The Black Campbell

Thursday saw the finale of our Marvel Heroic RPG “pilot” issue. I’ve already posted on the first night and some of the issues we had with the system — mostly chair-dice interface errors. I had a look through the book to clear up a few of the misunderstandings — on my side mostly involving the use of the doom pool, opportunities and plot points, and damage accrual.

The characters were working together to protect song and screen sensation Krista Holloway from being kidnapped by a stalker who has been threatening her on the internet. She is starting her tour to promote her new album in “Liberty City” — a superhero haven in Delaware that is a combination of Gotham and Astro City for feel. They stopped a snatch and grab by a bunch of henchmen and that’s where we left off that night.

In the second installment, the characters spent the first hour or so interrogating the punk they’d picked up, but the guy is legally savvy and cuts a deal to give up his employer — a former superhero that lost his sponsorships and licensing for crime fighting, etc. due to being involved with underage girls. He’s moved from Los Angeles to Liberty City. During the interrogation sequence, we did discover that sometimes, depending on how the distinctions are worded or lack of a particular specialty (skill), you can have trouble getting three dice for a pool. The support rules — where other characters help the primary — worked well here; good cop, bad cop, and silent brooding hero.

This led to the climactic fight scene of the night in which the “masks and capes” team in power armor and supported by the superhero Paragon (brother of the singer in question) raid a warehouse on the docks (you have to have a docks district, c’mon!) The fight ran very smoothly. We all liked the “what can you do in a panel” feel, how the character going chooses the next actor (although I did use an opportunity to jump the line for the villain.) No problems with damage this time, nor the doom pool.

In the proces they practically destroy the warehouse, and discover the “villain” was set up. He was offered a chance to start his new life by a friend who had connections in Liberty City. The mooks working with him , they find out, planned to rob him of his gear and money after he had been arrested. The girl was never to have been actually harmed; it was the intervention by the characters that led to violence. The whole thing was set up by Krista’s manager to generate buzz for the album.

One of the players (Paragon) has a habit of ignoring effects to his character, even when they are reasonable. The “villain’s” predicament hit him with a d6 emotional stress — he jumped the gun, overreacted, and in the process they destroyed property that the villain’s security deposit sure wasn’t going to cover… He should have felt like a bit of a dick (but with this guy’s personality he was sure to get over it.)

So the final assessment for the system: It’s not Cortex, one…it’s FATE but heavily tweaked to fit the genre. It emulates the comic book feel tremendously, the mechanics leave a lot of options (too many for beginning players) for the gamers, and the simplicity of character generation is grand. The sheer number of options you have with opportunities, SFX, etc. makes the system confusing to some — one of the player never used the SFX because he didn’t “get it.” Another jumped right in and played the mechanics for all they were worth. Overall, we felt the mechanics aided play and the feel of the comic setting, without slowing play. However, if you can get past the steep learning curve, it’s an excellent set of rules.

Our pulp game was on hold again for illness in one of the players, leaving me with the “what do I do now?” moment all GMs have at some point. I could continue running the Battlestar Galactica stuff, but over the last week or two, I had been spitballing ideas with the player and GM apparent for our superhero campaign about ideas for the game. We’d been talking about possibly co-GM duties — something that’s led me to think about running “historical” games in the universe we’re creating — so I suddenly decided “hell with it” and slapped together a couple of characters for the players coming and a simple adventure to test drive the Marvel Heroic RPG rules by Margaret Weis Productions.

First, the plot: We started with a teaser that introduced one of the players as the head of the Special Crimes Unit of Liberty City — a combination of Gotham and Astro City (which funnily, I have not read, but just doing research for the game, the setting caught my attention — otherwise known as the “masks and capes” squad. They use power armor when going up against dangerous supers and tech threats, and the rest of the time are working plainclothes detective work. The player had the leader of one of their SCU squads, and they were confronted with a bad guy in an underwater demolitions combat suit. They planned their assault to rescue the hostages of a bank robbery gone wrong and take down the bad guys. It went quickly, and the use of the affiliations — working in teams or with a buddy, or solo to maximize their effectiveness — was something they cottoned onto quickly.

The use of the dice pool and how you put it together was a bit confounding through most of the play, but both players felt they were getting the hang of it by the end of the night. I was a bit befuddled by how the doom pool was used for non-opposed tests, but I figured it out. The cheat sheets that come with the electronic version were indispensable and kept me from having to dig around the book too much (this is where the hyperlinked pages came in very handy!)

They snag up the baddie, a gang girl that stumbled onto a power suit and called herself Demolina. The cop character took the suit down with a single punch. It was a bit anticlimactic, but it was a teaser, so I let it stand.

The real story starts when the other character finds out his sister is back in town to promote her up-coming new album. The family is old money and the character has the alter ego of Paragon — the hero that helped Liberty City grow to rival New York after he stopped a Nazi attack on Washington and destroyed the chunk of Delaware that became the city. Paragon is not one man — he’s been around since the ’30s. The character’s father and grandfather were the hero at one time or another. All have weather control powers, flight, and the usual strength and stamina. He’s a corporate tool more interested in gaining sponsorships, and in his normal identity represents Paragon.

The sister has been getting increasingly creepy and specific threats on her life, so he contacts LCPD to help watch her. There is eventually an attack on her car while she’s on her way to MTVs studios in the hip, Streamline Moderne City Center of Liberty City. This fight was more protracted and made them use different affiliations and distinctions (like Paragon’s “Gigantic Showoff.”) They managed to capture the leader of the group that turn out to be minions-for-hire. (I based them on the Empowered Witless Minions idea — they pose as stupid henchmen, then rip off the supervillain at the appropriate moment.)

The play went quickly and I was spinning off tons of asides to help flesh out the world on the fly — from creating supers and bad guys that we haven’t seen, but have reputations (and borrowing names and general ideas from everywhere I could think of.) We even got a glimpse into the alternate history of the world — that Paragon became famous for stopping a Nazi super from destroying DC during WWII, that Normandy went smoother than in real life thanks to Britannia, a water-controlling superheroine who created a tsunami that washed away the Nazi defenses. Or Strongman — the descendent of Paragon that fought “the Moustache” to stop an attack on President McKinley; their even older relative that fought Lion Rampant, a Scottish super, during the Great Lakes campaigns of the Revolutionary War.

I established as a toss off that Liberty City was the greatest population of supers because, like Hollywood (the second largest concentration), it draws the freaks. We established that many of the supers in Europe have Greek or Italian heritage, and that India has the largest collection of supers on the planet. China has the lowest, but they have the weirdest and make up for the lack of numbers in raw power. Super powers are inherited for the most part, and they always seem to have a psychological component that decides their abilities. Many of them get a crap hand in life and are too poor to get licensed to use their abilities legally (it requires very expensive insurance in many countries) and this forces them into crime…or so the liberals keep telling us. (And for some, it’s true!)

The worldbuilding was fast and furious, and meshed well with helping the players get a handle on their characters’ personalities — from Paragon’s casual, silver spoon condescension and arrogance, to the cop’s background as an army special forces guy that was on Team Achilles — specially trained to deal with supers, even though many of the team are normals. That was another conceit of the universe: superpowers will get you far, but if you tick off enough mundanes, they will gang up on you and eventually win…

The mechanics: as I said in my review of Marvel, the sheer amount of things you can do with plot points gets confusing, and one of the players just couldn’t wrap his head around the SFX and Limits — more I think because we were learning the essentials first. I screwed up the stress/injury mechanics a few times, mostly because their description is a bit toss-off in the rules book, but a quick reread after play (I was up all night with serious post nasal drip, so why not..?) Opportunities were the bit I screwed up the most. I didn’t give them the plot points I should have, and I mistook how the doom pool worked for non-opposed, simple tasks; I thought the dice were used up, as when they go to NPCs. Wrong. Despite the confusions and the stripped down play, the system did not get in the way of the fun, and the players did like the method of initiative and the ability/need to describe how they want to do things (I made them describe the panel.)

I think the system’s got some legs, although a nitpick both I and one player had was the vagueness of the levels of power — what is encompassed in “enhanced” or “superhuman”? They tell us to use common sense, bu that doesn’t help much. It’s the same isue I had with the old TSR Marvel Superheroes rules set. That said, the game’s worth a few more test runs, and the campaign world almost certainly needs to stay around, if only as interstitial play between other campaigns.

I was messing about with character creation again and wrote up Matt Wagner’s original Grendel, Hunter Rose:

Affiliations: SOlo d10, Buddy d6, Team d8

Distinctions: Boy in Black, Criminal Mastermind, Famed Author

Power Sets:

Grendel Spirit: Enhanced Reflexes d8, Enhanced Stamina d8, Enhanced Durability d8; SFX, Second Wind: shift physical stress to doom pool; Limit, Fear of Mediocrity/Failure: Hunter Rose gains 1PP and takes +1 shift of emotional stress when he fails at a task.

Grendel Mask/Suit: Enhanced Senses d8, Enhanced Durability d8; SFX, Inspire Fear: spend 1PP to gain d10 to emotional attack, then step back to 2d6 for the rest of the scene; Limit, Gear: 1PP when shutdown of mask (senses) or suit (durability) benefit. Action vs. doom pool to recover; Limit, A Steep Cost: 1s and 2s are opportunities when using Grendel Spirit.

Grendel’s Fork: Weapon d8; SFX, Taser: 1PP to raise damage to d10, then 2d6 the rest of the scene; SFX, Climbing Tool: the fork adds a d6 to acrobatic tests; Limit, Gear

Specialities: Acrobatics Master, Combat Master, Crime Expert, Menace Expert, Psych Expert

THE STINK! (aka Sofia Rhymer)

Solo d6, Buddy d10, Team d8

Distinctions: She’s Just a Baby!, Intrepid Explorer, Daddy’s Girl

Power Sets:

BABY!!!: Vile @$$ of DOOM! d8 (causes mental stress), Ear-Splitting Wail d8, Superhuman Cuteness d10, Enhanced Chewing d8; SFX, Disarming: 1PP to create a “She’s Too Cute to Kill” complication, SFX, We Have Poo!: 1PP to increase Stink Weapon +1 shift on effect die, but takes a d6 Emotional Stress; Limit, Takes +1 emotional stress when Daddy is angry with her; Limit: +1 shift on mental stress in new situations; Limit: 1PP and shutdown Superhuman Cuteness when d12 emotional stress or more; Limit, Conscious Activation: Ear-splitting Wail shutdown when unconscious or asleep.

Specialities: NONE

Milestones:

Gimme that!: 1XP first time she grabs something of interest. 3XP if she can chew on said object, 10XP if she can destroy an object by chewing or drooling on it.

Learning to Walk: 1XP first time she stands without aid, 3XP when she is able to crawl into trouble, 10XP when she successfully toddles herself into trouble.

This one is loosely based on a character I had in a Shadowrun game in the mid-90s. The character is a former Irish fixer for the various criminal factions in Ulster with a hard-drinking, hard-fighting past. She found a strange torc while hiding out from the police in the Irish Republic and found out it gives her some interesting powers. She has recently cleared out of Ireland as she found out just how nasty the torc lets her be.

Dark Mercy (aka Maura Mercedes Laughlin)

Solo d10, Buddy d8, Team d6

Distinctions: Criminal Past, Irish Temper, Pragmatist

Power Sets:

Torc of Morrigan: Mystic Resistance d10, Sorcery Adept d8; SFX, Afflict: d6 added to Sorcery stunts with a +1 step effect die when inflicting someone with a “bad luck” complication or providing “good luck” to a favored person; SFX, Goddess of War: d6 added to pool and +1 step to effect die to create assets (usually armor or a sword); SFX, Healing: 1PP to recover other or self stress, or -1 step of trauma; Limit, Gear: Gain 1PP when Torc of Morrigan is shutdown; must make action vs. doom pool to recover; Limit, Conscious Activation: Torc shutdown when unconscious, asleep, etc.

Life on the Run: Enhanced Reflexes d8, Enhanced Senses d8; SFX, Focus: Trade 2 dice of same face for one die with +1 step, Limit: 1PP gained when she takes +1 step to effect of emotional stress caused by something from her past.

Specialities: Combat Expert, Covert Expert, Crime Expert

Milestones:

Favor the Hero: 1XP when she first chooses a worthy, 3XP when she aids them in recovering stress, 10XP when she helps place one in charge of a team, or forces him to relinquish command.

Running From the Past: 1XP for her first use of Covert skill, 3XP when her past puts her or others in danger, 10XP when she betrays a teammate to avoid consequences of her past, or allows herself to be punished for her crimes.

Here’s a revised version of Jed Callahan (posted a few days back), the first character I built for the game.

Jedediah Callahan

Solo d6, Buddy d8, Team d10

Distinctions: Gonzo Inventor, That the Best You Can Do?, Wealthy Arms Contractor

Power Sets:

Unified Organism: Enhanced Durability d8, Godlike Stamina d12; SFX, Healing: 1PP to clear physical stress, reduce trauma -1 step; SFX, Second Wind: Physical stress to doom pool for a +1 step on a die for the action; Limit, 1PP and shutdown of stamina for mental and emotional tests (applies only to physical tests.)

Brace of Weapons: Enhanced Durabilty d8, Weapon d8; SFX, Lots o’ Guns: 1PP to use any of the following SFX – area effect, ricochet. May only use one at a time and must change as per Gear; SFX, We Need a Bigger Gun: and for 1PP you’ve got one, step up to d10 on Weapon for a turn, then back to 2d6 for the rest of the action sequence; Limit, Gear: Shutdown to gain 1PP, then take action vs. the doom pool to recover. May change the effect SFX at this time (limit four.)

Specialities: Business Expert, Combat Expert, Science Expert, Vehicle Expert; Tech Master

Milestones:

Callahan Industries – 1XP when aiding the government or other client, 3XP when choosing needs of company over others, 10XP when actions put the company or personal reputation and resources at risk.

Dark Secret – 1XP when he pursues the secret of his origin, 3XP if he disregards leads to his origin for the good of others, 10XP if he makes serious headway to unraveling the mystery, or if his “condition” becomes a major issue or plot point.

I’ve been playing with the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game for the past few days, cobbling together characters to see how I can stretch the system. It does very, very well on higher powered supers, not so well on the street-level types (but they’re still doable.)

Here’s an ooooold character from my first supers game I played in (before I was into comics.) It’s the Beauty & the Beast sort of brooding outsider trying to do good. Lion-like in appearance: big, scary, but very smart. Think the Beast from X-Men.

ASLAN (aka Henri LeCeour)

Solo d10, Buddy d6, Team d8

Distinctions: Beast Behind the Man, Rugged Individualist, Smartest Man in the Room

Power Sets: Beast in the Dark — Superhuman Reflexes d10, Superhuman Durability d10, Enhanced Strength d8, Enhanced Stamina d8; SFX – Claws & Fangs: +d6 to attack pool, -1 step on high die, but +1 step for effect die; SFX – Spiteful: Like Second Wind, physical stress swapped to doom pool for a +1 step on an action; SFX – Berserk: Borrow doom pool die for a +1 step on action, and return the doom pool die next round; Limit – Porphyry: Shut down Stamina for 1PP. Must recover in transition; Limit – Fearsome Appearance: No PP used in social tests. 1PP when he operates through his front man.

Specialties: Acrobatic Expert, Combat Expert, Covert Master, Medical Master, Menace Expert, Science Expert

Milestones: For Science!, Modern Day Cyrano (1XP When he allows someone to take responsibility for an action, 3XP to place himself in a situation where he must work openly with others; 10XP anytime he is openly exposed for his works.

I took a few minutes last night to try and bang out a characters using the new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game from Margaret Weis Productions. (Review here.) Normally, the weakest portion of a supers game, I find, is character creation — to keep game balance players usually have a certain number of points based off of the grandness of the campaign envisioned to work with. You never have quite enough points, or you have to sacrifice concept for more weaknesses or limitations than you might like, and this is understandable in the traditional campaign context where you start out as new heroes…but superheroes tend to pop into existence ready made and ready to hammer bad guys. they’re not on some Campbellian path of the hero.

Now MHR is a bit free form on character creation. There’s plenty of powers, special effects for the same, and a few limitations (that are, of course, marvel-centric like “mutant”), and you have several dozen templates to work from if you want to craft your hero. So I decided to go for a character that was one of an old gaming buddies who was so well liked he’s made an appearance in some variant or other as an NPC in nearly every super or modern game I’ve run. This is as close to the original character (once he had matured to his concept) as I’ve ever gotten.

Jedediah Callahan

Affiliations: Solo d6, Buddy d8, Team d10

Distinctions: Mysterious Origin, Gonzo Inventor, Wealthy Arms Dealer

Power Sets: Unified Organism (Godlike Stamina d12 SFX, Healing: 1PP to clear physical stress, reduce physical trauma -1; SFX, Regeneration: 1PP to regenerate destroyed limbs.) Experimental Weapons (Weapon d8 SFX: Area Attack, SFX: Ricochet, Limitation: Gear, Limitation: May use 1PP to trade in an SFX for another more appropriate one to the weapon. Must roll vs. doom pool as if recovering Gear.)

Specialities: Business Expert, Combat Expert, Science Expert, Tech Master

Milestones: Callahan Industries, Bleeding Edge Tech

History: Jed Callahan hails from Houston Texas. He’s a shortish, scruffy, and colorful fellow with a love of tings that go bang. His father was an aerospace engineer who made a small fortune off of patents and worked at NASA. All his life, Jed has been a tough bugger — he bounces back from injuries incredibly quickly, but with his first major injury — from a car accident that left his 1980 Camaro a twisty, almost unrecognizable ump of metal, his ability to heal has gone into high gear. (He told the police he had been lucky and gotten away with a scratch…he didn’t mention the severed limb that has sintered itself back on.)

He left college early and founded Callahan Firearms, quickly building the company into a respectable arms company, before expanding into military hardware. He earned his BS in his spare time, but has been considered an amateur by the rest of the arms engineering establishment.

He quietly sought out medical specialists that could figure out why he heal so quickly and learned that he is a “unified organism” — all the cells in his body act in concert with each other, reconfiguring themselves as needed. His DNA is definitely not human…but what is he? His father held the key to this knowledge, but has gone missing.

Personality: Jed is a free-wheeling, happy fellow who drinks and smokes far too much…or would if his body couldn’t handle the toxins. He likes fast vehicles, things that go bang (the bigger the better), and other than an unreasonable fear of heights, loves to push the boundaries of what he can do. At heart, however, he’s a south Texas boy, no matter what his DNA might say.

Resources: Jed is the CEO and majority holder in Callahan Industries, which makes all manner of dangerous small arms for militaries around he world. His company also does modifications for vehicles, uparmoring and arming and the like. He has access to a fair fortune (low millions) and anything that CI has in the works. He’s got friends all over, and loads of government and military connections.

So in essence — Jed is a combo of Wolverine and Tony Stark, with a bit of John Caprenter’s The Thing thrown in. His original concept was that, no matter what was done to him, he always survived. He’s not super-strong or even super-smart — his strength is that he keeps plugging away, even when badly outclassed, and