7 Superheroes Walk Into A Bar

...and only 2 of them exchange numbers.

On Sunday, I played in the first session of a Supers game using the Truth & Justice (PDQ) system. The GM wanted the PCs to form a team or band of heroes, which seems perfectly reasonable.

So she asked us to first focus on our mundane secret identities, and make sure that every PC knew at least one other PC. Presumably, that happened. With 7 players, there was enough chaos around the tabletop that I didn't really catch the particulars of how everyone knew each other, and just focused on my own connections.

Then, for our first session, she had us all attending the University Street Fair when some supervillains showed up. That way, in theory, we'd all respond to the imminent danger, and have our super-heroic debut together. Tie the party to one another via a trial by combat.

As you are no doubt already guessing, it didn't really work. 7 PC superheroes arrive on the scene. 2 get into costume and wade into the thick of it. 2 turn invisible and 1 uses astral projection, and essentially keep their presence hidden from everyone. The remaining 2 participate, but do so in low-key "on the sly" ways intended specifically to prevent anyone from figuring out that they are a Super. The fight is over in about 2 rounds, so anyone who was "waiting for the right moment" to make their dynamic entrance just missed out. Bad guys defeated, police show up, everyone goes their separate ways.

This is why so many old D&D campaigns start with "There's a wizard in the corner, and he says he's looking to hire some brave adventurers, and will pay you lots of gold." Of course, at least 20% of those openers result in inter-party bloodshed before you leave the tavern, but at least they're all aware of one another.

Oh well, as they say in the biz: "The show must go on". I imagine a fair amount of meta-wrangling will have to happen before the first real scene of our next session, to get everyone on the same page.

The lesson is thus: Never ever start a campaign with what is supposed to be the party's first meeting or first adventure together.  Starting with the origin story is virtually guaranteed to be more of a problem than it's worth. It sounds great on paper, but in reality it's a minefield.

It works in the movies, but that's only because scriptwriters and film directors have control in ways that GMs don't. A character in a novel can't misbehave and wreck the whole plotline, but a character at the table will do so more often than not. The self-destructive misbehavior meme is a strong one, and often hides behind the phrase: "It's what my character would do!" We'd like to pretend we're above it, but most of us aren't.

Far safer to run your first session from the perspective: "You've all known each other and been working together for about a year now, and have established strong friendships within the party." Several sessions later, when you've established a group dynamic, and gotten everyone's buy-in on how the campaign functions, then you can do a flashback session for an origin story, if you really must.

The Armchair Musketeer

Last night I played in a superhero RPG loosely based on "Mystery Men", in that we were supposed to play incompetent superheroes. The system was Savage Worlds, using the Supers Compendium.

I played the Armchair Musketeer, which is exactly what it doesn't sound like: a plushly upholstered Louis XV chair that had been granted sentience, served in the Royal Musketeers, and has been fighting crime ever since. Complete with an inconsistent "french" accent... and the last time he his upholstery repaired, he had "magic fingers" installed... "for ze ladies".

I spent his ten hero points on Construct (a requirement, really) and the rest on Super Skills. This, combined with the "Blind" Hindrance (chairs don't have eyes, you see) and "Trademark Weapon" edge allowed me a Fighting skill of d12-4 (d12 +1 +1 -6). I also had Taunt at d12-2, and Shooting at d10-6. Awesomely incompetent. I rolled a lot of (adjusted) 1's, but also the occasional high-level exploding successes.

Playing a Blind PC is really hard, by the way. GMs nearly always do the majority of their narrating as "Here's what you see when you open the door..." or "In walks a villain in a lab coat, and three thugs carrying submachineguns..." or, in our case last night "You hit Santa in the face, which peels back revealing he's a robot!" For some strange reason, the other players don't really enjoy having to repeat everything the GM says.

Or, maybe, they just didn't want to constantly explain things to an armchair. I can't completely rule out "the furniture factor".

Dirty Rotten Heroes

Last night was the third session of a four-part super hero mini-campaign of Truth & Justice. The villains are particularly despicable, having at this point killed over 2,000 people in their campaign of terror (and they'd tried to kill a stadium full of 50,000 as well).

The villains thus far have all been Invulnerable, Immortal, Intangible or just plain Untouchable. In the first 5 or 6 fights (the first 2.5 sessions), despite usually outnumbering them one villain versus 3 or more heroes in any given fight, we were unable to get any decisive victories. The bad guys always out-classing us, and always escaping.  Since any one of them can fight any three of us to a standstill (and, all assembled, there's about as many of them as there are of us), we've been getting kind of desperate.

Last session, there was a point where a group of four of us "heroes" managed to knock one of the villains unconscious. It was our first success. This particular villain was a thug - a super-powered thug, sure, but still nothing more than a hired gun, and unlikely to know anything useful. Plus, he had a lot of blood on his hands (literally and metaphorically).

So we chopped the unconscious villain into little pieces with an axe, on a public street. I kid you not.

Truly a bright and shining moment in super-hero stardom.

The Meat Shield (Truth & Justice PC)

Played a little Truth & Justice last week. It's a reasonably rules-light superheroes RPG.

I tend to over-think my characters too much, and take way to long making a PC. So, with my back up against the wall at the game, I slapped together a thin parody of a character, which I named The Meat Shield. Despite being so shallow, the character was kind of fun to play.

The Meat Shield

• Hot dog vendor by day, heroic sidekick by night.
• His superhero suit is printed with the cuts of meat he could be chopped into.
• He has some minor thematic equipment, such as a Knockwurstchuku and a hot-dog shaped cell phone, but nothing that actually provides a bonus (well, except the hot dog cart itself, which is mundane but amusing).
• I intended him to just be a lackey, but discovered in the process of playing him that there's some pretty enjoyable grandstanding to be done when your character resides at the intersection of invulnerable and ridiculous.
• Officially I'm the sidekick of the great Beef Wellington, a hero of immense girth reknown, who is, sadly, out of commission with some sort of food poisoning.
• The police got annoyed with me in one scene, and put a "boot" on my hot dog cart. It's hard to be a superhero when your bicycle is being impounded.

Powers:
Invulnerability +2
Regeneration +4

Qualities:
Body Guard +4
Karate +2
Unobtrusive +2
Bicycle-driven hot dog cart +2

Weakness:
Can't disobey anything a Superhero tells him to do (-2)

4th Ed on 9/11/1984

I recently played in a 4th Ed D&D one-shot that had superhero and 9/11 themes. Ra's al Ghul and Prince Namor were up to no good at the World Trade Center, endangering thousands of lives, and mix-and-match crew of PC superheroes from the Marvel and DC worlds had to save the day. It was 9/11/1984, because the GM wanted to use versions of the PC's (Captain America, Batman, Wonderwoman, North Star, Black Canary, and Invisible Girl) from the 80's prior to the 90's power creep that affected some of those characters. I played in this game at GwenCon.

The GM had never run 4th Ed before. I had never played 4th Ed (but have read the 4th PHB and DMG) before, and one of the other players had never role-played before. We were playing 18th-level characters. Despite that hefty set of self-imposed hurdles, I was definitely impressed at how smoothly combat flowed. It's hard to imagine similar results from 18th level characters and first-time players in either 3.x or 2nd Ed D&D. 4th is really sweet, and easy to pick up.

A quick aside: This experience left me kinda wondering why I'm bothering with Savage Worlds - 4th's rules are far tighter, and character creation / advancement appears to be less fiddly than in SW. But that's a topic for another time - and rather similar to what I was griping about last week.

That said, it certainly wasn't a perfect gaming experience. The game was basically two fight scenes, with a very brief bit of narration between them. This was a big shock, given that the GM (Dqniel) had run an absolutely awesome Cthulhu scenario at GwenCon 2 years back. Because of the skill he'd shown in crafting and running that adventure, I was expecting a lot this time. I anticipated getting to role-play a bit more and roll a bit less. I had my hopes up - especially after seeing the jawdropping prop he'd made (see below).

Of course, what you get out of an experience is based in part on what you bring to it. I don't check my email too often, so I missed out when he sent out the pregen characters for us to choose from. As a result, there wasn't much of a choice left for me - I got stuck playing Black Canary. I've never read a comic with her in it, and didn't know a thing about her, so had there been more role-playing opportunities, I probably would have stalled out. Lack of knowledge on both character and system was a big handicap for me. My bad - there's definitely things I could have done to enhance my enjoyment of the game. I was playing a sort of monk-ish build, and didn't really know what my combat role was. In retrospect, I think I was a Striker. A tiny bit of homework on my part prior to the game would have done wonders.

Speaking of wonders, Dqniel brought something to the game that was the gaming equivalent of one of the 7 Wonders of the World. He had a 6-foot-tall scale model of the World Trade Center. He's a graphic designer by trade, and so had assembled this breathtaking foam-core and cardstock model of all the various towers. Hands down, it's the coolest single prop I've ever seen in gaming. I can't say enough positive about it - I really wish I'd brought my camera. This prop more than made up for whatever minor gripes I may have had about the pure-combat plotline (which wasn't really pure combat either, to be fair, as there was a vital skill challenge in the midst of the second fight).

UPDATE: I found a photo one of the other GwenCon attendees put up on the web. Check it out here. He or she put a caption saying it's a 4 ft model, but I think that's selling it short. I'm 6ft and change - my eyes were maybe two inches over the tops of the towers, so I'd guess the towers about 5'3" or so. The aerial on the roof of Tower #2 reached up pretty close to the top of my head, IIRC. I sure don't think I could be overestimating by more than a foot. The photo, nice as it is, doesn't do it justice. The big towers just look white or uniform light grey in the picture. Dqniel had used Illustrator, and the panels all had grids on them to give the proper wall-of-windows skyscraper effect. Much more impressive in person then on film/screen, I'm afraid, but at least this gives you an idea what we're talking about.

One last bit of praise for Dqniel - the man has patience and tact. There was a player who kept wandering away from the table, disappearing for 5 to 20 minutes at a time. Expecting that if his turn came round while he was still gone, he'd just hold his action, and get to take a turn almost instantly upon returning. Dqniel handled himself with a lot more composure than I'd have managed if some ...person... tried that at my table. Had I been GMing, the second (maybe third) time he wandered off without saying anything, I would have dropped him from the game. When he came back, I'd have said "sorry dude, you failed a save and died". I know, it's harsh. But by the end of the 4-hour block, I wanted to scream at this player - he was repeatedly disruptive and disrespectful. Dqniel kept his cool, though, didn't let it phase him at all. Buddha would have been impressed.

Lego Batman at GwenCon

My favorite game at GwenCon this year was Lego Batman. It had a great balance of goofiness and challenge, played wonderfully with tropes and expectations, and was just a delight to dive into.

The setting was a city that had outlawed superheroes. The Comedian was dead. Sounds familiar, right?

Except this city was Gotham, and The Comedian was a former sidekick of The Joker, a sidekick who'd gone on to become a hero of his own. The Joker, you see, was one of the outlawed Superheroes. We were all playing characters mostly known for being villains that Batman battles against - but in this alternate reality, we were the heroes. Our backstories were just a little different to fit that as well - they paralleled various superhero backgrounds. I was The Joker. My parents had been killed on our way home from the circus as a child, so I grew up to become a crime fighter, wearing a costume styled after the most terrifying thing I knew - circus clowns. I didn't get to read the other PCs backstories, but bits came out. The Penguin developed his super powers after being bitten by a radioactive penguin, etc.

The Comedian was dead, having seemingly been drained by a vampire bat, then thrown off his balcony. So I loaded up my clown car full of the old superhero gang, and started the investigation. Much hamming-it-up ensued. Before the night was over, the Bat had also kidnapped my current sidekick Eddie "The Riddler" Nigma. Our attempts at a rescue were nearly blown by the psychotic showboating of a Scarecrow that clearly had elements of Rorshach in him.

Not that I can complain about psychotic showboating. At the scene of the crime, where the police rushed to the decision that The Comedian had killed himself, I did a little psycho showboating of my own. A pretty lengthy performance, the Joker wearing a little black pillbox hat and black veil, wailing like a bereaved widow. Eventually, when the police wouldn't do anything, I took matters into my own joy-buzzer-laden hands. "The mask is it's own protection", I told them, and then got in Commissioner Gordon's face. In fact, with a few good Taunt and Intimidate rolls to back it up, I managed to make the good commissioner pee his pants on Gotham TV.

Mechanics either were True 20, or were based on True 20. I haven't read True 20 in years, so I'm not sure how modified it was. But it was fast and simple, easy to grok and worked really well despite the frequency of opposed rolls. I just may have to go take another look at True 20, 'cause this was pretty sweet. I'm not used to anything d20-related having an elegant and robust set of social mechanics that use the same basic rules as the combat system, but it was a beauty the way it allowed for the confrontation with the Commissioner.

Did I mention this was LEGO Batman? Tim Beach, the GM, went above and beyond by making a set of awesomely intricate lego models for the various locations and vehicles. No doubt many of the vehicles were published lego models, but the most important bits were Tim's own creation. I wish I could show you The Comedian's apartment and the building it was part of. Fully detailed, with all sorts of tiny details like little lego faucets and toilet. It must have been weeks worth of constructing. It was an extremely cool prop - almost cool enough to make me regret that we were playing such over-the-top characters, I'm certain there were clues and details we missed because we were too busy riffing. We were chewing the scenery instead of analyzing it.

And then there was the scene at the Superhero Bar. He made this bar model, complete with "sidekick shack" out back. The bar had more than 30 figures in it - all outrageous and awesome. I could only identify about half of them. Villains from DC and Marvel, badguys from Harry Potter, one of the Emperor's Royal Guard from Return of the Jedi, Amelia Earhart for reasons that boggle the mind, etc. Mr Danger-To-Himself-And-Others (that's Doc Ok to you, kids) was the multi-armed bartender. We were holding a wake to remember our dear friend The Comedian. In the middle of the ridiculous wake scene, me standing on the bar trying to eulogize the deceased, the Batmobile crashed through the sidekick shack.

This lead to a watery chase to that falling-apart waterfront lab from Spiderman II (where Dick Grayson was holding poor Eddie Nigma hostage), then an aerial chase from there to the BatCave. In the midst of it all, I ended up leaping from Earhart's biplane onto one of Batman's flying toys. I managed to cling on to the outside, and made him crash. Meanwhile the rest of the group trashed the BatCave and beat up his Butler. Or maybe I was fighting the butler? It's hard to tell when they're wearing the same costume.

It was a delight to behold. A cornucopia of fun. So much going on, on so many levels. Thank you, Tim, for running the best game of a really good con.

Microwave Pantometry (Updated)

I played my Pantsomancer again tonight in another session of Truth & Justice. Click for Recap of the previous session.

The big bad was running us ragged most of the session, but we managed to figure out where his lair was, and arranged an ambush. Time for some more stupid Trouser-Magic tricks. On paper, I'm the weakest superhero in the party, but I didn't let that stop me. I fought dirty.

To make a long story short, I found myself in a kitchen, far from the fight scene, but with an established sympathetic link between a pair of pants I was holding, and the pair of pants the villain was wearing. I knew the villain was mopping the floor with my buddies, and that I'd only get a couple quick shots at him before he realizes the Pantomancy involved in my attacks and strips down to his supervillain under-roos.

Wasting no time, I grab a Kitchen Knife. I shove it into the pocket of the pair of pants I'm holding. Lucky attack roll, too. The blood that oozes out tells me that my Voodoo Doll trick worked. I'm squarely into Anti-Hero territory now.

Then I run across the kitchen to the microwave oven. I throw the pants into it, with the big metal knife still in the pocket, and the magic link between pairs of pants still open. I turn on the microwave, which results in heating, radiation, and a shower of sparks cascading down the knifeblade. Elsewhere, the bad guys pants are exploding and burning around him.

It was all stupidly effective, because the bad guy kept using his big defensive powers on the superstrength punches and other massive attacks he could see coming from the Tank / Brick PCs, and had no defense against cutlery and microwave radiation manifesting in his trousers. Not very becoming of a hero, but it sure got the job done. When all was said and done, I had done more damage to him than the rest of the party did.

Update: It has been brought to my attention, that it's possible my Pantometry / Pantomancy wasn't as effective as I imagined it to be. Seems the bad guy had defensive / regenerative powers that would allow horrible wounds to exist, and then just heal up right afterwords. Which means that possibly when I thought I was doing all that damage, he might have been soaking it up. It still felt darned good to squeeze even a few drops of effectiveness out of something as silly as pants-flavored-magic.

Truth, Justice, and Pantsomancy

Tonight's session at the weekly one-shot group was the second leg of a three chapter short-shot that started at a session I'd missed a few weeks ago. The system is Truth & Justice, a light and flexible superhero RPG (I was quite impressed by the system, to be honest).

One of the existing PCs was Geckoman, like Spiderman with a tongue instead of webs. That encouraged us to be a little odd, too.

Sarah's character, Madame Griselda, is a psychic with temporally-displaced senses. She can smell the future and hear the past, or was it the other way around?

My character is Peter Braccae, aka The Trouser Weasel. Occultist, Reformed Criminal, Tailor. My power is control of pants. I can summon pants, teleport myself to pants, transmute pants, reach into my pocket and pull out your wallet (or car keys, or whatever's in your pants), etc. My signature stunts are the Panteleportation Swap (I go to your pants, you go to mine) and Immobilize From The Waist Down. My weakness is skirts, kilts, and nudists.

I just sent the following email to the other players. The plot is far too complicated for me to explain, but I think this will stand without further context beyond "Dread Wizard Calvin is the badguy, and he has a wild cat as a familiar." Here's the email:

Those of you who wear pants find the following note in your pocket. It's been laminated in hopes that it will survive all the rain, and to make it a little more noticeable when it's inserted into your pants. It reads:

"My esteemed colleagues,

I was walking miss Griselda home from the Trolley ambush, and as we talked, a theory hit me. It's gonna sound pretty ridiculous, and I don't mind if you call me crazy. Dirty looks and funny names don't hurt a guy like me. As you may know, my ancestors were excommunicated for heretical Pantsomancy. In this enlightened age, the science of Pantsometry is finally getting some acceptance, but it's been a long hard road full of dirty looks and funny names. A few more of each won't bother me.

More to the point: Griselda tried to smell the future, and she can't smell The Dread Wizard Calvin at all. Funny thing that - a guy in a fancy suit, who's pet is a wild cat, and he ain't got no scent. You'd expect some fancy cologne, or lacking that, some cat dander and piss. But no, nothing, nada, like a totally normal generic nondescript everywhere kinda scent.

Likewise, I tried to teleport to his pants, and struck out. Wrong pants, wrong guy. These ain't no simple pants, neither. Distinctive. Green Armani. Hard to confuse 'em. They don't sell pants like that in Harbor City. If they did, I'd own a pair. One way or another.

So what kind of guy looks like a million bucks, but's got no pants and no smell? An illusory guy, that's who. He ain't no wizard, he's a scentless well-dressed red herring. My money's on the cat. I bet it's a magic cat, hiding behind a guy who never was. It's some kinda exotic breed, probably related to a Cheshire.

Calvin = Illusion, Cat = Illusionist

That's a tough nut to crack. Like the Pope, a cat's got no pants. Don't know how to fight a pantsless cat. This one's gonna take some out of the box thinking. I'll let you know when I come up with a plan.

In conclusion, I'm really honored that you invited me to team up with you. You're real heroes, the kind I've always wanted to be. Feels good to be part of something. Maybe we should consider a team uniform. I'll sketch up some designs, and send your pockets a memo.

Fashionably yours,

The Trouser Weasel."

Dr Horrible's Sing A Long Blog

This very odd-looking miniseries may be the dumbest thing Joss Whedon has ever been involved in - and that's saying something. I mean that as a compliment. Whedon has a talent for making things work that just rightly shouldn't.
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
The first section goes live tomorrow (July 15th 2008), and the whole thing is only up on the web for a week. View it this week, or not at all. (Well, I expect it may one day come out on DVD.)

I'm specifically pimping this show because I want to support Whedon's attempt at creating a new market for series projects outside of the Hollywood & Network machine. I'm not sure exactly how a free program on the web for less than a week will do that, but I'm willing to give him a chance. Besides, I'm secretly hoping that we'll get to see Malcolm Reynolds kick Doogie Howzers butt.

What does this have to do with Gaming? Crap if I know, but my other blog is so full of stuff these days. This would just get lost there. I guess I'll justify this by mentioning the many gaming tie-ins to Joss Whedon. Eden Studios did a Buffy RPG, Margaret Weiss (of Dragonlance fame) wrote the Serenity RPG, and...um... here's a link to a yahoo group for an Aliens vs Predator RPG (Joss wrote Alien Resurrection, so gimme a break. I know I'm stretching.)

Stuper Powers

Next time I play Stuper Powers, my PC will be Camera Man.