Today kicked off my first attempt at running Champions in about three years. My last one ended up turning into a short-lived M&M campaign that fizzled out after about four sessions.
This time out, I have a better mix of available players. After the last disaster, I came to the conclusion that I'm simply congenitally incapable of playing Champions on any sort of sustained basis with people who don't regularly read and enjoy comics. I'm a genre fiend and I play my best with other folks who share my passion. That's just how it is: I'm 45 years old and I've no desire to change my ways.
Fortunately, the current crew are comics fans, so that's one hurdle cleared.
The next was figuring out what I was going to run. I decided pretty early on to make extensive use of published settings, adventures, and characters. I'm busy with work and family, and I don't have the time to spend months crafting an intricate backstory before we roll the first die at the table. I also wanted to keep things simple in terms of basic information. After all, George Lucas used less than 100 words to kick off the Star Wars saga. The rest is discovery in play.
After a lot of deliberation and going back and forth, I ultimately decided to use Bay City from the New Millenium setting. However I have no intention of slavishly following that version of the CU. I like the city, I like the GUARD far better than I ever liked UNTIL or PRIMUS. I'm not fond of the Proprietor War, but it's fairly easy to ignore if I'm not worried about the backstory.
As to the campaign premise, I'm using "Second-String Supers" from the Truth & Justice RPG. In it, Dragon Knight, the local protector is called upon to join the Earth's premier heroes (who I've named The Sentinels) to fight off an invasion from space. It's a long term assignment, and someone needs to watch Bay City in his absence, so he's recruited some of the lesser-known local talent to fill in while he's gone, provided he DOES make it back.
(The alien invasion is not public knowledge. It's happening far away and the Sentinels want to keep it that way.)
Here's the opening bit, mainly consisting of flavor text and a bit of backstory to get things moving.
The Dragon Knight crouched on the spire of the Transamerica Tower, surveying his city, as his spoke to his friend on the nearby observation platform. “I hate this, Galsworthy. Abandoning her. I’m supposed to protect her from harm.”
The mage looked up from the dossier he was reading. You will be protecting her, DK. You’re not abandoning her, just…expanding the perimeter.” Galsworthy’s eyes flicked back towards the file in his hands. “This one has potential.”
The Dragon Knight scratched his chin with mail-covered fingers. “But no real experience.” He sighed. “I have to leave her in the hands of retirees, tyros, and second-raters. Present company excepted, of course.”
Galsworthy waved the comment away. “We both know I can’t dedicate my time to doing what you do, given my” – the words turned venomous – “Grand Destiny.”
“Speaking of that, I’ve been wondering: any one of these look likely to be your future student?”
Shuffling the files in his hands, Galsworthy shrugged. “Reply hazy, try again. Provided you can help the Sentinels keep the front lines as far away from Earth as possible for as long as possible, there is a chance one of these potential heroes may become my pupil. A slim chance.”
The Dragon Knight looked back out to the skyline. “That’ll have to do.”
The year is 2005. You are a superhero operating out of Bay City, a municipality that grew up after the 1995 earthquake destroyed much of the San Francisco Bay area. In the grand scheme of things, you’re not in the big leagues. A few days ago, you crossed paths with Dragon Knight, Bay City’s greatest protector. While he didn’t have time for a detailed explanation, he asked you to meet him here, on the (top) 50th floor of the Henderson International building, at 3 PM this Saturday. He gave you a card to get into the building and access a special service elevator...
Our Heroes:
Oracle, secretly Dr. Alexandria Booker, a Classics professor at UC Berkeley. She possesses a cloak woven from the wool of the Golden Fleece, and channels the powers of the goddesses Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite. Dedicated to the protection of women, she has a reputation of being a radical feminist that's not entirely undeserved.
Rex Radium - The Atomic Detective. An anomaly. A man out of time and out of place. Radium looks and acts for all the world like a classic two-fisted film noir detective. So long as you ignore his glowing yellow skin and the low-levels of radiation he constantly emits. Rex is a refugee from an alternate timeline, a retrofuturist world of SCIENCE and airships and flying cars with fins. As such, he makes his way in a world he barely understands, solving crimes with two glowing fists and his geiger vision.
Byte Torrent is the living embodiment of the internet. He appears to be a semi-solid mass of electricity and floating data images. Little is known of his true origins (the player is unfamiliar with the game system, so I did a tentative write-up based on a 50 word concept he pitched to me via email). He's got Cyberkinesis and Cyberpathy, can shoot an electrical blast and teleport through electrical lines. He also has access to massive amounts of information (a multipower with the Universal Translator, Universal Scholar, Universal Pilot, and Universal Scientist talents).
The heroes arrived in the lobby of Henderson International at the appointed time. All are in their costumed identity. Rex notices that the security staff is pointedly ignoring them. After some brief introductions, they take the secure elevator to the 50th floor. They come out into what appears to be a penthouse apartment which has been converted into s a high-tech command center. Computers and monitoring equipment cover every available surface. The center of the main room is dominated by a large conference table displaying a holographic map of Bay City. Also displayed over the areas they normally patrol are holographic readouts of our heroes and some other NPCs/PCs to be added later. Seated at the table is the Dragon Knight.
More introductions are made and DK begins to explain why he called them here. At this point, he's interrupted by an alarm going off. He activates a communication link.
“Dragon Knight here. What? But no! Wait!”
He begins to vanish in a bright light. The last thing he says is, “Too soon! Galsworthy will have to explain. Keep her safe…”
(Since Byte Torrent has high range radio perception as a sense, I allowed him a chance to "overhear" the conversation. Essentially, it was Ultrawoman of the Sentinels telling him he was needed immediately and to prepare for transport. So the PCs knew something was up and that he hadn't just been disintegrated by an unknown assailant.)
After a few moments of looking things over and floating theories about what was going on, (The Great) Galsworthy arrived. Once he calmed down from the realization that DK (as he calls him) had already left without explaining things, he took a stab at it, informing them that Dragon Knight had left the safety of Bay City (the "her" in his last words) to them. Along with this nifty base of operations.
Just as they were starting to settle in and survey the surroundings, there was an audible BOOM off in the distance. Looking out the magnificent view, they saw a plume of dust and smoke rising from Altacraz. Clearly, something was afoot.
Which led to the first serious issue confronting the new-formed team. Namely, how to GET to Alcatraz. Byte Torrent could teleport there. But Rex had only his running speed, and Oracle can only fly very slowly in her Aphrodite aspect. Fortunately, the GM had noticed this and prepared for just such an eventuality. Galsworthy said, "This isn't going to be fun, but grab my arm." He winced, gulped, closed his eyes, and the team vanished in a flash of green light.
Only to appear an instant later in the exercise ground at Alcatraz. Galsworthy immediately passed out from the strain of the teleport while our remaining heroes took in the scene of sheer chaos. Tourists were fleeing in panic from a large impact crater in the middle of the yard. A crater occupied by an enormous four-armed green figure that was roaring in anger.
Grond. The strongest and angriest thing on the planet.
Oracle, ever feeling the need to prove herself, leaped into action as Athena. Because of the fleeing tourists, she couldn't reach the monstrosity in a single half-move, but decided to engage him directly to keep him off the less durable members of her team.
Meanwhile, Byte Torrent pulled up everything he could find on Grond, including his known vulnerabilities to fire and ego attacks. Conveying this to Oracle, she shifted to Aphrodite and hit him with an ego blast. While it hurt him, it didn't do enough to stun him, much less shut him down. He retaliated.
On the plus side, Oracle can now boast that she's taken a full on punch from Grond and survived it. On the down side, she did fly back over 100 feet, hit a concrete wall, and briefly lost consciousness. Rex found all but his most taxing atomic blasts ineffective against the behemoth, but tried to get it's attention, to little avail.
Realizing his electric body was a perfect defense against Grond, Byte Torrent went desolid and charged the great green goon. Grond swiped at him, his massive fist passing harmlessly through Byte Torrent. Which made Grond madder.
While Oracle recovered, Byte Torrent led Grond on a merry chase away from the remaining tourists. Once she got her bearings, Oracle shifted tactics and used Aphrodite's mind control on Grond, calming him down and putting him in a cooperative frame of mind. Rex used his substantial Persuasion skill to talk Grond into sitting down to eat in the cafeteria (shades of a Hostess Fruit Pies ad) while Byte Torrent contacted the GUARD, who had already been alerted.
The GUARD arrived with their heaviest containment unit. Guard Agent Rica Jankowski took command over the situation, awestruck that the damage from Grond had been limited to under six figures. "That never happens," she said, eying the heroes closely, "What did you do?"
(GM's Note: At this point, the players had rather neatly circumvented what I'd expected to be a MUCH longer combat. We'd been playing for less than ninety minutes and clearly, I needed to advance the plot. Problem was, I didn't have more plot yet. I knew Grond was a distraction. But I had no idea for what or who had dropped him on Alcatraz. Time to improvise.)
Once Grond was dealt with, our heroes turned their attention to trying to figure out what happened. Witnesses reported a low-flying jet aircraft dropped something over the exercise yard. When it hit the ground, there was a substantial bang and Grond emerged from the crater. The rest, they knew.
Byte Torrent hacked his way into the local Air Traffic Control grid and found a radar trace of a fast moving aircraft passing over Alcatraz at the appropriate moment, then flew to a location over Silicon Valley before vanishing from the radar.
Convinced that Grond was merely a distraction for something bigger, our heroes return to their command center to do some more research. They discover an odd police call still being worked. A break-in at (flips through Bay City sourcebook) Neuroscape Computer Systems, Inc. But a very strange one. There was an initial intrusion report, followed by a nearly immediate "false alarm" call to the alarm monitoring service, followed twenty minutes later by a call to the police reporting a break-in. NCSI is within 100 yards of the radar track of the vanishing aircraft.
Before the heroes can commandeer Galsworthy to teleport them to NCSI, he has enough presence of mind to mention the van Dragon Knight provided for them. (This was me as the GM realizing we had some serious mobility issues at hand and looking for a quick fix. Also, using Oracle's Prius would jeopardize her secret ID.)
Arriving at NCSI, Rex discovers the crime scene is under the supervision of his police contact, Detective Sergeant Lubbock of the BCPD. After a bit of traditional Cop/PI banter, Lubbock fills them in. The intrusion occurred on the twelfth floor. Ingress was achieved by cutting a hole in the safety glass window, presumably with a high-energy torch of some kind.
Byte Torrent decides to attempt to enter the building via the network only to find himself...somewhere else. He's in some corner of Cyberspace (treated as an extra-dimensional space) and finds himself conversing with someone or something calling itself "Aiken." Aiken asks him if he's from "outside," and when Byte Torrent says yes, Aiken replies, "Father doesn't want me talking to outside." Byte Torrent finds himself out in the parking lot, standing next to his teammates. Less than a second has passed.
A Maserati Bora pulls up, driven by a tall, slightly dangerous looking woman. The passenger steps out. It's Peter Stephenson, the genius founder of NCSI. After quick introductions, he attempts to contact Aiken to see what happened. Byte Torrent eavesdrops again (he has a PyschLim about his belief that all information should be free) and gets caught. In a brief conversation, he earns Stephenson's distrust, but learns the following:
1) Aiken is a rudimentary Artificial Intelligence Stephenson is developing.
2) Aiken's own security monitoring was blocked by whoever entered the building.
Stephenson agrees to let the heroes examine the crime scene, as long as Byte Torrent stays out of his network. Before they enter the building, Rex notices an odd energy trace in the parking lot with his Geiger Vision. A large area, roughly the size of a private jet is emitting some strange residual radiation. The texture of the parking lot is also slightly different. Unfortunately, Rex doesn't have the analytical chops to draw any conclusions about the energy trace.
Entering the crime scene, Stephenson quickly determines that the only thing missing is a newly developed isotope used in their medical imaging equipment. The isotope acts as an energy amplifier. In small amounts, it provides exceptional power efficiency. In large amounts, it could produce a truly terrifying yield. While it's not a significant amount, it is enough to raise alarm bells.
At this point, we called it a day. The PCs have several leads to follow up on and I've got a bunch of information I need to generate for Byte Torrent's player. All in all, a decent start. We play again in two weeks. Hopefully by then, I'll have the rest of the story plotted out. As it is, I do know who the bad guy is and what happened to the plane, so I figure it's good enough.
