The Black Campbell

This character is unique to our campaign, which is an “original” setting (or as much a one as supers campaigns get.)

I’ve been told our Liberty City campaign is a bit dark. The recent adventure, which featured the suicide of a security guard with the unfortunate power to release a power noxious gas from his nethers, aided in stopping a robery on a casino in the LC. Since the gas also affects dies, it ruined the carpets, paint, and fouled the air of the place badly enough the lobby will need to be refurbished…for that they fired him. It was a poignant scene and continued a theme I’ve been pushing — powers don’t make you smart, talented, or competent. The villains are still mostly idiots who can’t do much other than crime (and that rarely well), and the heroes don’t necessarily embace their gifts, or have them make their lives marvelous.

Here’s an upcoming villain that keeps that darkness going. The campaign is essentially a police procedural show with superpowers. In an upcoming episode, they’ll have a series of child abduction/murders that link into an FBI serial killer manhunt. They know very little, other than the suspect uses some kind of hypnotic weapon to draw in the kids. Only once has someone identified the perpetrator, and that agnet was killed with some kind of sonic weapon — possibly the same thing used to lure the kids. The FBI has dubbed him the Pied Piper:

THE PIED PIPER (real identity unknown)

Affiliations: Solo d10, Buddy d8, Team d6

Distinctions: Pedophile, Takes a Lot of Planning, Centuries of Experience

POWERS SETS:

Psychic Vampire

Lifeforce Drain: d10     Superhuman Durability: d10   Superhuman Stamina: d10

SFX, Psychic Vampire: On a successful life force drain test, shift the effect dice from the Pied Piper’s stress to the target. With an opportunity, can shift trauma from the Pied Piper to the target.

SFX, Memories!: With a successful life force drain, can trade 1PP for  the highest die from the opponent’s next action pool for his action or reaction.

SFX, Unleashed: Step up or double a Psychic Vampire power for a turn. If the action fails, the effect die goes to the doom pool.

Limit, Love of Innocence: When lifeforce drain is used on an adult, takes the targets reaction die in mental stress.

The Flute

Sonic Blast d8     Mind Control: d10

SFX, Come Hither: +d6 for each extra target and keep an extra die for effect.

Limit, Made for Children: 1PP and step the Mind Control effect down to d6 on adults.

Limit, Gear: 1PP and shutdown Flute. Needs to make a test vs. the doom poo or use an opportunity  to recover.

Specialities: Covert Master d10, Crime Master d10, Menace Master d10, Psych Expert d10

So this week marked the return of Marvel Heroic RPG to the gaming table. It’s been a couple of months since we did the test play, and we found that the game ran smoothly despite a few “what was that rule again” moments on my part.

The campaign is still a homebrew universe, set primarily in Liberty City, Delaware — a fictional city founded by the grandfather of the current, and who was the original, Paragon after he bested a human nuclear bomb the Nazis had sent to destroy Washington in 1945. There’s a big helping of The Incredibles and The Venture Brothers, meets Wild Cards and various comic books I liked back when I collected comics.

The game opened with an origin story flashback sequence for one of the new characters, El Gato — a former barrio hood from Los Angeles that was turned into a cat by strange chemicals at a “jump” factory run by rival white gangs. Jump is a main feature of the adventure — it is a drug, originally a military experiment to create supers (or metahumans, as they are officially called) during WWII, to counter a similar Nazi program. Jump gives normals powers at between a d6 and d8 level (what we call Class C powers) for between 30 minutes to 12 hours, depending on the person’s biochemistry. Their genetic code, biochemistry, and it is thought, their psychological makeup lead to what kind of powers they get, how powerful they are (Class B: d8-d10, Class A d12), and it can occasionally lead to permanent powers (For “jumpers”, I roll randomly unless I need something for the story.) The drug also has a nasty effect on the nervous system of the user and burns your brain pretty quickly. It’s highly addictive psychologically; having super powers is cool.

The game started with El Gato landing in Liberty City for an SMA (Superhuman Martial Arts League) fight. He usually does tandem fights, as he is small (3’6″) and not overly strong…but he’s hard to hit and has a mouth that will piss anyone off. He’s the distraction for his teammate. He gets to the venue, the Indian Run Casino on the river and moments later the place is attacked by three jumpers — one a sonic blaster, two with super-strength and durability, of which one can set off earthquakes by punching or stomping on the ground. The other characters just happen to be in the area: Paragon is flying home from trying to score a licensing deal, and the head of a “capes and masks” unit of the police is nearby getting himself a YooHoo and a Bust-a-Nut bar.

The fight went well and the players were able to use each other’s strengths to quickly put down one of the villains. The cops were badly outmatched by the bad guys, but Paragon and El Gato evened the scales. For the mostly normal cops, they have to use their wits (since they didn’t have their power armor handy) and instead of trying to inflict stress, they used their shotguns with “goop” rounds and soporific gas grenades to hit the bad guys with complications to slow them down.

One of the bad guys is run out of the casino by a security guard who has a power…one that earned him the metahuman registry alias of Stinkbug. You can guess his power. They eventually capture the bad guys, take them to the SCU (Special Crimes Unit — the official title of the “capes and masks” squad) for interrogation, where they learn the jump is coming from a small group of hoods out of Atlantic City currently testing their product so they can put together a jumped-up army to go against Grendel (the Matt Wagner Hunter Rose version) who is kicking their crime family’s ass right now.

The cops get sidetracked a few hours later for a capes and masks call that includes a HAZMAT team order. Stinkbug, having blasted the lobby of the casino with putrification that changed the color of the carpets, paint, (as well as Paragon’s uniform), and left a smell they are hard pressed to get out, was fired from his job. Having been called Stinkbug in the press, despite giving his real name and having attempted to change his alias in the registry, has committed suicide. The note mentions his inability to keep a job, get a girl, or lose the horrible nickname his dad gave him. This will be a running theme: superpowers don’t always improve your life. They also don’t make you competent, as would seem in normal comic books — criminals are still usually stupid or lazy; heroes are not always good guys. Or competent.

El Gato manages to track down the dealer for the jump, questions him, and finds out he’s working for their prime jump manufacturer, Bernie Corso. They get the dealer back to SCU and find out from him where the factory is.

Next time: big fight at the factory.