WWYCD: Toy Recall!

[Blue]

It's December 24th, 10pm. This year's hot toy has been the "Spaceman Steve Atomic Adventurer", an action figure with a little gun that produces a cool but harmless noise and light show.

 

As you go through the documents seized from the evil Black Harlequin you discover among the plans for building various other dangerous devices, that he has created a malicious version of Spaceman Steve with a real working weapon and inserted it into randomly selected "Spaceman Steve" packages. All over America (and perhaps the world) 1 in every 100 children who received this toy in a few hours will unleashe mayhem and perhaps even death on their own household.

 

How do you stop this? Most people are sleeping and there's not much time!

 

Additionally (if appropriate) What if the child wakes up and his beloved Spaceman Steve isn't there because you personally recalled it during the night?

 

This one takes some real ingenuity.

[OddHat]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

Style - One spell and it's fixed. He's more surprised that BH has come back to life, and begins to investigate how.

 

Flesh Gordon - Is completely useless here. Goes to his team mates.

 

Legend - Is completely useless here. Goes to his team mates, and PRIMUS, and the media. Better a lot of shouting than many dead children.

[nexus]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

Eve: Probably has one of the darn things. Once that is dealt with, she'd could push her Cybercontrol powers to the limit and seize control of the little buggers on a global scale, shutting them down.

 

Valkeyrie: Very little direct use, she could inform the proper authorities little else.

 

Tao:Same

 

Shidoku:Same

[proditor]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

Awesome idea Blue, too bad I can't Rep ya.

[Blue]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

Thanks. I'm just having images of Defender stealing one from under a tree when little Cindy-Lou Who comes out and asks, "Santa Clause, why are you taking our presents?"

[Dust Raven]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

How absolutely EVIL!!!

 

Kristian Rolyat: Would find his cyberkinetic buddy and get to work.

 

Dust Raven: Would be frustrated that his power is useless in such a situation... until his grandfather told him that Santa is real and where to find him. Then it just a quick trip to find out that Santa is already out and about and a race to find him.

 

Cobalt: Would notify the autorities and use in contacts in UNTIL and PRIMUS to organize a recall team.

 

Zectron: Would immediately demand the team contact Santa, and be frustated when they look at him like he's crazy. He then would search the city for the Polar Express and hitch a ride to the North Pole to warn Santa in the Saint Nick of time.

[assault]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

Assault can't fix it himself. If he had found out about it before the toys were distributed, he could have.

 

That means that he is going to have to seek assistance.

 

There are two options:

(1) the magical one

(2) the scientific one.

 

Assault has a rather difficult relationship with the Mystic World, but there are a couple of "trenchcoat" mages he gets along with well enough. (They don't actually wear trenchcoats much, because the weather here is usually too hot). A brief trip to visit Santa might be in order.

 

Failing that, it's off to see the local gadgeteer. I actually wrote up a gadgeteer version of Assault once, but I've never actually played him, so I guess he would have to visit his pals Professor Plott and Doctor McGuffin.

 

What could they do? Well, it might just turn out that Black Harlequin was thoughtful enough to externally synchronise their attacks, or have some kind of data link with the toys so he could enjoy watching them play. If this connection worked both ways, it might be possible to remotely disable them.

 

But Assault would mainly just be a spectator during all this. I suppose he would probably wind up leading the team that has to take control of the ground station (or the satellite!) the toys' communications are run through.

 

Both plotlines would work, wouldn't they? The Santa one is definitely sillier. I guess you would go with the one that best fits your mood.

 

Or there might be some other way of stopping the toys. Presumably the GM will have placed clues pointing to it.

 

If there isn't some way of dealing with the situation, however, then the GM is a jerk, and there is no point playing in their game. And, of course, that "some way" should be some way available to the PCs that are actually playing the game. It should not be dependent on powers, skills or contacts that the PCs don't have.

 

And come to think of it, it shouldn't really be dependent on the players being all that competent, either. They should be able to muddle through, short of being total fools. The alternative is lots of imaginary dead kids, which isn't really what the game is about.

[Bradd]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

If there isn't some way of dealing with the situation' date=' however, then the GM is a jerk, and there is no point playing in their game. And, of course, that "some way" should be some way available to the PCs that are actually playing the game.... The alternative is lots of imaginary dead kids, which isn't really what the game is about.[/quote']

This scenario closely resembles one I used in my "Mage: The Ascension" game. An evil, mutagenic super-soldier formula accidentally got shipped by UPS, and the toxic chemical agent leaked into other packages. The government dispatched agents to eliminate victims and issued a cover story (food poisoning) to explain the sudden deaths.

 

That game had an ongoing theme of limited and pyrrhic victories. The PCs generally couldn't fix everything. Instead, their goal was to find hope where they could, turn catastrophes into lesser disasters, comfort victims, and otherwise do the whole "candle in the darkness" thing.

 

The deadly toy scenario would've fit perfectly in that Mage game. Just like my shipping mistake, it's a race against time, with horrible consequences if you don't get the job done. The PCs would "win" by saving as many families as possible before disaster struck the rest. (That's exactly what they did in my "toxic oops" scenario.)

 

However, I'd be uncomfortable running either scenario in a Champions game, where saving only a few families is a horrible loss, rather than a tragic "win." Even if they do win, just thinking about the potential consequences might set the wrong mood for a superhero game, unless you're very careful to keep the tone light (i.e., playing up the Rube Goldberg aspects of the plot rather than the dire consequences). In short, the GM might come across as a jerk even if he's careful to give the players an out.

[Koshka]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

Making a few quick period-appropriate adjustments here ...

 

Falcon would use her detective abilities to trace the main control center for the robot killer toys. There has to be one, given tech limits of the period, and once it's found stopping the toys from going lethal would be a matter of getting her teammates to help smash the place up and capture everyone. She would have warned the police just in case, so there's probably a recall notice in the morning paper. In the morning paper for the 26th, there's a story about an unknown philanthropist offering replacement toys to any child who got a killer toy by accident. (She's Filthy Rich and would consider that a good use of her money.)

 

She's luckier than some of the modern-era heroes on the thread in that shipping takes longer in 1938 -- unless the rewritten-for-golden-age BH started this plan last summer, the killer toys can't be that spread out. (And the 10 cases of toys in a warehouse waiting for the next delivery truck can be gone through at leisure, after the ones that made it to homes are dealt with.)

[lemming]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

Scales: As leader of a large group of heroes (Protectors) and ties with quite a few other hero groups and some sympathetic villians, we could get this mess cleaned up right away. And Black Harlequin better hope he gets caught by some of the more CVK minded people and he will. He's strickly small change, but booby trapping children's toys is a quick way to gain the attention of the power players. After Scales got a hold of one of the toys, he'd be able to get some magic into the mix to trace down where all the toys were.

 

Ice Pirate & Calico are members of the Protectors as well, and both would kick the problem upstairs as it were before going out. IP would be in the retrieval team, though once Christmas was explained to her, she'd probably whip up a suitable replacement toy.

Calico would put herself in the hunt down BH like the dog he is. She wouldn't kill him, but it would be a while before he'd be functional again.

 

Spectrum She could use magic, but thinks that a device by Nexus would be a good tracking system for the robots. And then we have the aid of the world's best detective to be able to figure out exactly who has each robot as well. We'd also be able to replace each toy.

[TheEmerged]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

The Disruptor would find a way to megascale his Gremlin Ray (20d6 Dispel vs Any Technology) -- making sure to save an operational one so he can hunt down and kill Black Harlequin with it. He'd then add the event to the list of time he's "had to do the pretty-people's job for them." (This is a villanous character in a mostly Iron Age campaign).

[Wormhole]

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

 

Air Raider and Hardware would both need help on this one, though Hardware would have little difficulty removing the weapons and replacing them with harmless LEDs once they've been rounded up.

 

Tiger Shark would call in the spooks (i.e. naval intellegence) to help.

 

Wormhole would use his Gatemaster belt's time travel function to nip this one in the bud. Though Wormhole is a villain himself (albeit more of a prankster/thief type than a world-threatening menace/killer), he'd be righteously pissed off at BH for doing something this low to a bunch of kids. In the end, he'd probably toss the little psycho to Nebula so she can send him on his merry way to Durras.