the presents to get Krampus attention? And maybe kidnap him?

[BoloOfEarth]

A few highlights from Sunday's game:

 

In addition to grabbing various "wicked" people, the Unjust also grabbed some innocents -- most often because they refused to let go of the true wicked person (e.g. the 10 year-old son of the VIPER front company VP, the mother of a kid acquitted of killing a family while drunk driving, etc.), and from the news reports it was very clear the victims were stuffed into a large (though not man-size) canvas sack. 

 

The precog (Nexus) has a teen sister who had been kidnapped by DEMON the previous adventure, and she's still a little emotionally unstable.  So it didn't help when Nexus' counterpart in the Unjust (Hecate) stopped in (pretending to be Nexus) to tell sister Sofia that an evil Santa is coming to punish everybody who is wicked, which includes Sofia who is probably screwing around with her boyfriend, and that's probably why DEMON kidnapped her for their ritual, finishing with:  "...and I'm gonna get cramps, and he's gonna press the big reset button..."  I actually had to explain to them later in the adventure that Sofia mis-heard Hecate referring to "Krampus coming", not "cramps coming."

 

While comforting Sofia, Nexus had a future vision of Boston getting nuked just after midnight on Christmas.  The players seemed a bit unworried by the news, preferring to just pass the info on to PRIMUS and the authorities to let them worry about it.  They talked to another precog (Lady Psi) from LA, who told them she had a vision of watching news reports about DC, NYC, Palm Beach, and Boston all getting nuked, about an hour before LA gets nuked.  The PCs eventually figured out that the Unjust must be taking over a Russian missile site, preparing to launch on the US, setting off an escalation that ends up with most of the world getting nuked. 

[BoloOfEarth]

BTW, as a Weird Al fan, I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't think about his song, "Christmas at Ground Zero" during the entire time I was creating this adventure.

 

Also, the heroes never did make the connection between "Skampur Toys" and "Krampus."

 

At PRIMUS' prompting, Just Cause contacted some heroes they'd worked with on Backworld, to learn that the Unjust had escaped from prison a few weeks prior with help from a "big goat-man" (Krampus).

 

Knowing their counterparts were just as paranoid and sneaky as themselves, the heroes knew the Unjust had likely taken major measures to block the heroes' abilities to track or locate any of the evil twins.  But the heroes figured out a way to locate Krampus' canvas sack, so they eventually found their evil twins in Russia.  Cue the heroes sneaking into the missile base and disabling the missiles in the silos before making a run at the Unjust. 

 

After a major fight, the heroes captured the Unjust (Krampus cut and run as soon as they showed up, conveniently leaving his sack behind) just as Russian supers were arriving.  The PCs stuffed the Unjust into the sack and teleported home to sort it all out.  They eventually returned the Unjust to their own world and decided to rescue all of the kidnapped people (not just the truly wicked ones).  That's when Krampus appeared and revealed he was using the heroes as a proxy to see how wicked their world had truly become, and whether it required being "reset."  He even mentioned the various not-so-legal and not-so-nice things each of them had done in the name of justice.  Their decision not to take the "easy road" in this case gave him pause for thought, so he promised not to nuke the world. 

 

All in all, it went well. 

[steriaca]

Who did you blame for the toy thieth?

[BoloOfEarth]

Foxbat Fan Fiesta Foiled

Portland – Dozens of cars were damaged outside a downtown shopping mall when police and members of Second Chance fought Foxbat Force Thursday afternoon. The supervillains had advertised a “Fans of Foxbat” gift giveaway at the mall, prompting the police and heroes’ arrival.

      KATU-TV news anchor Julia White reported, “Foxbat and his goon squad showed up in Santa suits and took over the parking lot to hold what he called ‘Foxbat’s Holiday Fan Fiesta.’  It’s probably a good thing not many people showed up, because it wasn’t long before cops and capes arrived.”

      “We had them on the ropes when Professor Steriaca started spraying dyed fish on the nearby highway,” claimed Doctor Gremlin in a KATU interview.  “God, what a mess!  After that, we were too busy trying to stop a bunch of car crashes to catch Freddy and friends.”

      While none of the supervillains were captured, a truckload of wrapped gifts, mostly toys, were left behind by Foxbat Force.  Portland police believe the gifts he was giving away were stolen and are looking into where they may have originated.                                                               

[steriaca]

Ah...but what does dyed fish have to do with anything?

 

Man, I just got it. The type of fish, and the dyed color...man...

[steriaca]

Also, were there a lot of Quick Kick G.I. Joe action figures and Croc Dundee action figures in the grouping? If so, they might be the result of a failed transformation device to make Seeker action figures.

[dsatow]

I ran Krampus at a con game once.  Krampus had the ability to make clones of himself without the magical artifacts.  When the PCs arrived they were fighting 5 Krampii(?).  Players barely beat up all the clones when they found he could just summoned another 4 more.

[Ninja-Bear]

19 minutes ago, dsatow said:

I ran Krampus at a con game once.  Krampus had the ability to make clones of himself without the magical artifacts.  When the PCs arrived they were fighting 5 Krampii(?).  Players barely beat up all the clones when they found he could just summoned another 4 more.

Well that’s just evil  !