BoloOfEarth

Re: GATEWAY, the UNTIL space station Cat, First off, thanks for the link. I'm a nut for maps and immediately printed that off. Second, thanks for the plug on the Bayside Blimp. As to the meat of your post, DC Heroes had a module, Siege, that contained maps of the JLA satellite base. I'm not positive, but I thinkTraveller had a space station in at least one module. And I know there's a set of blueprints done of the Next Gen Enterprise that could be twisted or borrowed from to fit a space station. But AFAIK nothing official from DOJ on GATEWAY. According to the text in the UNTIL sourcebook, the station has artificial gravity, and since it is bought with a Bulky OIF, I'd say it's the sci-fi variety rather than from rotation. Of course, you could decide differently in your world. Given the size (8,000 hexes!), I doubt you'll see GATEWAY drawn out, though that would be way cool if they did. If you can get your hands on one or more of the previously mentioned maps, I'd just borrow bits and pieces for key areas (bridge, docking bay, etc.) where the players are likely to go, and wing the rest.

Re: one question... A few suggestions: (1) have a diceless sequence. Make it a group dream (maybe someone mystic trying to warn the heroes of something while they sleep), so their actual power levels don't really apply. This gives you a reason to ignore the damage levels and just get descriptive. (2) run an all-NPC intro to a plotline. Maybe have the players temporarily play the villains they're going to face later on. Give them a general idea of what their powers are, but not details (since they're going to face off against them later). This is kinda like a teaser sequence in a comic, giving the players some info that will become important later. Have them roll to hit, but you "determine" damage off the cuff. This gets away from the game mechanics and adds some variety to the game. I had the players play a bunch of normals (and one low-powered villain), paired off against each other, with a disk of information what they were all after. After that was run, the players went back to running their own characters, find the disk, etc. This was done to add some interesting roleplaying to the game, but the principle can be altered for your game. Overall, you need to have fun too. One way I have fun is by coming up with subplots and behind-the-scene machinations that the players rarely learn about (but frequently feel the effects from). And when they do ferret out one of those subplots, it's a lot of fun for both me and them. Or I try and develop an NPC that the PCs will want to interact with on a regular basis. Friends or foes, the supporting cast can be tons of fun for the GM to play.

Re: Title for the next HERO villains book I was thinking "Foxbat's Pop-Up Book of Foes" - it gets away from the alliteration, but what the heck? A book of individuals that might, for a time, work with and against the mighty Foxbat.

Re: Labs! for every occasion Demolitions Lab - combine with Concealment Lab and Breakfall Lab (mentioned above) - can you find and defuse the bomb before the lab rotates? And who the heck put a mercury switch on that thing?! Acrobatics / Contortionist Lab - bars and beams and razorwire (oh, my!) crisscross this room, making it extremely difficult to cross the room to the other door. Bureaucratics Lab - you must return from this room with form 37-B.

Re: from little plot seeds, mighty games do grow: Share you ideas! Not a computer, but I did something similar. A player character in my campaign was rather paranoid, especially about the government. His teammates signed him up for a subscription to the Hero.net Herald, a weekly newspaper in my game. This publication is put out by former and current superheroes, plus fans and superhero wanna-bes. Subscribers receive the paper every Monday morning on their bedside table, secret ID or not. Nobody has ever seen the paper actually appear, and it never appears if somebody other than the recipient is in the room. You can imagine how the paranoid PC freaked out when his first issue appeared in his home.

Re: FoxbatsMasterPlan.Com dear mistr foxbat, my name is timmy im six years old if i start a foxbat fan club can i get a rid in yore centapeedmobeel? my daddy thinks yore a loon but i think yore cool timmy

By the way, Lord Liaden, I followed the links. Loved 'em, especially the Foxbat Deathtrap stuff. As to my own suggestions, if the heroes are frontal assault types and they're supposed to wake up in the trap, have it be a cell with one armored door. (They were actually lowered in from a concealed hatch above.) The door is a fake, very flimsy and concealing a very short corridor with spikes facing the doorway. (Something like 3d6 AP KA should do the trick.) The brick's high-speed move-through merely means that he impales himself, upping the KA by an appropriate amount. Saw one in Iron Man where he came to a room with a TV monitor showing a friend of his wired into an electric chair, and a voice informed him that, if he moved, a sensor would detect it and electrocute his friend. He scanned the room to find the electrical wiring for the sensor and used his chest unibeam to deactivate it so he could move and save the day. A truly insidious way is to use a cumulative mental illusion. No matter how they defeat one "trap," another kicks in automatically (the hero's brain is doing all the work). So the hero defeats the spinning blades of death atop the narrow walkway, only to slip and fall onto huge glass spikes. He uses acrobatics to avoid landing on the spikes, but they're hollow and his foot breaks one, releasing a deadly gas. He jumps back up to the walkway, and sections of the ceiling begin to fall on him. Ad infinitum until either the illusion does enough STUN and BODY, or the player finally wises up that it isn't really happening.

A truly good deathtrap is aimed at the powers/skills of a specific character, so what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. That said, I've been in games with the following: 1) Went down in an elevator quite a way; I think the elevator was a hydraulic lift, not a cable-suspended box. After it passed a certain point, hardened armor blast doors sealed off the elevator shaft. At the bottom was a room that looked like a meeting room of some sort. Of course, as soon as all the heroes entered the room, armored doors slammed shut and heaters hidden a ways back in the walls turned on to slowly but steadily bring the room temperature up to a deadly level. Smashing back into the elevator shaft only buys some time, since the blast doors sealing the elevator shaft are too hard to break through -- and then the elevator shaft starts getting the heat too. The heat vents were too small to get through, but as I recall one character could teleport and took somebody else in to help smash the heaters. With the immediate threat taken care of, we could work on the blast doors until we could escape. 2) The hero team came to a room with switches (number equalled the number of heroes). Only one entrance, across the room from the switches. The heroes were informed that, if they did not throw the switches, a nuke was going to destroy the city. If they did throw the switches, the door would lock (too tough to break through easily) and nerve gas would fill the room. We quickly rigged something up to the switches so one person could throw them all at once, and one hero (the speedster) volunteered to throw the switch then make a run for the door, while the rest of us were outside and trying to keep the door open. I don't remember why, but for some reason the door still closed, too fast for the speedster to get through. (I think it was a second, hidden door that dropped from above.) He didn't make it.

So you're saying that Christmas is all part of Foxbat's Master Plan?

On the topic of villain motivation: think about how the villain sees him/herself. Few people wake up and say, "Well, it's time to be evil!" They usually have reasons for the things they do (twisted or delusional as those reasons may be). To the villains, their actions make perfect sense. The suggestion on acting is bang-on, too, even as far as facial expressions. While speaking as the big baddie, look at the players as if they are beneath your notice, or vermin, or however the villain sees the heroes. A distinct voice, or cadence, or word choice also helps. As to making the villains as if they are your personal characters: this has a danger, namely if the GM is so attached to "his" characters that he goes out of his way to hamstring and thwart the heroes. Yes, put as much effort into creating the villain as you would in creating your own PC. But don't get too attached to him.

Not multiple plots converging, really just a completion of some long-standing plots. One campaign I ran, three of the five player characters decided they were hunted by Malachite, all for different reasons. One, Hybrid, is a brick type that nobody can seem to hurt. He has a DNPC, a female researcher interested in his mutant physiology. Another PC, Guardian Angel, is a beautiful telekinetic that Malachite wants to study and maybe make his bride. Game goes on a few months, and the heroes discover a man with amnesia fighting his way out of a hidden lab of Dr. Draconis. They find no clues to his background, but figure out that Draconis was actually programming combat skills into his brain. Everybody he sees is overlaid with a template showing weak points (Find Weakness with any weapon, AE: Cone), plus information on equipment, known abilities, and vulnerabilities (lots of Knowledge Skills). He's a normal (all 20s on primary stats) who's a combat machine. They call him John Doe and make him a pseudo-member of the team (he stays at their base, sometimes helps them out, etc.). Campaign continues a while, with the players really getting to like John Doe. Then, Hybrid's DNPC has a heart attack in front of him, and dies in the hospital while another PC (Mind's Eye, a mentalist) was there. Ever paranoid, the other players even told her try to scan the DNPC, but she doesn't detect anything. After a few days, they discover that they were duped; she was drugged to have symptoms similar to a heart attack, and given another drug to slow respiration and heartbeat. The hospital equipment was rigged to both flatline and jam mental scanning. They figure out that she was taken to the Malachite Islands, and of course they sneak in (a great but long story I won't go into here) to find and retrieve her. John Doe goes along, too. When they're in the final confrontation with Malachite, he smiles and said something none of them understood. Suddenly, John Doe turns and starts attacking Hybrid. You see, he was a clone created by Malachite and given a deeply hidden command to attack Hybrid if he heard the phrase Malachite said. He was sent to Draconis to be programmed and to keep the players from suspecting Malachite. During the months (maybe over a year) that John Doe was hanging out with the heroes, he was subconsciously watching Hybrid and cataloguing his abilities and (most important) his weak points. The best part was that the player characters (who had been bloodthirsty at times in the past) actually refrained from hurting John Doe, instead restraining and talking to him until Mind's Eye could cancel the subconscious command. It was one of those "long-term" background things that usually don't come to fruition in my campaigns, and I loved when it all came together.

Foxbat On Ice Last week, I ran an adventure titled "Foxbat on Ice," where he tries to steal skills from the Millennium City Red Wings during a hockey game and hold them for ransom for... "One million dollars!" (A fight breaking out at a hockey game -- surprise, surprise!) The zamboni was modified with the equipment to steal the skills and memories from five of the Wings and put them into the members of the Foxbat Five -- yes, Foxbat has managed to convince four supervillains to join him in his Master Plan. "With their ice skating and fighting skills, I will be well nigh unstoppable this winter! My Master Plan cannot be stopped!" Unfortunately, Foxbat hired some thugs to cover the exits, and a technician to help with the mind transfers, and the tech had ideas of his own. First, he convinced Foxbat and his teammates, plus the thugs, to wear mental protection headgear (in case Witchcraft shows up), then he modified the zamboni equipment. The headgear actually allowed the tech to switch his mind and those of four thugs with those of the Foxbat Five. The player characters arrived to save the day, only to discover that the Foxbat Five are now bona-fide bad guys. One PC hero (Pack Rat, the team swiss army knife -- I love that term, Rechan) fired a electic dart at one of the thugs, and I decided that the power surge would trigger another mind switch, this time at random. Taking far too much pleasure from this, Pack Rat skated all around the Joe Louis Arena, happily zapping thugs and triggering multiple mind switches. The players, who actually get along pretty well with the F5, had a great time chatting with Leroy (Exoskeleton Man, who bounced into a thug, then Foxbat, then another thug, then Static Man), trying to knock opponents into the goals, and stopping the tech from escaping in Foxbat's body (he removed his headgear after he bounced back in). Foxbat rules!

I used to have a bit of a problem with running games with telepathic player characters, but it lay more with my view than with the players' actions. My current campaign has a player character (Mosquito) who has Shrinking and a limited Telepathy (whispering in a sleeping person's ear to get them to answer questions in their sleep). It's kinda fun to act out the person being questioned, what with the snoring, dream-related sidetracks, wierd comments, etc. that I make along the way. The past campaign had a PC mentalist (Lethean) who was incredibly powerful, but the player used enough restraint that he wasn't a campaign killer. In fact, his backstory and Hunted created a major plot thread, and his habit of turning captured agents into his "followers" made for an interesting set of Contacts. It really depends on the player involved. After 13 years or so with all but one of my players, and 9 or so years with the last player, we've gotten to know each other's playing styles pretty well. My players are pretty cool (and forgiving when I get flaky). However, I've played with people who I wouldn't trust with Mental Awareness, let alone mental powers. I would seriously question some things, such as high-end Cumulative on mental powers, since some powers (like Telepathy or Mind Scan) are frequently used out of combat. For 60 points, a small 5d6 Telepathy with Cumulative (4x Max) would eventually get +30 effect on anybody with less than 15-20 points of Mental Defense. A final result of 120 pretty much gives you anything you want, game mechanic wise. Then again, the roleplaying (and potential misdirection) can temper this, but still I'd question allowing it.

I've done a campaign newspaper, the Hero.net Herald, for the past several years. I try to have a new one for every session (I'm successful about 3/4 of the time). It has articles recapping the prior adventure (unless it was something secret), usually an article pertaining to the current adventure, and maybe an article of two of filler, red herrings, or harbingers of things to come. I'm not sure who created Heronet (a prior GM had it in his campaign, but I suspect he got it from a published source) originally. I adapted it to an online resource (database, message board, chat rooms, etc.) for superheroes, with a newspaper put out weekly. The fun thing is that the paper is delivered through some mysterious means directly to the subscriber (yes, even in secret ID, though not when others are around). If these boards supported PDF files, I'd post a few. (My favorite is when Foxbat took over the Hero.net presses and put out the Foxbat Gazette, describing him being proclaimed Emperor of the World.) Campaign newspapers, or even news items read to the players, can really add a lot to a game. Just be prepared for the players to jump on something that you only meant as filler...

To disguise agents' coming and going, I've put the base under a building abutting a parking structure. The agent and vehicle entrances were through the parking structure, not the building overhead. I also put bases under a strip mall, in a half-sunk WWI navy ship, and in a mobile island. My personal favorite was in a section of the Maginot Line, for several reasons. (1) Most of the work was already done for the villains and required just cleaning up and upgrading, (2) No real reason to hide the base (the surrounding land was bought by Montgomery Int'l. to use as an executive retreat), and (3) for months, the players kept saying "We go to Paris, France" every time I asked them what they were going to do next, so I finally made them go there, enroute to the Maginot base.

(30) Take Me Out To The Ballgame VIPER agents (trainess, mostly) take over a baseball stadium during a major game (big attendance a must) and hold the fans and both teams hostage for $20 million. To make life miserable for the heroes and PRIMUS/UNTIL, they force numerous fans to put on cloth copies (no Armor) of VIPER uniforms and "stand guard" near the entry ways. Of course, this is all a diversion as their main forces hit the temporarily understaffed PRIMUS base across town to break captured supervillains free or procure an important device the Feds acquired.

I haven't played in a long time, so I'll take a stab at what the player characters in my game would do. Possum would have to find some other route to meet and impress hot chicks, but he'd probably find something without a problem. Pack Rat would go into the lab and invent truly strange things. (This is a guy who uses Super Silly String and an electrified rubber dart gun; he and Foxbat are kindred spirits.) Seal would buy a boat, teach scuba diving, and go wreck diving. Mosquito would raise her kids and predict the weather. Probably also protect her photojournalist husband when he puts himself in dangerous situations. ("The building wouldn't dare collapse before I get this shot...") Argent would continue searching to find out who, and what, he is. (Amnesia, don't ya know...) Now, the players are a different story. I don't think a few of them could enjoy a game without a decent fight somewhere along the way. (I've run blatantly token battles in the middle of investigations, just to keep everybody happy.)

One of the player characters in my game (a gadgeteer) has gravity grenades -- a linked TK / NND (both 3" radius), continuing for a turn. (This kinda fits the Entangle + NND thing.) While neither is incredibly powerful, they have been highly effective against many foes. Unfortunately, as AOE attacks they've also affected his teammates on occasion (he, of course, has the defense to his own attack). So now, the other players want him to build them similar defenses. Since it doesn't go outside his concept (and they're willing to pay the actual points for these defenses), it doesn't seem wrong by the rules. But is it just, well, *wrong*? Actually, in my campaign I have an organization (called Moriarty) that is gathering lots of intel on supers and selling it to any interested party. The heroes have recently discovered this (the best part was their walk down a corridor with holograms of superheroes and supervillains, with computer screens displaying info on powers, defenses, and especially weaknesses). I think that, if the gadgeteer does give them all the defense for his grenades, I'll have Moriarty put a major bounty on that gadget, then sell copies to all comers. What's good for the goose...

Drawing heavily on Superskrull's idea, bio-electricity is needed to make a resurrection permanent. Other sources of electricity allow temporary resurrection with extremely limited intelligence and base motivations. The "mad scientist" creates short-term zombies to perfect the resurrection process, then (as Superskrull suggested) uses a low-power electical supervillain to create stronger minions. Unfortunately, the supervillain used is an alien or man/animal hybrid, so the process isn't to the scientist's satisfaction. He needs a bio-electrical source closer to the deceased supersoldier's DNA to make the process work on that supersoldier. That is why he needs that hero. (Perhaps the hero can learn he is a distant relation to the supersoldier; VIPER doesn't know this, but a sample of the hero's blood collected after a prior battle revealed DNA similarities.) The scientist might even surmise that the hero is in some way related to the supersoldier and send agents to investigate the supersoldier's family tree hoping to figure out the hero's secret identity. This allows preliminary encounters (the normal zombies), some investigation (into VIPER breaking into family members' houses and stealing address books, geneology papers, etc.), building up to the climactic battle.

Muzak in the elevator A few years back at GenCon, I played in a Hellenback Champions game where we assaulted the bad guy's base. After dealing with the underlings in the lobby, we get on the elevator up to the penthouse office of the big baddie. At this point, the GM starts "singing" the muzak version of Girl from Ipanema. The contrast in the middle of the Grand Assault was hilarious.

A bit late for Halloween, but what the hey... (23) A costume ball is being held by a rich industrialist, and all the movers and shakers of the city will be there. The theme is "favorite villain", with the wait staff wearing credible copies of VIPER uniforms. The wealthy attendees will likely have pretty impressive looking costumes of supervillains, too. Of course, VIPER plans to crash the party and kidnap some influencial people. And the heroes have to see how well they can pull punches until they're sure who is who.

Don't know if anybody mentioned these, but: A zero-gravity room Force wall projectors (invisible force walls if the base AI is a prankster) Trophy cases in the entry way, with mementos supposedly from conquered foes. These are fakes with tracking beacons, to catch thieving would-be supervillains. A rubber room A "Deathtrap Challenge" room (always good for attackers to wander into). This room can be filled with water, emptied of air, or have flames or freezing cold generated inside. Self-repairing walls and doors Muzak in the elevator. Of hard rock.

(6) The local Nest is in an uproar because VIPER agents from another city (Pittsburgh, in my campaign) did an operation in *their* city without clearing it first. It turns out the Nest Leader in Pittsburgh was disfigured (and given superpowers) in a lab accident, and he took over / built / bought a Nest so he could wipe out the other scientists who worked on that project. (He believes the accident was the result of sabotage -- and he may be right.) Now, the heroes have two Nests of VIPERs to deal with, figure out why Pittsburgh is targeting those scientists, and save the remaining scientists. (7) VIPER develops a vehicle with a prototype holographic and radar-absorbing stealth system. At least, they had it just long enough to verify the stealth system worked, but Foxbat stole it (along with all notes and plans). With his new cloaked Foxbat Flyer, the Cowled Crusader is embarking on a crime wave with decent success. However, VIPER is gunning for him big-time -- and the heroes get stuck in the crossfire.

One thing I liked when I looked through Heroes Unlimited books is the 101 adventure scenarios for the featured characters or location. Seems to me that we can do even better, especially for a great core Champions group like VIPER. So, how about it, folks? How about some plot seeds. I'll bet we can come up with 102 or more if we try. I'll start: (1) While the city is honoring the heroes for a recent victory, the local VIPER Nest Leader decides to make them look like fools. He hires/convinces/tricks some non-VIPER supervillains to attack the heroes during the award ceremony (almost any Hunteds would work), while covert VIPER agents wearing police uniforms sneak in to kidnap the mayor from under the heroes' noses. (2) A recently captured supervillain (preferrably one the PC heroes brought to justice) is on trial, and VIPER has a grudge against that villain. What better time to rub out that villain then when he/she is cuffed and powerless? The attack can happen in the courtroom or enroute between the prison and court. (Note that most security will be geared toward preventing an escape, not protecting the supervillain from attack.) (3) VIPER wants to lure a troublesome vigilante into a trap, and lets word "slip out" of a major arms shipment coming into town. The "shipment" is actually a bomb or a psycho supervillain captured elsewhere. Unfortunately, the heroes also hear about the shipment. Will they also get caught in the trap? And can they save the vigilante (who might not be so helpful, thinking they're trying to bring him in)?

Oh, and who says you have to *buy* bases, equipment, and vehicles? Hit a VIPER weapons shipment, steal the latest UNTIL stealth surveillance jet prototype, research 30+ year-old VIPER or supervillain bases "shut down" by the heroes (saves tons on excavation costs, though upgrading is a pain). Another idea, along the weapons line: A scientist type could supply both sides of a gang war (or real war) with weapons and equipment.