Story of the Week from My Gaming Group

[Remjin]

Hello everyone, this is in response to a short dialogue in the Quote of the Week from my gaming group thread. Please, indulge, and post here your stories of the week from your gaming group, as the title implies. Thus, regail us with your heroic or comedic exploits with no limit on length besides post size restrictions... in which case, split it up into as many posts as it takes.

 

I guess I could start...

 

This week we started our new game, Heroes for Hire [no, not based off of the comic book, and expect a web site, possibly. ], in which we are playing in a "monster hunter" type of genre as mercenaries working for... well, Heroes for Hire, a large company that contracts many teams for such endeavors.

 

Now, we are presented with a simple "Would you like to take this job?" scenario by Texas Media Tycoon Johnathan Murdoch who wishes us to save his daughter from a cult which she has suddenly joined. Originally, she had planned on doing a journalistic expose on the cult, which had caused some concern in the area of San Antonio, etc. etc... he wanted us to save her.

 

We asked several poignant questions on a factual and moralistic level, eventually agreed to the job, and he left, leaving us to talk to our handler, Dianne.

 

Robyn: so how much does it pay?

Dianne: A million dollars. Each.

*silence*

Father Longfellow: Why didn't you say that in the beginning? We would have taken it right away.

Dianne: I didn't want him to think we were just doing it for the money.

Torch Song: But we are doing it just for the money.

Robyn: Yeah, but people like to believe we really care.

Dianne: Exactly.

Father Longfellow: Huh.

Wendigo: Well, at least its good PR.

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: Story of the Week from My Gaming Group

 

I just ran HERO combat for the first time last week; the PC's are a hero's support network. One player did a decent job of putting together a superhero "trainer"; ex-special forces kinda guy. However, the player didn't quite get the fact that this was Silver Age, rather than Dark Champions. So, when I made an offhand comment about a villian's henchman being abusive towards an animal (the main villian was robbing a bank, and there was a petstore nearby), the player immediately shot the mook in the chest with his MP-5. There was a moment of silence as all the henchmen stared at the PC, eyes wide, as the bleeding man fell to the ground while gurgling "It was just a puppy...."

 

Throughout the rest of the combat, I had the henchemen running away from the PC, as they all (justifiably) saw him as a dangerous loon with a dog fetish. Note that the player quickly realized his out-of-genre mistake, and has since not done anything similar; it was mainly just the catchphrase of the evening.

[Theron]

Re: Story of the Week from My Gaming Group

 

If it's a Silver Age style game, why did you let the PC have a MP-5 in the first place?

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: Story of the Week from My Gaming Group

 

If it's a Silver Age style game' date=' why did you let the PC have a MP-5 in the first place?[/quote']

 

He's a superhero trainer, which means he needs equipment like that to practice with on the brick (the main "hero" NPC); ie, part of the training is him shooting at her with firearms. (He also uses shotguns.).

 

The other reasons, in terms of genre elements, is that the PC's are the minor characters in a comic book that attempt conventional means against the villian, only to have their attempts fail. Their strength comes from investigative, stealth, and support capabilities, not their firepower. Thus, the MP-5 was mainly a SFX of "something that sounds neat, but isn't worthwhile to use against the villian". Which was true; the actual villian in question had enough rPD that it wasn't an issue. It's just that I didn't expect him to go Punisher on people and start shooting people for misdemeanors.