The Sunday Night Jokes (Champions Universe)

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The Sunday Night Jokes is the name for an ongoing gaming group that I’m a member of. After a hellish eternity of playing D&D the GM finally managed to convince them to play something else. Something else, in this case, being a Superhero Game set in the Champions universe. No mean feat, given that all bar one of the players have never played anything but D&D before.

 

Oddly enough, one of the players seemed to have anticipated the move, and relished the idea. Win.

 

Anyway, after first settling on the game (Champions universe, 6e, 400 points + 75 complications) and lot of work (teaching people the system was no mean feat, especially given that after years, one of the players still didn’t ‘get’ 3E D&D) and character creation, we had our cast of heroes!

 

Skadi – Played by Me – Chemistry student Jill Vader was exploded in a lab accident, which gave her the most common super power. It also gave her superhuman strength and stamina. Realising that she had gained these abilities, she felt that the only right thing to do was to use them to aid others and to fight crime. Besides, punching people is fun.

 

Skadi is nearly seven feet tall and heavily muscles, with long red hair and blue eyes. She wears a sleeveless black and purple costume with a hot pink trim. She doesn’t wear a mask, as a lot of people seem not to look at her face anyway.

 

Portal Kombat – After falling through a radioactive doorway, a young Computer Technician found that he had gained the ability to create portals and use them in a variety of ways. After being tutored by a PRIMUS janitor, he set out to fight crime. His primary motivation is simple – stupid people make him angry, and he feels that he can use his powers to stop people from being stupid.

 

Portal Kombat is a fit young man with blond hair and blue eyes. He wears a black and purple costume with a neon green trim.

 

Timeshift – A late-night shift worker at a supermarket discovered that he was a mutant with the power to stop the flow of time. Experimenting with his powers, he found that he could interact with other people and objects while time was frozen. Bored with his job, he decided to use his powers for the greater good.

 

Timeshift’s appearance has not been defined in any way, shape or form.

 

“Rubberman” – Placeholder name – A man fell into a vat of toxic waste during a superhuman battle. After an unknown amount of time in a rusty iron barrel, he emerged with no memory of his past or how he got there. However, he also found that he had a malleable body and shape shifting powers. He also had a dislike of superhumans, and felt that one was connected to his condition.

 

Rubberman so far wears a battered shawl. His appearance is otherwise undefined.

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Re: The Sunday Night Jokes (Champions Universe)

 

Session 1 – Not Ready for Prime Time

 

Rubberman is out experimenting with his powers, when he finds that the Millennium City Natural History Museum has been broken into. Checking the structure out, he finds that someone has gone in through one of the skylights, presumably after disabling the alarms. Looking inside the structure, he finds a man in Insectoid power armour, who identifies himself as Mantisman, stealing part of the insect collection.

 

A fight breaks out between the two; Rubberman tries to contain Mantisman, however, the supervillain manages to escape using his jet boots, dropping Rubberman from a great height while doing such. Fortunately, his rubber body absorbed the worst of it. As he escaped (leaving his booty behind), Mantisman commented that he was glad that Rubberman “Wouldn’t be at Channel 11 on Monday”

 

Meanwhile, Timeshift is at work when a huge man (eight foot tall!) walks into the store and demands to know where the liquor is. Having gotten his directions, he then starts drinking the liquor in the store without paying, and menacing several young women, saying that he’d be a rich man “come Monday”. Not wanting any trouble, Timeshift used his powers to literally throw the man out of the store.

 

Outside, a fight broke out between the young hero and the man, who called himself Onslaught. The two fought, Timeshift using his powers to surprise his larger opponent. Realising that he was in trouble, Onslaught retreated, challenging Timeshift to face him again “On Millennium Morning”

 

Across town, Portal Kombat was just leaving a bar as another man entered – a man with metallic gauntlets. Approaching the bar, the man, calling himself Buzzsaw demanded the contents of the register, warning the bartender that he had buzzsaws! Portal Kombat responded by opening a portal under the bar’s Jukebox and then dropping it on Buzzsaw’s head.

 

Taking the fight outside, Portal Kombat managed to defeat Buzzsaw (who he mistakenly thought was called Buzzsauce) before the villain got even a shot of by simply dropping a pool table on him. Interestingly enough he found a security key card for Channel 11’s studios on the villain.

 

Not too far away, Skadi was looking for criminals to beat up. An explosion at a convenience store grabbed her attention. As she arrived, she saw a man stepping out with glowing yellow eyes, wearing a garish red and orange costume and carrying a skateboard and the cash register. She demanded that he surrender, and then mocked his fashion sense, calling him a kid and a walking 90s cliché.

 

This enraged him and caused him to attack her; using his powers, he slammed her with the cash register, which caused it to explode. This only caused her to mock him further, pointing out that he’d just destroyed his reason for robbing the store. The two fought, with Skadi getting the upper hand. Eventually, he used telekentic abilities to entangle her and escape; however, as he fled, he said that he would be at “Channel 11 on Monday Morning at nine”

 

Four different investigations revealed two interesting facts: The first was that Channel Eleven had a Weekday Morning chat show known as Millennium Morning. The second was that Monday’s show would have mayor Calvin Biselle on as a guest. As a result, four superheroes independently wound up stalking out the same station, which featured as a convenience a massive flatscreen display on the outside with the stations; current programming.

 

Skadi noticed Portal Kombat first. Leaping over to him, she complimented him on his dress sense and then asked what he was doing here. As he explained, they also spotted Timeshift and Rubberman. The four of them exchanged information, eventually reaching the conclusion that the four villains that they had fought had come to Channel Eleven to take Mayor Biselle hostage. From there, they considered their course of action.

 

Only to be cut off by a shout over the external display. Looking over, the four of them watched as, on screen, the presenter of Millennium Morning and Mayor Biselle were taken prisoner by the four villains they had previously fought – Mantisman, Onslaught, Buzzsauce and the nameless fourth man. Another villain entered the frame, a muscular man wearing a garish black, brown, orange, blue, purple and white costume. He announced that he was Power Crusher, the leader of the Power Crusher Gang. He had taken Biselle hostage, and wanted two million dollars for each of his gang (and after a pause added that was ten million dollars).

 

The four of them decided to work together to defuse the situation and save the mayor. Using the security card Portal Kombat had found, they entered the station, heading towards the studio for Morning Millennium. Once there, they managed to observe the studio without being spotted, and formed a plan. Timeshift would use his abilities to stop time and rescue Biselle and the presenter, then the four of them would beat up the bad guys while the hostages got away.

 

The first part went off without a hitch; as far as the Power Crusher Gang were concerned, the hostages simply disappeared. Before they could figure out what happened, the four heroes stormed onto the set, determined to take them out, despite being outnumbered.

 

The battle was surprisingly one-sided; while Power Crusher was able to drain some of Skadi’s strength, she was still able to face off with him. Buzzsauce tried to shoot her with his Buzzsaw launchers, only to find that they were completely useless against her. To make his day even worse, Timeshift used his powers to dismantle his gauntlets – and then Power Crusher’s.

 

While they had only just met, the four heroes turned out to work well together, while the Power Crusher Gang seemed to have very little to do with each other. Rubberman used his limbs to tie up both Mantisman and the anonymous fifth man, while Portal Kombat decided to drop cameras and other film equipment on the members of the Power Crusher Gang.

 

Pretty soon, the members of the Gang began to fall; first Onslaught and then Power Crusher himself. Mantisman managed to escape, and Buzzsauce tried to do the same. However, he found himself tied up by Timeshift. The final member of the group – the still nameless one – demanded that Skadi face him so he could get even for her humiliating him.

 

So Portal Kombat opened a portal under him, dropping him right in front of Skadi, who then punched him through the back wall of the set.