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STORY ARC 1 |
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GM: KILLER SHRIKE |
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I was the GM for the duration of this arc. |
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SETUP |
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I had a group mostly comprised of HERO rookies that had wet
their feet on a cyberpunkish campaign (the progenitor to
MetaCyber) and wanted to try out Champions. The one veteran
HERO player in the group, Wily Quixote, had never played supers
with the HERO System, and really wasn't crazy about the idea at
first but was willing to give it a try. |
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After the game started a new player responded to an ad I had
placed on the HERO boards and we brought him in to give him a
shot. He played Green Knight, which was a very cool character.
Unfortunately the player just did not fit in well with the group
and I let him go after only a couple of sessions. |
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FOCUS |
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The players wanted to enjoy the experience of playing in a
Champions campaign, so I decided to keep it pretty vanilla /
true to the Champions Universe supplement, the release of which
had prompted the campaign. I wanted to cover all the standard
bases of a supers campaign since none of the players had any
background roleplaying in the genre. |
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LEARNING CURVE |
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All of the players claimed to have read comics at some point in
their life and a couple had collected. Based upon conversations
that were had on the subject, I went into the campaign confident that
the players were comfortable with the genre. As it turns out
this was a mistake. While several players did "get it" and did a
good job with the genre, a couple had no feel for it at all and
were basically not very contributory. This caused a good deal of
friction. |
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LOG |
Campaign Start
and 1st session
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Various Bio-chem Labs working with
a strange mud that has unusual regenerative properties are raided by a crack team of super-mercs including
Wu,
Bulldozer, Hypnos, Thorn, Wulfen, and Thunderbolt (II)
John Wrath, Millennium City Silver Avenger, arrived at the scene of a
the most recent heist-in-progress in Dearborn in his flying
car. He boldly pulled up and got out to aprise the situation, and came under
immediate attack from the fleeing speedster Thunderbolt but the
speedster was unable to lay a finger on Wrath.Wrath also
noticed some activity on the roof and got back into the flying
car to hover up to see what was going on up there. Wu was up
there with a souped up super bike and vaulted off the roof,
heading down the road with a back pack full of ill gotten gains.
Right behind Wu, the feral monstrocity known as Wulfen exited
the building onto the roof via an access door, and took a
running leap onto the flying car where he proceeded to smash
thru the bullet proof windshield and lace into the irascible
Wrath with a vengeance.
Meanwhile Chitin, whose father worked at the plant and liveed very nearby,
responded as did Rook who worked at a Home Depot in a nearby mini-mall.
A raging super battle broke out as Wu, Wulfen, and Thunderbolt sought to escape with a container of the strange mud substance.
Wrath wrestled valiantly with the dogged Wulfen while Rook
stymied Thunderbolt and Chitin interfered with Wu's escape.
Eventually the villains gained a momentary advantage and made a break for
it. Rook, Chitin, and Wrath determinedly pursued.
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| 2nd session |
As the running battle spilled out onto the highway and became a
full fledged pursuit, Gravitic and The Green Knight joined the chase,
having been alerted to the event via the news and police bands.
Finally Rook was able to incapacitate Wu and Thunderbolt via the expedient
of smashing them with a semi trailer. However, just as the
heroes were taking control of the situation an urban assault vehicle driven by
Bulldozer careened cross-country to intersect the highway, and out
spilled Thorn and Hypnos. In the ensuing knock-down drag out fight all
of the villains managed to escape in Bulldozer's truck, but they
definitely knew they had been in a fight.
After the fight John Wrath got pushy with the other PC's regarding
registering with PRIMUS and they all beat feet without even exchanging
contact information. |
| Gravitic's player had been out of town
the previous week and Green Knight's player was a new add to the
group. |
| The end of this session irritated me.
The entire purpose of the first two sessions was for the group
to meet and start working as a group. Instead they all scattered
to the winds with barely two words to each other, effectively
invalidating the two sessions. |
| They didnt even bother to check the
robbery site for clues, injured civilians, or what have you.
Literally they none of the characters ever set one foot into the
crime scene. Very frustrating. |
3rd session
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Later that same night Rook was
watching the lab to see if anyone returned to the crime scene.
Unbeknownst to him, the Green Knight and Chitin as well (from his home across
the street while in SecretID) had the same idea.
Noticing some odd activity in a copse of trees nearby all three
converged independently. However, this was some thing else entirely --
it looked like a drug deal going down. Rook moved in to stop it, and
much to his surprise the "gangers" in the car and several more hidden in
the bushes popped out and began shooting him with strange guns that
drained his powers away!
Nevertheless the three were able to capture the agents, with the
assistance of John Wrath at the end, who flew in to investigate reports of a
disturbance.
Again given the opportunity to reach a formal arrangement, Chitin, Rook, and
the Green Knight flee the scene after the baddies are dispatched
without so much as exchaning a phone number.
The next day Wrath holds a press conference detailing the initial
battle of the day previous and asks the heroes that assisted him to
come forward at a specified time at PRIMUS HQ.
Some comply; Rook, Chitin, and the Green Knight to be exact. Gravitic shows up late however.
After a smile-for-the-cameras meet the press on the steps outside,
Wrath maneuvers the heroes into PRIMUS HQ itself. He song-and-dances
them into registering, but when he leaves to go set it up Chitin and
Green Knight panic and literally bust their way out of PRIMUS HQ.
While at PRIMUS HQ Rook and Gravitic [and Wrath, though according
to back-story he already knew him] are introduced to The Mod, a
Texas-based Superhero that has been investigating Bio-chem lab
murder-thefts all over the US for the past decade that have a similar
MO to the ones occurring in MC currently.
The Mod, a sanctioned superhero with long experience working with
PRIMUS, offers to assist Wrath and the PCs in the investigation.
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| The group seemed bound and deteremined
to avoid making any sort of attempt to gel together. I had to
scramble with the press conference and when even that failed I
trotted in a NPC I happened to have handy so I could take a more
active role in shaping the group in game. |
| Green Knight's player was part of the
problem, sabotaging various attempts and overtures towards
teaming up, and finally spearheaded the violent exit from
PRIMUS. The player was also proving to be somewhat obnoxious in
general, so I gave him his walking papers. |
4th Session
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Gravitic, on a patrol looking for clues to the robbery, tried to contact Green Knight via a frequency that he had reason to believe GK monitored
based upon an earlier observation, but to no avail.
Meanwhile Rook and The Mod took to the streets in Dearborn and did
some investigative work at the plant. It turned out that one of the
security agents that wasn't there during the robbery (and thus wasn't
killed) was of the opinion that it was an inside job, since the
villains seemed to know where everything was at and disabled all of the
security cameras with too much precision.
The security guard gave the two heroes the name of a guy that had
worked security at the lab for a few months and then suddenly quit a
couple of weeks ago.
Meanwhile back at PRIMUS Wrath received several conflicting reports
of Green Knight spottings in several different places. With typical
aplomb in the face of uncertainty, Wrath simply ignored all the
sightings equally.
|
| Green Knight's background had
coincidentally meshed with some plot elements I had already
wanted to use, and had been tweaked to fit even more closely.
Rather than abandon the thread when I booted the player, I just
adapted to it and started using the Green Knight for my own
purposes. |
4th Session part 2
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The Mod and Rook retire to discuss
the matter of the suspect ex-guard, and killing two birds with one stone they checked out an
abandoned warehouse in a seedier part of Dearborne close to where Rook
lived at The Mod's suggestion that they find some kind of building the ragtag
collection of heroes
could use as a base.
The warehouse was a bust being in poor condition, but while they
talked in supposed privacy The Mod sensed a lurking presence. After a
little bit of excitement it was revealed to be Chitin, who had noticed
the two when they were investigating the lab and followed them here.
Rook and The Mod encouraged Chitin to turn himself in and make things
right with PRIMUS before matters got out of hand, but Chitin flatly
refused. After talking a bit, Chitin gave them an email address where he
could be reached, and the three split up.
However The Mod secretly followed Chitin back to his house and saw
him change into his secret ID -- the hulking brutish man-bug was really
a young boy!
The Mod revealed himself to the boy and after cautioning him to be
more careful with his Secret ID in the future, he told him that he
would straighten things out with PRIMUS, and he that Chitin could register without
fear of his Secret ID being leaked.
Meanwhile Wrath was catching hell from his superiors at PRIMUS for
not catching the perpetrators, not solving the crime spree, and
bumbling around a bit with the whole escape from PRIMUS bit. Despite
this interference from on high, Wrath persevered and questioned the
agents captured at the fake-drug bust the night before.
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Agents Questioning
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It was finally determined that the
agents, all of whom were Eastern Europeans of various sorts with
high-quality fake IDs and an assortment of equipment, were agents of
The Fixxxer, a former KGB agent turned black marketer and general
go-to-guy for mercenary activity.
They flatly refused to give any useful information in general, but
Wrath managed to break one of them and was able to get out of him that
the Fixxxer had been hired to get rid of the man-bug that was killing
drug dealers around the greater Old Detroit area. They were operating
on the belief that the man-bug they are hunting and Chitin are the same
person. So when they saw Chitin active in the area on the news earlier
that day, they set up their ambush nearby in the hopes that he would return to the area.
However while still in questioning a team of crack lawyers descended on PRIMUS HQ and
veritably hammered on the doors.
Basically since the heroes that interdicted the agents were not
sanctioned, it was a clear cut case of improper procedure and
word-vs-word self defense. PRIMUS got 'em for the fake ID's and deported
them, but it was the best they could do in the face of heavy lawyer
presence.
Wrath vowed to "Fix the Fixxxer" one day.
|
| Was trying to send a message here to
encourage sanctioning, which was increasingly becoming a
sticking point for group cohesion. This session also gave Wrath
a chance to play into his background as the Silver Avenger. |
5th Session
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Later the same day The Mod returned to PRIMUS HQ and
clued Wrath in on the security guard lead. Meanwhile Rook had decided
to check things out for himself, but decided to swing by PRIMUS and
pick up his registration card first.
Arriving there he met up with Gravitic who was also coming to pick
up his card, and were both intercepted by Wrath and The Mod who took
them out with them to question the suspect former security guard.
When they arrived at the suspects house, Rook, Wrath and Gravitic went in while The Mod watched the back.
The three supers easily took control of the situation and started
questioning the subject. However just as it was getting to the
good stuff The Mod gave warning
that something was going down outside. Suddenly a crack team of paramilitary goons
fast roped in from assault helicopters and attacked the building. Caught by
surprise, the heroes were never the less able to overwhelm their
attackers who were good but only normals, and thanks to Rook's Force Field they even managed to keep
their suspect alive.A) Clearly someone did not want that guy talking to the
heroes.
B) Clearly someone was keeping tabs on them.
After calling in PRIMUS agents to secure the assailants, the four
heroes climbed into the Flying Car to return to PRIMUS HQ, with their
suspect as well.
En Route they were attacked by what seemed to be the Green Knight on his flying robo-steed!
|
| This was the best session to date. With
the Green Knight's player gone a lot of the dissension
evaporated and the group started clicking. Chitin's player
wasn't able to make this session unfortunately due to school
commitments, but otherwise it went well. |
6th Session
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After his initial attack failed to put the Flying Car down, the Green Knight proceeded to flee. Wrath
bore down on his stogie with a growl and pursed.
A lengthy aerial battle / chase ensued with Wrath and The Green Knight engaged in incredible death defying
aerial gymnastics with their respective flying vehicles, while Wrath's
passengers tried not to throw up, and the suspect passed out from
G-Forces.
Wrath even managed to maneuver out of a stall caused by Gravitic
using his Gravity Powers to attack The Green Knight out the window,
which disrupted the Flying Car's anti-grav unit.
Meanwhile the long aerial pursuit continued and was picked up by
several news helicopters. In Dearborne Chitin flipped on the TV and saw
what was going on. Slipping out of the house as best he could, he
turned into bug form and started to fly out to intercept the chase.
Finally, after an almost 20 minute high speed chase, Wrath pulled off a
nearly impossible aerial stunt to power dive in and get close
enough to the Green Knight for Rook to latch on to him with his
force limbs.
However, the Green Knight rappelled down to the ground, pulling Rook
out of the Flying Car and taking him down with him. Gravitic flew out
as well, and the Mod leaped out the passenger door leaving Wrath to
madly try to land the now un-aerodynamic Flying Car.
Chitin arrived about this time as well, and a raging battle against
the Green Knight ensued, with the Green Knight surprisingly holding his
own and almost escaping several times.
Finally working together the heroes were able to incapacitate the
Green Knight....only to discover that their opponent was really a robot!
|
| This session was a blast from start to
finish. The chase scene was great, Wrath got to really show off
his Combat Piloting skill, and the Flying Car got put through
its paces. The fight with Green Knight was the group's first vs
a single opponent capable of giving them a run for their money.
|
| The funny thing was the only thing I did
to the Green Knight build was to add a Robotic template. I left
all of his existing abilties as is. The group really had to work
for it, and without Rook I think GK would have gotten away. The
character is all over the place, but is effective. |
| The entire time the players kept trying
to talk to the GK, and when they finally beat him and realized
it was a robot you could see the suprise around the table. Good
cliff hanger.
|
7th Session
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Taking stock of the situation,
Wrath first off indicated his displeasure with Gravitic and forbade him
from every riding in the Flying Car ever again. Or even being near it.
(Gravitic's powers are all gravity related, and the anti-grav
based Flying Car had a Disadvantage that affected it in Gravity
Fields).
Then Wrath "arrested" Chitin and told him to go to PRIMUS HQ to settle the busting out issue, or else things would get serious.
Finally Wrath tossed the robot into the car with the unconscious
suspect, and along with Rook and The Mod proceeded to return to PRIMUS
HQ.
En route however the suspect woke up and started getting
hysterical, so the Mod knocked him out again with a nerve pinch. Then
Wrath heard a faint ticking coming from the robot in the back and
declared that it was a bomb. Hovering over a relatively empty
industrial park he had Rook hold the wheel while he tried to
investigate the bomb over the front seat.
An "18" on Wrath's Demolitions
check led him to believe that the robot was going to explode
immediately, so Wrath ordered The Mod to get rid of the robot. Not strong
enough to lift it, The Mod took the expedient of leaping out of the car
with the robot, using his thrust for extra force. Him and the robot
plummeted a few hundred feet to the ground, where the robot broke into
many pieces, and the Mod got very badly busted up.
Fortunately he
regenerates.
However, there was no actual bomb in the robot; the ticking was just a broken actuator.
Arriving at PRIMUS HQ with the robot's head and the suspect, Wrath
turned the robot bits over to the R and D team, and proceeded to
question the suspect.
The suspect caved and easily revealed that he had been paid good
money to sell out the lab's security plans. He claimed that Wu was the
person that contacted him and that he had encountered Wu on several
occasions at a seedy bar near the docks district of Dearborne to go
over the plans. He sang like a canary and gave it all up.
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Wrath's Investigation
|
Later that night Wrath went to
check the bar out on his own but didn't see Wu. However, leaving the
building he saw a bike that looked like Wu's pulling around the corner.
Unfortunately the driver saw Wrath too and promptly peeled out
and sped off. Chasing as best he could on
foot (he's faster than he looks), Wrath managed to see the bike pull into a warehouse close to the
docks thanks to his CyberEye and some Overall Levels to throw against the range
modifier, but even as he was calling in back up several speed bikes and
Bulldozer's van came careening out of the warehouse. The lot of them
managed to escape across the nearby bridge into Canada before a cordon could
be closed.
Ensuing investigation of the abandoned warehouse was somewhat revealing, but not
very helpful.
Wrath was able to determine that the perpetrators had been staying
there for some time, perhaps as much as three months. Further, various
clues provided some weak links to previous Lab heists in the tri-state
area that had previously been unsolved.
Other than that...bust.
|
| For some reason Wrath's player
stubbornly decided to do this as a solo mission, leaving the
rest of the group to sit around the table twiddling their thumbs
and irritated. It was going to be a big fight for the arc,
closing the robbery chapter and opening new clues into the real
master villain behind it all. |
| I couldn't let Wrath face them all
alone; a couple of the villains (most notably Wulfen) are lethal
and would have killed him. Also it was getting quite late in
real life and most of us were getting tired. I decided to go
with the get away dodge, but in retrospect it was a mistake. |
| I should have let Wrath sneak around a
bit, and ended the session with him getting lead to the
warehouse with the bad guys none the wiser and left it at a
cliffhanger. Then I could have talked with the player between
sessions and made it clear that he should get the other PC's
involved.
|
| I consider this to be one of the top 5
mistakes I've made as a GM, and it would prove to start a domino
effect. I actually got pretty irritated with Wrath's player as
well, for not taking the thirty or fifty hints and general mood
at the table to stop stealing the limilight.
|
8th Session
|
The next morning at PRIMUS HQ Wrath was roundly berated for botching the job on picking up Wu.
With an eager media pressing for details of the heist
investigation, Wrath was ordered by the Station Chief to give a press
conference that afternoon and to make it sound good, dammit!
Later that afternoon Wrath reluctantly gives an interview, but
when informed mid-way thru by the station chief that another lab
break-in is underway Wrath obstinately informs him that he wanted Wrath
to give a gawd-dam interview, and it could just wait until the gawd-dam
interview was over.
Following the interview Wrath had a tense phone
conference between himself, the Station Chief, and the Director of
PRIMUS to discuss his recent actions. Unwilling to take a little heat,
Wrath mouthed off quite a bit and was subsequently fired. They called
it an "early retirement", but that was just a polite fiction.
Meanwhile The Mod, Rook, Chitin, and Gravitic responded to the new
break-in which was pulled off by the same villains as the first one, and played out similarly to the first, save that this time
when the erstwhile heroes had almost run their quarry to ground and had managed
to recover the payload of bizarre mud, a
mysterious woman dressed in a rather inappropriate fashion appeared in
a flash of darkness and held the lot of them with some kind of mystic
bands.
She simply divested the heroes of the strange mud, said a few
pithy things, and then departed with Wulfen in tow via the same means
she appeared. The other villains escaped in the meantime.
After the battle the heroes all agreed to return to the scene of the crime later that night and do some skulking around.
[GMs NOTE: I never understood their repeated efforts to watch places AFTER they had already been robbed]
The Mod and Rook returned to PRIMUS HQ, where they reported the situation
and discovered the
identity of their mysterious assailant was none other than Incantrix,
and also that Wrath was no longer the Silver Avenger.
Digesting that information, they parted.
|
| Basically, for reasons unknown, Wrath's
player was not having a good day today. I think he had been
taking heat from some of the other players (who were also his
roommates) thru the week about botching the Wu thing.
|
| When I came down on him with the station
chief I think it pushed him into obstinant mode, and after
gaffing off the robbery, I tried to further reenforce the idea
that if he was going to play the Silver Avenger he needed to
play appropriately. He (in character) got very lippy with the
Director of PRIMUS and the Station Chief an said some pretty
inflammatory things.
|
| I tried having them put him on
suspension to give him time to cool down, but Wrath basically
told them to shove that too. I was left with no choice but to
fire Wrath from PRIMUS, and the player left the session in a
huff. |
| The fight with the villains went pretty
well despite Wrath not being there and was a lot of fun. |
9th Session
|
That evening almost all of the
heroes appeared as agreed at a 7-11 near the crime scene, including a
ragged looking Wrath via taxi, who smelled like he'd been drowning his
sorrows for a few hours.
The Mod, however, did not appear. Now, some folks might be curious
that a straight shooting dependable guy like The Mod just vanished, but
not this band of heroes. Instead they settled down to watch an
effectively empty building for no apparent reason amid random surly
outbursts from Wrath.
However, mid-way through their vigil a gentlemen dressed primly in
the style of a 1920's era well-to-do Englishman simply faded in amongst
them.
Apologizing for being late (for what he didn't specify), he
introduced himself as "The Lord Arcane". Lord Arcane proceeded to lay
some heavy exposition on the heroes. Time for them to be given a clue
as to what was going on since they seemed unable to pursue the matter
on their own.
After giving his spiel and putting a Spell of Isolation on an insulting Wrath, Arcane departs.
Deciding to give up on watching the defunct crime scene the group
split up and returned to their homes. Rook "thoughtfully" paid a cabbie
to take Wrath, still affected by the Spell of Isolation, back to PRIMUS
HQ, apparently forgetting that Wrath didn't work there anymore. Smelling
of booze and catatonic, Wrath was dropped off at PRIMUS and everyone
laughed at him OOC.
|
| The player said he still wanted to play,
and still wanted to use Wrath, so I redesigned him to get rid of
all the PRIMUS stuff. In general I made the character simpler
and more streamlined and it may have been overall a good thing,
though without the Flying Car Wrath did suddenly have
transportation issues. |
| However once play started Wrath was
generally obnoxious to everyone. I'm not sure what was up with
the player during these couple of weeks -- but he was doing
everything completely in character so I let him run with it for
a while even though it was getting on my nerves. |
Lord Arcane's spiel
|
Lord Arcane indicated that he was generally
responsible for the mystical well being of the entire dimension in
precisely pronounced, grammatically correct sentences. In short it had
recently come to his attention that an ancient artifact of some power
had been accidentally unearthed by a chemical company who had
discovered mysterious healing properties in a patch of mud on the site
of an abandoned spa and sanatorium near old Detroit. Apparently the
chemical company had simply dug the entire lot of muck up and sent samples of
it to various labs for testing of it's strange properties.
What they don't realize is that the properties of the mud come from
being exposed to the artifact buried somewhere in the soil that they
took from the site.
The artifact is powerful enough that in the wrong hands it could do
great harm. One set of those wrong hands would belong to Incantrix.
Could the good heroes assist him in preventing her from getting the item?
Apparently not. Wrath was outright insulting to the good fellow,
earning him a spell of isolation, and the other heroes were rather
ambivalent. In the end they kind of shrugged and gave a "Sure,
whatever" response.
Somewhat disappointed Lord Arcane departed.
|
| As far as Lord Arcane, due to the timing
getting thrown off back when Wrath hosed the warehouse fight, I
was basically scrambling to try to get the storyline back on
track.
|
| After half the session went no where and
the players just kind of sat there like bumps on a log not doing
anything and waiting for something to happen I decided to try
the old mysterious stranger routine to jump start things. Not
only did it not work, the PC's just sort of collectively went
"eh" and wandered off again. |
| I was starting to get irritated with the
general apathy of a couple of the players, Wrath's internal
combustion, and various things that were going on in real life
at the time, so I just put the game on hiatus. |
