My life with RPGs: a few thoughts

I am very close to resurrecting my life with RPGs, and I could not be more happy.  This is not to say that I have not been maintaining my interest and study of RPGs in the last few years (okay, it might actually be DECADES), but I have not played regularly in a very long time.

Now, I am about to return, with baby steps, through the magic of 13th Age.  I have also been running some pick up games using Marvel Heroic Role Playing, and that has done wonders for my confidence as a game master.

As I step (or stumble) towards this new opportunity, I am feeling a bit introspective, and I think back to how it all began.

It really began with The Hobbit.  My mother read The Hobbit to me when I was quite young, probably as a Kindergardener and first grader.  That sort of sunk into my DNA, but then was really sparked again by, of all things, the animated Hobbit movie from 1977.  I was actually allowed to watch it on TV, and even though there were many flaws with it, when I was 10 (and it premiered right after my birthday that year), it seemed pretty awesome, and even to this day, John Huston's voice as Gandalf as well as the art design for Smaug and Elrond, are pretty awesome things.  Shortly thereafter, I re-read the book and found it superior in every way to the movie.  However, I was ever thankful that the movie spurred me to read the book again.

I then proceeded to wade into the Lord of the Rings for the first time.

And then a friend (who was about 3 grades ahead of me, but whose dad worked with my dad) introduced me to D&D.  That would have been probably late 1977 (we probably went to Yosemite with that family for some winter cabin camping, if I recall correctly) and early 1978.  My friend, David, took me through character creation and some little adventures, that I don't really remember well.  He and his older friends had a game, but I was too young to be invited to that.  I had to content myself with some solo adventures with him as the Dungeon Master.

At some point around 1978/9, I acquired the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set (and I think I still have one or two dice that remain from that box), and I tried running things for my friends.  I still had only a rudimentary understanding of the game, but I was hooked.

Then came the next real turning point.  When I was in Sixth grade (1978-79), my mother actually enrolled me in a "class" for Dungeons and Dragons.  I grew up near Monterey, California, and there was an educational enrichment organization called the Lyceum (still going strong), and my mom signed me up for all sorts of things, from caligraphy to opera appreciation.  But this time, she really went to bat for me.  She knew I was getting obsessed with D&D, but had no real outlet.  So, even though I did not meet the age/grade requirements, she argued that I was an advanced student and mature for my age and got me in the "class."

One evening a week for eight, ten, twelve weeks, I'm not really sure, I got taken into town, and I got to play the NEW Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  Tim and Bart and Valerie ran the game.  The game world was Tim's, but Bart did a lot of the DMing and Valerie subbed in a couple of times (I think; this was 34 years ago).  Tim was a rancher in Carmel Valley and Bart was, I think, some kind of engineer/IT (to the degree there was IT in 1978) guy and I think Valerie was some kind of scientist as well, though I have to admit I don't really know (spoiler alert, of them all, I have only kept in touch with Tim).  They were all in a gaming club called The Myth Masters which met every Sunday down in Monterey.

They were amazing storytellers.  It took me a very long time to internalize all of the things that they taught us by playing the game (and I may still not have them mastered) but they really did a great job.

The first night, we made characters of course.  I was in there with a bunch of other guys (and yes, it was all guys) who were in high school, but they all treated me pretty well.

So, my first ever real AD&D character, whose scrawled character sheet I have to this day, was a fighter; Ged (yes, I had just read the Earthsea books by Ursula K. LeGuin).

Here is how he statted out:

Human, Male, 1st Level Fighter, Neutral Good alignment
Strength 11
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 6
Dexterity 6
Constitution 14
Charisma 6
Hit Points 7

[The really amazing thing I saw when I looked again at this character sheet, was that Ged had the same birth date as my first child (in real life!) just by coincidence.]

So, Ged has terrible stats.  Most of us would just roll up a new character (or use a point buy, where it would be impossible to get such crummy scores nowadays).  But this was a play them as you roll them time in the life of RPGs, and I have to say, Ged was always fun to play.

We lived in The Vale, in a small village that was cut off from the larger world.  The Vale was surrounded by a terrifying mist that no one crossed.  Our village was beset by a legendary evil, the Shadow Hound, which had recently risen again to stalk and kill inhabitants from the village.  This was a spectral half hound half human monster that seemed unstoppable.

So, the village trained and equipped the eldest sons of the village (I was the miller's son), to go into the wilds (though not beyond the Mist) to find the source of the Shadow Hound, and to destroy it if we could.  We did a lot of dungeon crawling thereafter and while I have forgotten most of the details, I do remember that we adopted a pet Goblin, named Snarg, and my character lasted until the last session, when a fumble by one of my fellow players got me killed (he hit me with his two handed sword, which the DM had clearly told him would endanger me).  When Ged died (still first level, just before the climactic battle with the Shadow Hound), I was no longer the "mature" kid.  I cried and had to be told to get a hold of myself.

I sat through the rest of the adventure.  I think everyone was first level, except maybe one or two characters.  We had one magic sword, wielded by our leader (who was Snarg's "master").  The Shadow Hound killed every one.  It was probably a three or four hit dice monster, but immune to normal weapons.  It cut everyone down, though our leader was the last and put in some hits with the magic sword.  Then Snarg actually took up the sword and killed the Shadow Hound. 

Unfortuntely, that just caused the Hound to rise, taking over the soul of its last victim, which was our dead leader.  Unfortunately, Snarg then died screaming, "no master, no!"

It was amazing.  Even though we all died (my first TPK), we all had a fun time, and even though I lost my cool, I got invited to join the Myth Masters.  Tim, who was just the nicest guy ever and a real live cowboy, lived not far from me, and he agreed to take me in to do marathon, all day AD&D every Sunday.  That was a wonderful and amazing time for about a year and a half.  I had many characters, played in several campaigns, and learned to get along with working adults, college students, army guys, and high schoolers, all of whom were included in the weekly games.

From then on, I never looked back.  I had to leave the Myth Masters in Eighth Grade, because my family relocated for a year while my dad was a visiting professor (in Philadelphia).  I continued to play some Ad&D there, and also got into games like Ogre and other Steve Jackson goodness (and amazingly, that guy is still making stuff my son loves (Muchkin to the max)).  However, when I came back and went to high school, I really found my peers to play with.  I played and ran AD&D and Gamma World, I was introduced to RuneQuest, Traveler, Top Secret, and FASA Star Trek and Call of Cthulhu.  Into college and grad school I would add Twilight 2000, Stormbringer, Cyberpunk 2013 (ha!), Paranoia, Star Wars (D6), Vampire:TM, Superworld, and GURPS. 

For many years how, I have been on hiatus from regular gaming (really since 1993), though I have had a pick up here and there, and I continue to collect read and follow systems (principally FATE, PDQ#, Cortex+ and D20 of late, but various others as well).  I have really missed a regular game, but as a guy with a wife, children, a house payment, a full time job and a (very) part time job, it is hard to fit regular game play in.

I loved RPGs.  In the end, it was always less about the systems and more about the characters and the stories.  It has been a great road to travel.  And I am about to hit the road again!

It all started with the Hobbit, and now, with the latest film iteration, I begin again with what I hope is a new birth of playing RPGs as a regular part of my life.

Watch this space for further reports.

Go play!

Bending Breakout: Marvel Heroic Role Playing Actual Play

Marvel Heroic Role Playing has been the first game that I have felt comfortable running for a while.  I have been out of the game master game for a long while, and while my son and I valiantly tried to get me to get a D&D 4th Edition game off the ground, I felt there that I had lost my mojo.

However, MHRP has really allowed me to find my way back into mastering a game.  I have published one actual play account already and this is a second.  So far, this has all been one-shot stuff.  But it has been fun, and has made me think that running one-shots is a pretty good way to flex those long dormant muscles, as well as being a lot of fun.

This time around, I ran the game for some old role playing friends that I visited on the West Coast and one new person I had not met, but who was taking a break from another game happening in the house.  I decided to run the shell of the Breakout event, though I knew we would perhaps get through just the first few scenes of the first Act.  I have an idea to mix up Breakout with The Hammer Falls, with a few ideas taken from the Fear Itself arc from Thunderbolts to really mix up a What If? scenario.  However, this was not the time to try to do that.  This was the time to let people rifle through the big stack of official and fan made datafiles and take some heroes for a spin.  We ended up with Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, and Firestar (from Marvel Plot Points; but played with a twist, since we were in a "What If? scenario, Firestar in this reality was a guy and not a gal).

I played the intro pretty straight, though I took on the additional "What If?" of Bruce Banner being held at the Raft instead of Sentry.  Thor was coming to see Banner; Black Widow had SHIELD VIP minder duty.  Captain America was on a helicopter on the way back from Washington, DC, and Firestar was out flying patrol over the city.

All heck breaks loose, the lights go out, and things start happening.  Widow and Thor are in an elevator, momentarily stuck.  Cap's air transport is going down, and he is working with the pilot to get it safely into the drink as close to the Raft as possible.  Firestar sees figures riding the lightning out of the Raft, but makes the decision to tackle the bigger problem of the villains left in the prison, rather than chasing the figures seeming to make a break for it.

Widow quickly acrobats her way out of the top of the elevator and gets the access to the hallway above open.  Thor is about to squeeze through when something (or someone) blasts through the elevator like a missile, leaving Thor surprised.  Cap gets himself and his pilot to safety.  Firestar sees Count Nefaria blast out of an elevator shaft and pause to hover above the raft.  Then stuff really starts happening.

Firestar, true to his name, decides that the Count needs more fire in his life and starts raining down fiery blasts down on him.  This gets the Count's attention, but does not seriously inconvenience him.  Captain America then steps up and, with the SHIELD pilot providing some covering fire, throws his shield, making it ricochet to strike Nefaria from an unexpected angle.  Cap did well and manages to inflict some physical stress on Nefaria.  Then Cap chose Nefaria to go next so that Black Widow and Thor would have plenty of time to bat cleanup in the round.  Nefaria lets loose with just about everything, attempting to fry Cap, Firestar and the SHIELD pilot all at once.  Firestar takes some physical stress, Cap manages to get himself and his shield between the agent and the blasts, keeping them both safe.  Black Widow then on her turn starts sniping with her widow's sting from down in the elevator shaft.  Her goal was not to cause direct damage, but rather to set Nefaria up to be disoriented for Thor's attack.  This she does exceptionally well with a d10 complication.  Finally, Thor blindly blasts his way out of the elevator with Mjolner leading and finishes off Nefaria in a one hit strike.

The heroes then gathered into a single team to determine the next course of action.  On the one hand, they knew that Bruce Banner was trapped down in the Raft with scads of supervillains who had just been released from their restraints.  Also, they knew that there had been some "leaders" (at least the first ones out) in the breakout.  However, they determined that Banner/Hulk could care of himself while they tried to get the prison under control.  Since that was their goal, they knew they needed to get power back up and take control of the control room.  They determined Black Widow was the natural leader for the mission since the had the SHIELD access and knowledge of Raft operations.  Widow then determined that rather than going through the direct route where they might have to fight through dozens of villains, they would take a more indirect route through the belly of the raft and come up through the main service conduits to the power plant and the operations center.

On the one hand, this meant getting through a series of dropped security bulkheads.  On the other hand, they had a THOR.  So this was proving easy.  Then Thor's player had to step away from the table.  So, I spent a Doom Pool die to make it official, and had Widow, Cap and Firestar trapped between two armored doors while Thor got dropped out of the raft and into the river by a trap set up by Typhoid Mary, Vermin, Zzzax and Hydro-Man.  They would have had to face the first three if they had gone back to check on Thor, but they were focused on going forward.  So, Hydro-Man tried to take them out by himself.  He did a major area attack and got lucky, taking Firestar to d12 physical stress.  Widow got herself to the ceiling with her swing line, and Cap is an Olympic level swimmer, etc. and was fine.

Widow then turned to attack and dealt some stress to the overconfident (and quite dumb) Hydro-Man.  Cap swam to the bottom of the quickly filling section of tunnel and recovered Firestar and rolled a recovery action on the stricken hero.  This brought Firestar back up enough to focus, and Cap then pointed him at Hydro-Man, whom Firestar quickly flamed into oblivion. 

Having stressed out the bad guy, the water started to recede.  Black Widow then started in on the far bulkhead door and pulled a MacGyver, using power from her bracelets to jump the mechanism to raise the door.  Low and  behold, there was Thor, who (by a little of Bullpen fiat) had transported himself back with Mjolner.  They then proceeded onward until they had to choose between the control room and the power plant.  They decided to split up.

Cap led a team consisting of Firestar (whose scientific know how was needed to deal with the generators) and Thor, whereas Black Widow split off to take the control room on her own, as she had the necessary access and resources to take it, or so they thought.

Black Widow easily made it through the access tunnels to the Control Room.  There she found former SHIELD agent and Raft Inmate Mentallo using a mysteriously powered control panel to direct confederates to take possession of a momentarily subdued Bruce Banner.

In the meantime, Cap's team entered the power plant to find a villain with his hands in the reactor core, muttering about burning the drugs out of his system.  The villain turned, showing himself as Graviton.

As Rob Donoghue would say, it was then On Like Donkey Kong!

Black Widow acted first in the action order.  She blasted the monitor in front of Mentallo to disrupt whatever control he was exercising over the other goons and/or Banner.  He was taken unawares,  but was soon threatening terrible vengeance on Widow.  Widow then chose Thor to go next.

Thor advanced swinging mighty Mjolner to subdue Graviton.  Graviton simply pointed at Mjolner and Thor found himself humbled on his knees, momentarily unable to even lift his mighty hammer.  Thor picked Graviton to go next, deciding to try to get the worst of it over while other heroes would have time to act.  Graviton fired a mighty blast of force at Thor, staggering, but not disabling the mighty son of Asgard.  Graviton picked Mentallo to go next.

Mentallo put a great deal of thought into trying to immobilize Widow, trying to regress her mind back to her time in the Red Room, under painful and shocking training.  Widow, however, shrugged off the mental stress with that self-same Red Room training and a handy plot point.  Mentallo chose Firestar to go next.

Firestar summoned his most powerful energy blast to go full force, toe to toe with the master of gravity.  Graviton easily captured the energy and began to convert the molten globe of plasma to his own uses.  Firestar picked Captain America to go next.  The Sentinel of Liberty threw his shield into center of the energy fields Graviton was manipulating in order to disrupt his planned attack.  He managed two effects, both robbing Graviton of his stunt die, and inflicting some severe Emotional Stress on the villain.

For the next round, Cap chooses Thor to go first.  Thor again struck with Mjolner, this time overwhelming Graviton's defenses, inflicting physical stress on the villain.  Thor chose Graviton to go again, and Graviton unleashed a brutal multi-target attack.  Thor, however, used his Anti-Force SFX and reflected the d12 of physical stress back on Graviton, taking him out.  Graviton chose Mentallo to go next.

Mentallo continued his relentless mental assault on the Widow, showing her scenes of her friends dying, of her efforts failing.  Widow put almost all of her Plot Points into resisting, and then, activated a counter attack, kicking Mentallo into unconsciousness.  Widow chose Firestar to go next.

Firestar flew to the power controls and quickly managed to restore enough power for Widow to start locking up the prison, isolating inmates and regaining control.  Reacquiring a view into Banner's cell, she saw the Hulk just finishing mopping up the cell with the goons who had been trying to kidnap Banner while he was incapacitated.  She contacted Captain America on what to do.

Cap said, "Let him go."  So, Widow cleared a path for the Hulk, and he left the Raft and headed to New Jersey.

And, we were out of time.  The session was a lot of fun.  I am still quite a rookie at running and explaining the system.  The basics are easy,  but elaborating how to make Opportunities, Assets, Stunts, and counterattacks work are still a work in progress.  Also, Milestones have not yet played a big part.  Mostly, this is because I have run limited one-shots that have not been to coherent as far as short or long term story goals.  Mostly they are just slugfests.  These are fun, but I need to flex some other "Watcher" muscles.

With a little more planning, I would like to develop some short act/action scene milestones and unlockables that could bring those into play even for a one-shot.  The issue, as always, is time.

I was very grateful to find the materials on StufferShack.com which will make writing up and producing custom Datafiles extremely easy.  The resources on the web for this game are amazing.

So, after a third play, with a second time being a Watcher, I am ever more a firm lover of this game and the system.  The best thing is that I am still just scratching the surface, and more and more interesting and helpful materials, official and unofficial, keep coming out.  Thus, it is easy to have a very rich play experience with relatively low investment, and without even too much prep. 

Thanks to everyone out there making with the awesome on this.  It's great!

First Time Watcher: Marvel Heroic Role Playing Actual Play Report

This past weekend I had my first chance to run Margaret Weis Productions'  Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game as the game master (the Watcher, in MHRP parlance).  I have played RPGs off and on for over 30 years, but I had not yet run MHRP.

Some friends of ours generously host a game day at their home about three times a year.  The focus is mostly board and card games, but my son and I decided to take MHRP to see if anyone would sit down and play a brief event with us.

Fortunately, last week MWP released as bonus content, a "What if" scenario based in part on New Avengers issue 6, which happened to be one of my favorites from that era of Brian Michael Bendis' run.  The original story had to do with a batch of the New Avengers (Spider-Man, Spider Woman, Luke Cage and Wolverine) ending up having to fight The Wrecker (who is constantly reminding them that he has successfully fought Thor) and having quite a hard time of it.  The mini-event gives you the opportunity to run an encounter with The Wrecker, but also provides datafiles for the rest of the Wrecking Crew, as well as Thor, and provides some ideas on how to run an alternative scenario from how it played out in the pages of New Avengers.  Quinn Murphy wrote the action scene and Cam Banks and Dave Chalker (Dave the Game!) developed the bonus content download.  Amanda Valentine edited.  I mention all these folks, because they provided something that I was able to immediately jump brand new players into with minimal effort and prep and we all had a really good time.

Before I go into how things ran, I want to send a few more shoutouts to the professional and fan community surrounding MHRP.  I have been watching the development of the game by following Cam Banks (lead designer), Philippe Menard (The Chatty DM)  and Dave "The Game" Chalker on Twitter, and I had the good fortune to go with my son, Ian, to a launch event at Labyrinth Games in Washington, DC and sit at a table with Dave the Game as Watcher.  I have learned a lot from them.  Further, I have been really impressed and learned a lot from the fan base of MHRP.  Especially helpful have been Dr. Doom and Marvel Plot Points who through posting support materials, actual play reports and events (adventures) have really fired my imagination.

I have to give major prop supports to Plot Points, because I printed out a bunch of their unofficial hero datafiles to add to the official ones from the basic game in order to have an even broader appeal for my potential players. 

One pro-tip on printing datafiles from Plot Points: the image files will kill your printer as is.  They are beautiful and would totally work if you are using them off of a tablet (e.g. iPad), but to print out they are a challenge.  However, here is how I solved it.  I use Picassa 3 (free from Google) as my photo-editor.  I imported the datafile images into the program, and then I transformed them using Picassa's "Pencil Sketch" tool.  Just a little fiddling with the intensity of the "sketch" and I had very legible sheets that did not kill my printer FTW.

So, how about some actual play in the actual play report?  [This is what happened to the best of my recollection]

We arrived at the game day, and immediately, my son, who is 14, looked to recruit players.  He immediately had 3, our hosts' two sons (12 and 9) and the younger son's good friend (also 9).  I sat them down and they all selected heroes.  We soon had a team consisting of Captain America (my son), Mr. Fantastic, Iron Fist and Rogue (thank you Plot Points!).  I started to do my best impression of someone who knows what he is doing (thinking back to playing at Dave the Game's table) and explained how the basics of the game worked and how to read the datafiles.  Then two more boys sat down, each about 13.  We were happy to add them, and they picked Spider-Man and Iron Man.  Aside from my son, I think all the kids were pretty new to RPGs and most I did not know well, if at all.  However, we got everyone up to speed and launched into the mini-event.

In the wake of the Breakout at the Raft, heroes had been assembled to try to recapture the many Super villains who were at large.  SHIELD intelligence had identified a collector of super villain and super heroic memorabilia who might have acquired dangerous technology/gear that belonged to some of the escaped villains.  Heroes were dispatched to secure the items and set up to try to apprehend any evil doers who might show up. 

Captain America had the lead.  Reed Richards was the scientific advisor, since they were unsure as to what they would encounter in this collection, Iron Man was along to provide firepower (both scientific and physical) and Spidy, Iron Fist and Rogue were there for their versatility, experience and ability to punch things hard.  They touched down in a Quinjet on the cul-du-sac near Ed Gross' McMansion.

They quickly split into three groups.  Iron Man was flying over watch, Cap, Rogue and Mr. Fantastic went to the front door, and Spidy and Iron Fist went around back.  Cap asked Mr. Fantastic to do some kind of scan to give them an idea of what to expect.  Dr. Richards quickly jury rigged something and soon had a full schematic of the house and its secure sub-basement filled with all sorts of super-tech and mystic junk.  Also, Richards could tell they some super-powered individual was already in the basement with someone else.

At this point Iron Man got bored, or at least the kid playing him did.  I felt a pang of failure as a watcher for not being able to immediately engage him and keep him interested.  However, no one gave him a bad time about deciding that this was not for him, and he went to find a more conventional game.  Later, my host told me that he actually doesn't like to play games that much, but he comes to the game days because all the other neighborhood kids come and he does not want to be left out.  So, not an epic fail, but, so long Iron Man. 

I informed the players that Iron Man had to respond to an emergency at Stark Enterprises and they were going to have to deal with things on their own.

So, then we switched to Spider-Man and Iron Fist.  They detected the intruder as well, but the old fashioned way, since someone had come in through the rear, ripped out the sliding glass door and stomped through the house and down to the sub-basement.  Spidy and Iron Fist followed the trail and soon heard some mean guy threatening a teenage girl.  The heroes immediately leapt to action.

I chose Spider-Man to act first since he seemed the most tentative of my players and I wanted to give him a moment to shine.  We talked about what he thought Spidy would do and I showed him how to form a dice pool.  He had a great role and he leaped into the room, web-shooters blazing and quickly had webbed Wrecker's face and feet!  I then explained how action order worked in MHRP and he wisely chose to let Wrecker go next, so Iron Fist could bat cleanup.

Wrecker, who can at least go a few rounds with Thor, was not going to let some web slinger do more than annoy him.  He ripped the webbing off his face and teleported away from the webs on his feet and behind Spider-Man, recently recovered magic crowbar raised to strike.  The collector's teenage daughter (being held hostage by The Wrecker) really started screaming at this point.

Into this calmly stepped the Living Weapon of K'un Lun.  I turned to the nine year old playing Iron Fist and said, "What do you want to do?"  "I think I should kick that crowbar out of his hands."

Okay.

One terrific role later, the crowbar was out of the Wrecker's hands and imbedded in the wall across the room.

Iron Fist graciously picks Spider-Man to act next.  He was not sure what he wanted to do next.  Bullpen style, we all gave him some suggestions.  Next thing he was rolling to grab the crowbar with his webbing and swing it upside Wrecker's head.  "Hey Wrecker, I think you dropped something!"

PTANNNGGGG!!!

Spidy K.O.'s the Wrecker with his own crowbar (d12 physical stress). 

Wrecker falls onto a pile of alien technology, mystic artifacts, and superhero fan magazines.  Sparks start to arc and there is a little smoke curling from behind his head.

The teenage girl continues to scream.

Back to Cap's group.  They briefly consider knocking down the door after the house foundation jumped when Wrecker hit the floor, but then they did decide to check the door, and low and behold, the collector's (Ed Goss) daughter has left the door unlocked (much like many a forgetful son and daughter I have known).

The heroes rush down to the basement, led by Mr. Fantastic’s holographic schematic and arrive to find one ex-hostage teenage daughter near hysteria, one unconscious super villain lying on top of some stuff that probably should not have been crushed together, and two very satisfied heroes (Spidy and Iron Fist).

Suddenly, Wrecker's limbs start to spasm, and before anyone can take an action, his right hand grasps the crowbar and he vanishes [yes, this was some mean old Watcher fiat, and I can explain that I had planned to have Loki (thank you Plot Points!), masquerading as the Norn Queen, manipulating things; I was going to follow the flow and decide if he would take a direct hand at all, or if he was just jerking everyone around.  At this point, he was just making mischief and putting Wrecker back into play with the rest of his Crew.

Reed Richards quickly scanned and could tell that Wrecker was being joined by three other like powered individuals and they all seemed to be approaching the parked Quinjet.

Uh oh.

In this brief transition scene, everyone besides Spider-Man decided to spend plot points to make assets based on picking up useful things from Ed Gross' collection.  Everyone made up what it was they were taking.  Cap picked up a Hydra pulse rifle.  Mr. Fantastic picked up a pocket mass canon.  Iron Fist picked up a mystic staff.  Rogue picked up an energy baton.  Then, they all raced topside, except for Cap, who took a moment to calm the distraught teenager who was sure her dad was going to kill her when he saw his collection.

Cap reassured her, and she said he was kinda hunky for an old guy.  Cap beat a hasty retreat and sprinted to join the rest of the heroes.

Spidy leapt from the front door to a lamppost and saw that the other three of the Crew (Bulldozer, Piledriver and Thunderball) had arrived in a huge dump truck.  Wrecker was back on his feet.  Thunderball, the genius, was cracking the code to get into the Quinjet.  Spider-Man acted decisively and leaped to the front of the dump truck and flipped it at Bulldozer and Piledriver.  He only rolled well enough for one effect die (and I got to add a d8 to the doom pool!) and he smashed the engine block onto Bulldozer's head, additionally exploding the gas tank and spraying burning fuel around the neighborhood (DOOM POOL, YAY).

Mr. Fantastic notified SHIELD authorities than an evacuation of the local neighborhood might be warranted.

Iron Fist got himself in position to stop anyone from escaping in the Quinjet.  He was unable to create an effect die to help him by melting into the shadows, but he still was in good position.

Bulldozer said "You are dead Spider-Man!" and attacked.

At this point, Spider-Man's player, unfortunately, was stating that he was tired (I think he spent the morning at the pool) and was thinking about going home.  I told him we would miss his participation, but if he needed to go, we would be okay. 

Bulldozer then hit Spidy so hard he went flying out of the neighborhood and into a nearby playground jungle gym.  The Bullpen decided that Spidy probably would see some folks trying to get out of the neighborhood that needed rescuing and would get caught up doing that before he could get back to the fight.

Piledriver then went after Iron Fist, saying he was going to plant that old Bruce Lee wanna-be six feet under.  Iron Fist easily evaded.

Thunderball declared that Mr. Fantastic was clearly the most serious threat given his intellectual superiority, so Thunderball put everything he had into catching him with his huge ball and chain and flinging Reed Richards out of the neighborhood.  Despite a valiant attempt to evade the attack, Reed Richards soon found himself having avoided damage, but under the complication of "hurled far away".

Rogue went after Wrecker directly, flying straight at him (gloves, literally off), grabbing his face, flying up with him, leeching his strength, and then pounding him into the ground.  How do y'all like that Sugah!

Wrecker's attack was ineffective against Rogue. 

Reed Richards halted his flight, crashed into someone's skylight, but then (again literally) began to spring back to the action.

Then, Captain America hit ALL the bad guys with his shield.  He made sure that he put two effects on Thunderball.  One was physical stress, but the other translated to mental stress.

While I could spend from the Doom Pool to activate invulnerability for Wrecker and Thunderball, I had to sacrifice and take some stress on Bulldozer and Piledriver.

Iron Fist then continued his fight with Piledriver.  Somehow, the battle took them up onto the Quinjet where Iron Fist swept Piledriver's feet out from under him and made sure that Piledriver's crotch hit the wing (hey, this was a nine year old narrating).  More physical stress to the Wrecking Crew.

Wrecker then teleported behind Captain America and laid him out with the crowbar.  Cap was down, but not out.  Rogue in turn took Wrecker down with his own stolen strength. 

Iron Fist easily leaped over Bulldozer’s charge, but could not counterattack. 

Cap caught his second wind and threw the shield to hit Bulldozer and Thunderball again.  Bulldozer went down, but Thunderball sucked a die from the Doom Pool and ignored the physical stress. 

"I'm smarter than all of you put together" declared Thunderball.  "You'll never take me down!"

Ian, playing Captain America did a facepalm and said, we have to stop hitting him and stress him out mentally!  We need Mr. Fantastic!

At which point, in sprang Reed Richards!

"Take him down with SCIENCE!" yelled Cap!

Cut to brilliant and funny nine year old playing Mr. Fantastic: I make my head really big, and I explain to him what the many probable outcomes of his continuing to fight with us.  I tell him he is going back to maximum security and tell him his intellect is nothing compared to mine!  Also I shoot him with my pocket canon.

One roll later, Thunderball collapses in a pile of overwhelmed nerves and neurons.

Cap: "You talked that guy into unconsciousness!  Way to go!"

After that, it was all cleanup.

“When do we fight Loki?” asked the kid playing Iron Fist (who had noticed the sheet in front of me). 

“Not right now,” I had to say.  We needed to break and everyone wanted to try some other games.

There was a lot of interest in doing some more, but we did not have time then.  But, I would totally sit down with those kids again, probably in one or two action scene and one transition scenes at a time.  My core group of 4 totally understood the game and really got into it.  They were uninhibited, creative and enthusiastic!

My Reed Richards proudly declared "Mr. Fantastic is definitely my favorite superhero ever!!"

For me, these kids epitomized why I play RPGs.  We went to a different world and had a whole lot of fun by cooperating together to tell a really interesting and exciting story.

It was a blast.  I don't know when my next opportunity is going to come, but I am definitely running this game again!

Some Comics are Good

At my old blog, I once did a short post on trying to get back into reading comics, that was titled something like "Some Comics are Bad."  Brilliant, I know.  Not sure why Pulitzer hasn't called yet.

Still, the issue was that, with the totally unscientific sample of books I had been able to grab off the shelf of my local library, I found precious little from either DC or Marvel, that was worth the time it took to read.  Thus, I largely pulled back in and read only what I could get of work by my friends Greg Rucka and Jen Van Meter.  This kept me largely away from Marvel and often put me in the Indie Comics world with stories that I really enjoyed.  Based on that limited view, I knew that comics could be very good, but I doubted much could be found, particularly at Marvel.

Why so down on Marvel?  Well, even though there are a ton of characters that I love from Marvel, I often find the universe and the editorial management of it pretty awful.  I could cite a lot of things, but the crazy, messed up storyline that resulted in eliminating Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane really exemplified the kinds of style without substance that I perceived working at Marvel.  Trying to read Civil War in trades (again, yay library) also reinfoced that.  Here we had a mega event, with tons of talented people working at it, and yet I found the storyline just bad (my opinion, doesn't have to be anybody elses, but I'll say again, it was BAD).  What stuck with me was the event was extremely plot driven and the organic development of or reactions by the characters were subordinated to the plot.  For me, that is never good.  The characters in many cases came off as cardboard pieces on a big game board, rather than interesting and complex individuals.  Since Marvel was doing one of these plot driven monsters pretty often, it just seemed like, even where you had a solid creator behind a title, it was likely going to be hijacked and the characters would start doing really stupid out of character things to advance the plot.

So, I stayed away, read my Rucka and Van Meter stuff, and dove into the past getting trades of the old Question, Justice League International, and Walt Simonson's run on Thor. 

Two things made me reconsider.  One, Greg started writing The Punisher.  Now, while The Punisher has been a long established and somewhat interesting character from time to time in Marvel, mostly I considered him kind of a bad joke.  Hey, let's have a superhero whose power is, wait for it, GUNS!  In general, not my thing, and not, I would have thought, Greg's thing.

Ah, but the power of a good editor and a writer given a chance to write a character (a bunch actually), that, I had not counted on.  Now, I just have to say, thank you Stephen Wacker, I think you are the best!  Suddenly I was pulled into the Marvel Universe by a character I had scant given consideration to.  Great writing and great editorial changed my mind.  Still, I was not that interested in going deeper in.

Then, Margaret Weis Productions new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game came out, and it is really fun.  It set me on a path back to exploring Marvel, and suddenly, I found out that, despite all the things wrong with Marvel (and I still maintain they are many), there are some really terrific writers who have written some fantastic books in the last 10 to 15 years.  So, while you know I am totally biased towards Greg Rucka, here are some other writers I am really happy to know.

Ed Brubaker (Secret Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Winter Soldier)  I know, you all are saying "duh!"  He wrote Gotham Central with Rucka, and that was amazing.  How hard was it to find him?  Well, I have to admit the heresy of not liking Criminal very much and while I enjoyed his reunion with Rucka on an arc of Daredevil, I was just kind of avoiding Marvel comics in general.  But dang, Secret Avengers!  Those totally rock.  The other stuff then follows and there is no doubt he is a terrific writer.  I have been reading what I can get my hands on (on a limited budget).

Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente (Incredible Hercules, Prince of Power, Chaos War)  OMG!  Hercules was this B-list character, a foil for Thor.  Not ANY MORE!  These guys reinvented Hercules and gave us Amadeus Cho.  The world will never be the same.

Mark Waid (Daredevil [and a million other things I am going to discover])  Mr. Waid is poised to win a number of Eisners, and despite my rabid Ruck bias (who was not even nominated darn it), I have to say he is really deserving.  The current run of Daredevil is astounding.  And, he handles both sides of the character right.  A lot of writers really don't understand what Matt Murdock does as a lawyer.  However, that is a really important part of the character.  Waid gives a lot of time to it, and he does it right.  I am really, really impressed.  I know he is a long time player in the comic book world, and I am looking for more stuff to read, especially some Fantastic Four stuff, becuase I hear that is great.

Brian Michael Bendis (New Avengers, Moon Knight, and like a gazillion other things)  Okay, I know, "DUH!!"  Clearly, he has changed a great deal about Marvel.  Mostly for the good.  Now, I have to qualify my love for Bendis.  He does some great character work, and I think nobody does Spider-Man like him.  He also did some really intersting things with Moon Knight and I am sorry they have cancelled the title.  However, he does have a terrible habit of having characters go on, and on, and on, in rambling di/monologue.  You can get used to it, but sometimes he has a story really humming along and you hit a page that is just a person talking, talking, talking, for like six, eight panels, all down the page, and it is like hitting a traffic jam.  Still, he writes good characters and gets to do things no one else has done at Marvel.

Jeff Parker (Agents of Atlas, Gorilla Man) Okay, another OMG moment.  I love Agents of Atlas.  I can't say that Marvel didn't try to make them work.  Maybe they didn't do it the right way, maybe some other plan would have made the first or second ongoing survive.  It's hard to know.  All I can say is, thank you for the time we had with Atlas, because it was really good.  Now I have to seach out other stuff Parker has done.

Paul Cornell (Young Avengers, Captain Britain & M.I. 13) Captain Britain & M.I. 13 was another series that did not last, but the writing, for me, was top notch.  I didn't love every element of the first arc of Young Avengers, but in general it was good.  Must see what else Cornell is doing for Marvel.

Matt Fraction (Defenders, and lots of other stuff)  Just "discovered" Fraction's Defender stuff.  It is gonzo fun.  Hope to read more by him.

Honorable metion: Joss Whedon (Astonishing X-Men)  Yeah, super-"DUH!"  Don't have to look for his comic work though.  Whedon had a very solid run on Astonishing X-Men.  He really hit great character notes.  Some of the plot stuff did not wow me, but he inherited a lot of it.  I more appreciated that he really understood the characters and even in plots I disdained, I enjoyed the characters, because he understood how they would act and react.  Now, he is (hopefully) going to be making many insanely popular bockbuster movies, and punctuating that with little side projects, and he probably won't write comics for a long time if ever again.

On the horizon: Kelly Sue DeConnick (Captain Marvel (2012)) I have not read a word by her in comics yet, but she is pioneering the latest effort to get a female flagship hero into the stable of Marvel Comics.  I want that to happen, and so, how can I not start buying.  Captain Marvel is slated for release in July 2012 and I have my preorder in at my local comic book shop (Beyond Comics, yay!).

So, that is my growing list of authors for whom I will search.  Marvel, I have a love hate relationship with a lot that you do, but you have employed some terrific writers, and I am going to do better about finding and following them.

Marvel Heroic Role Playing event chapter seed: Welcome to the Murder Games!

So, I have been thinking about what I could do with a MHRP game if I could sign up some players.  As ideas fermented in my brain, the following elements blended: the super villain Arcade (see also here) (and various Murderworld stories, as well as the old MSH module of the same name); several Justice League Unlimited episodes ("The Cat and the Canary", "Grudge Match"), and episode of Wolverine and the X-Men ("Hunting Grounds") and throw in The Hunger Games and what do I come up with?

Welcome to The Murder Games! 

The premise:

Arcade, with a cross-dimensional distribution and syndication deal brokered with Mojo, has set up a new environment for the amusement of the masses and the murder of superheroes.  This 21st Century Arcade is all about blending the time honored entertainment of built environments designed to kill you with the hot new trend of reality TV.  Add to that, the hottest literary property about a dystopian future (now a major motion picture) and you have the ingredients for a show to hit #1 on the Mojo network and be terrifically amusing for the master of deathtraps.

And may the odds be always in HIS favor.

But wait, wouldn't people object to Acade trespessing on this intellectual property?  Of course they would, so of course he has thought of that.  And that's why he has the author and the main cast of the film detained and awaiting certain death, unless the heroes put on a VERY    GOOD   SHOW.  Heck, he might also even have a few of the books biggest fans on hand, just in case there is one or two of the heroes who get stubborn.

So, what might be the initial set up? 

The environment is going to be very manipulable, with Arcade's stats often providing the dice pools, and in other cases provided by the Doom Pool.  Of course there are cameras everywhere and trackers on the heroes.  Of course, clever heroes may figure out how to fool the cameras, lose the trackers, or turn the technology against the villains.

Of course, maybe Arcade has, for round 1, a set of villains, perhaps some who broke out of the Raft, to compete against the heroes.  Whilte the heroes may have no moral problem beating the paste out of the escapees, at some point, Arcade is going to do something like put a gun to the head of a hostage and insist that the hero finish the job. 

Now, to really mess with things, some of the hostages and some of the villains are probably Life Model Doubles, Androids, reprogrammed Doombots, or something.  However, as soon as a hero feels like it is safe to kill an opponent or to allow a hostage to die, well then that is likely going to be a real person.

Of course the environment will also produce deadly challenges.  Arcade has probably, inspired by the movie (he might not do much reading) recreated the Tracker jackers (cause, ya know, they're fun), as well as having things like velociraptors and maybe a T-rex or whatever seems fun to try to mess with the heroes.  And Arcade can probably do things to help them on the fly, like make the T-Rex firebreathing or whatnot.

Round 2 may be not against villains, but instead against captured heroes (with a little Mojo brainwashing perhaps), and maybe or maybe not there are some androids, robots, whatnot interspersed, but heroes are going to have to worry not only about surviving and taking out the opposition, but also figuring out if they are fighting a person or a copy.  And what to do with the real heroes, and what to do when Arcade demands a death ("or else the sequel won't get made with this actress . . . ")

WIth these first two rounds, heroes may be able to win freedom for hostages or other concessions by winning challenges (arbitrarily made up by Arcade) or perhaps be appealing to sponsors or the audience ("text interdimensional 662 if you want Captain America to get to choose a hostage to free"). 

Round 3, then is the single elimination round.  Time for the heroes to fight each other (or the Girl Scout troop gets it, or some such thing).  There the rubber really meets the road.  Will Arcade demand death?  Will Mojo insist that a contestant needs to be able to return for next season?  Can the heroes phone a freind?  Lots of possibilities.

Of course, what the players will be trying to figure out is how to get to where Arcade is, so they can beat the paste out of him.  They may also want to try inflicting emotional trauma on him by facing him down, acting in a way that thwarts him, but wins audience approval.  Etc.  This is still unformed, but I would expect the arena is in a bubble in some controlled pocket of a dangerous environment (the deep sea, space, under the earth, in Antarctica, etc.)  Breaking out is going to be hard and dangerous and possible fruitless unless the heroes can carefully manage things.

I am opposed to the idea of having the control room right next to the arena, cause that is just to easy.  However, there might need to be interdimensional or teleportation portals, and there may by some physical conduit.  I would be flexible in letting the heroes try to come up with a way to manage things without it being too silly.

I see this events milestones as something like as follows:

Welcome to the Murder Games
1 xp Inflict trauma on an opponent.
3 xp inflict d12 trauma on an opponent
10 xp agree to kill an opponent or refuse to kill an opponent allowing a hostage to be killed

This is a pretty dark scenario idea (really, I'm a very nice guy), but given the trend in Marvel (Secret Avengers, Dark X-Men, X-Force, etc.) it fits into a corner of that multiverse.  The main thing that Arcade and Mojo want is a "good show."  While Arcade would love to wipe out some heroes (and may have side contracts to do so), he is not above have subbed in a LMD or clone, or something to torture the heroes into thinking they have killed someone or allowed someone to die, but then, it was all just part of the twisted "fun house" that Arcade loves to create.  After all, you have to bring people back to see next season!

Also, further plot hooks would involve tracking down Arcades ties, customers, and bases.  Further, doing some dimension hopping after Mojo, his minions and "entertainment" holdings.  It is likely that the heroes are but one of many teams being put through this hell.  Maybe there are more people or heroes, or even villains to rescue?  Maybe Arcade and Mojo are really diversifying.  Heck with Sauron gone, maybe it's "And this week on Murder Games - The Savage Land, we have a mutate versus SHIELD grudge match.  Who will emerge victorious?" or, "We've always wanted to know, who would win, Iron Fist or 500 Hand Ninjas?  Well, this week, we find out on Murdergames, The Amazing Chase!"

Just a few ideas.  Hopefully, I get to form them up and run with them.  However, I throw them out because I'd be happy if someone beat me to it and got some play in with these ideas as well.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Marvel Heroic Role Playing actual play fron "A Taste of Marvel"

Sunday my son, Ian, and I had a great time at the launch party at Labyrinth Games for Margaret Weis Productions new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game.  As with Labyrinth's other demo events, this was termed a "Taste of" and it certainly was a lot of fun, even though it definitely left us wanting more.

I am not going to try to recount our experiences moment by moment as I lack the time to do it justice, but I hope that I can give an overview of the thing we experienced and convey why we had such a good time.

Ian and I drove down to Labyrinth yesterday and arrived in the area 10 minutes early.  Unfortunately, it took another 15 minutes to find a parking place and another 10 or so to get back to the store.  Labyrinth has a great location in Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, but parking is a challenge.

So, there were two filled tables (being run by Rob Donoghue and Nate) and our two reserved spots left at Dave Chalker's (aka Dave the Game) table.  We had somewhat missed the preliminaries and did not manage to really properly introduce ourselves or catch the names of everyone at the table, though Tom Cadorette was playing Iron Man; I am sorry to say I did not catch and retain (typical for me I'm afraid) the names of our fellow players who had Ms. Marvel and Daredevil).  Ian got the hero he hoped for, Captain America.  I had planned to take Daredevil, but he was taken, so I grabbed Spider-Man.

Dave quickly outlined the basics of taking actions, how to build a dice pool from various character attributes and how to roll and read the dice, and then we were off and running.  The game "event" was the adventure that comes with the basic book, and it, in turn, is based on the storyline of "New Avengers 1-6", a story arc called "Breakout."

The heroes had to start in different places when the breakout started.  DD, in his civilian role as Matt Murdock, defense attorney, was with Ms. Marvel at a supervillain prison called The Raft.  He was going to see some guy who claimed he was a former hero called The Sentry who wanted to be locked up because he believed that he killed his wife.  Captain Americal was on a helicopter, returning from addressing the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, DC.  Tony Stark/Iron Man was addressing a corporate gathering, and I, Spider-Man, was just about to cuddle up to my wife, Mary Jane, on the couch for a romantic comedy and our first quiet night at home in forever.

Having sketched out these beginning scense, Dave, as The Watcher (the term for the game master in MHRP), quickly launched into the central problem of our first act.  Lightning seemed to strike The Raft, and to go on to overload the entire power grid, backups and black out not just the prison, but all of New York!  Captain America was able to observe that a bolt of lightning also seemed to leave The Raft and head away.  The residual energy fried the helicopter flight controls and it was going down!

Inside The Raft, Matt Murdock, his law partner Foggy Nelson (NPC) and Ms. Marvel suddenly found themselves in the middle of a maximum security block where all the cells were suddenly open!

Tony Stark (played hilariously by Tom, who channeled a lot of Robert Downey, Jr. for his portrayal) found his meeting suddenly cancelled by the blackout, realized that this was a huge outage that might be the result of some kind of attack and went Iron Man (while posting on Twitter, checking Stark Industries stock numbers overseas and making sure that 1000 lawyers were on retainer if this was somehow tied at all to Stark Tech).

I, as Spider-Man had to profusely apologize to MJ, put on the Wall-Crawler tights and zip off.

I quickly spotted the helicopter in trouble and swung onboard.  Cap was able to take care of himself, but I rolled well to grab the SHIELD pilot and get us down safely to The Raft.  This gave me an "asset" of being able to call on the pilot for help in a later roll which was a cool game effect.

Down below, Ms. Marvel was throwing thugs back into cells as much as possible, while DD as Matt Murdock did his "helpless" blind man deal while knocking around, tripping and "running into" the mob of woud-be escapees.

Up top, enter the first Super Villain.  Just as Ian, as Captain America, looked into the smoking elevator shaft, he spotted the evil Count Nefaria rising out of the prison.  His reaction was what any red-blooded American hero would do in his place.  He jumped into the elevator shaft shield first to take out the evil-doer (and he would figure out how to survive the rest of the fall later).

Let me just say a little about how action flows in the game.  There is an "action order" system, which basically has The Watcher pick someone to go first (often with input from the table), and that person finishes the character's action and picks someone else, friend or enemy, to go next, until everyone has had a turn.  Last person to go, hero or villain, decides who starts the next order.  This is fun, allows for fluid, yet tactical play, and really feels like the organic flow of action in comic book panels.  As we played, I could visualize the action leaping off the page.  It was pretty impressive.

So, for any attack, you build out a dice pool based on various attributes (see my earlier posts to describe the attributes), and then roll to try to produce a high base number and pick a leftover die, as large as possible, for an effect.  Once again, simple, once you are doing it, fun (picking from the menu of what your character can do), creative, imaginative, evocative and relatively fast.

So, Cap rolled his action (attack), and Count Nefaria rolled his reaction.  One thing is that the reactor knows the number to beat, so it pushes the actor to try to do as well as possible to put success out of the reactor's reach.  Anyway, that was not how it worked out.  Nefaria blasted Cap to the side, and suddenly he had to come up with how to survive the fall down the elevator shaft.

Fortunately, this allowed him then to choose your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to act next.  I told the SHIELD pilot "cover me" made some dumb joke about Count Nefaria breaking out for good Italian food, and started shooting webbing like crazy.  I managed to create a web-trampoline under Cap to save him, and it gave him a bonus on his next action as he sprang up from behind Nefaria.  Second, I completely webbed Nefaria's face, so he was blinded.

I think we bounced back to Ms. Marvel and DD, and they were holding their own against the mob, but Foggy got taken away. 

Then, in comes Iron Man and Tom played him just as overconfident as possible.  He tried to fly into the shaft and basically put Nefaria through the back wall.  Instead, Nefaria managed to beat his roll and get the opportunity to activate a counter attack.   So, basically, Iron Man flew in, and there was a huge explosion and Iron Man flew out, not under his own power, after almost being taken out.  Tom and Dave did a great job of describing how the suit's alarms were all going off and the heads-up display was filled with error messages and everything was reading "offline."  Again, I could totally see it both on a comic book page, and on screen.

So, it was just me and Cap against Nefaria.  I had my doubts, but while distracted Nefaria who failed to blast me, Cap completely clocked him by surprise with a shield blow to the temple.  Moments later, we had him safely webbed up and had rebooted enough of Iron Man's systems to go down into The Raft to join up with DD and Ms. Marvel in the hunt for Foggy and to try to reactivate the systems onboard.

I need to metion, that during this whole action sequence, the main game currencies were flowing freely.  These are Plot Points, which players receive for voluntarily taking penalties in their dice pools (rolling d4s), based on their personal foibles which are sometimes advantages and sometimes not, and also for rolling 1s, which add to The Watcher's source of currency, The Doom Pool.  Players speend Plot Points to get bonuses, activate special effects and opportunities, take counter attacks, change the way dice get counted or to create stunts, among other things.  The Watcher uses the Doom Pool in a similar fashion for the antagonists, but can also sometimes just roll the Doom Pool as the difficulty in a situation that calls for an challenging roll, but there is no opposing force, except for how dire the situation is.

This gives the game lots of tactile and visual goodness.  When building a dice pool, you get to pick up the dice that represent the powers/skills you use.  You see the Doom Pool growing or shrinking based on your actions.  You can count Plot Points with hash marks, but more often (and more fun) with poker chips, counters, or some other thing you can gather in piles to see how ready you are to take on the opposition.  If you are out of Plot Points, you need to start adding in some disadvantageous dice or accepting other limits to bank those for when things really count.  On the other hand, there is no sense in hoarding the points.  If you need to KO Count Nefaria, you need to spend and spend big (go big or go home) so you either force The Watcher to deplete the Doom Pool to save the villain early, or to allow him to go down to conserve the Doom for what else is in store.  It makes the game fun and fiddly in a good way.

So, to go with my promise of not going blow by blow, after our first battles, things just continued to be fun and awesome.  While Cap and I rappelled down into The Raft, Iron Man, of course, just flew underneath and punched in through the bottom to get to the control room, kinda because he could.

We played through searching for Foggy, found Foggy, got attacked by Carnage, who apparently just has a "totally disable Spider-Man" power, which got used on me.  We found out that Captain America is REALLY COOL and he basically was two for two in taking out Super Villains.  DD held his own and rescued Foggy.  I learned about "trauma" and that is is not a fun thing for your hero to have.

Iron Man and Ms. Marvel ended up fighting Graviton.  This was not Graviton's day however.  For one thing, Dave's d12 kept rolling 1s, which made Graviton less of a threat.  Iron Man and Ms. Marvel totally capitalized and took him out.  Then Iron Man convinced him to help us, and he told us who engineered the escape and for whom (Electro for Sauron (not the big flaming eye from Middle Earth, but instead a mutant energy vampiry guy who can turn into a fire breathing Pteradactyl; go figure).  We also talked to Sentry who seemed pretty crazy, but said he could help us if we called on him.

Then we went to talk to Electro.  We had learned that much of the hit first and then talk had not worked so well the first time around.  However, when Cap tried to talk to Electro, DD decided instead to try and take him out.  I said something like, "wait, we're going with the punch first plan?"  Iron Man rescued Electro's ex-girlfriend from the scene and flew off, lightning bolts started shooting around, Ms. Marvel ended up charging up Electro, and just when it seemed to be all going south, Iron Man flies back and hits Electro like a ton of, well, iron, taking him out.

We had fun interrogating him, and I told him he was going down with the Bad SHIELD guys, not the ones that worked with Captain America.  They guys that did waterboarding.  He said he'd spill it all if we promised minimum security Club Fed.  We made the deal and off we were to find Sauron in The Savage Land.

There was a lot more fighting (I helped KO a T-Rex) and merriment (Ms. Marvel chose SHIELD over the rest of us and tried to take Iron Man out) and the game went really well.

I will spare you the details and just say, it was a heck of a good time, so I can get this posted.

Excelsior!

A few more words about the Marvel Heroic Role Playing game

So, I am continuing to speak about the new Marvel RPG from a first impressions point of view.  I will get a good playtest run this weekend when I attend the launch party at Labyrinth Games on Sunday.  But, since I have the PDF I have wanted to give my pre-play impressions of the game.

Sequentially, the book does not talk about character creation right at the beginning.  There are a lot of basic concepts in the game discussed first as well as detailed explorations of how various game mechanics work, how the game is played through action scenes and transition scenes (the game really gives the feel of creating a comic book story) and how to take actions in those scenes.

However, the way I flip through things is different than going to cover to cover.  I keep a bookmark slowly progressing through the book, but I'm constantly jumping around to see other interesting things.  So, as I mentioned yesterday, I jumped to the end to see the 23 Marvel heroes statted out in the basic book. 

While that is a solid and representative sample, and plenty to play through the "Event" included with the book (perhaps I can post later on how the "adventure/module" structure for the game is structured around these "events"), everyone is going to be missing one or more of their favorite heroes.  Also, plenty of people will want to create their own heroes and strike off in quite unofficial/"What If" directions.

The game well provides for both contingencies.  On the one hand, Margaret Weis Productions has a fairly aggressive production schedule for their "Events" planing to bring out Civil War, Annihilation, and Age of Apocalypse.  Each of those are likely to be packed with character write ups.  In part this is because the game aims to satisfy those individuals who always wanted to play their favorite hero.  So, if you want to be Hawkeye, or Nightcrawler, or The Silver Surfer, all of those official write ups are coming this year.

On the other hand, the game makes it reasonably easy to create your own character, or to come up with a playable version of your favorite, but unreleased, character following the rules and models provided.  Hero characters are defined by five key traits: Affiliations, Distinctions, Power Sets, Specialties, and Milestones.  Combined, these build a character that is complex, versitile, and very role play ready.

In brief, these traits act in the following manner:

Affiliations tell you if the person works best alone, as a buddy, or in a team.  Then, based on how the hero is acting in a scene he or she has a better or worse die to roll in their dice pool (a set of dice you build out of your traits to accomplish actions or to react to things in scenes).  These are not immutable traits and can change and shift over time.  So, for example, Captain America, at the start of the Avenger's Disassembled Arc, operates best as part of a team and lest well on his own.  His peak performance has been trained to operate working with the Avengers, and when they disband, he has a real game incentive to try and get them, or some team, back together.  On the other hand, heroes like Wolverine and Daredevil have their peak performace solo, and operate less well as a member of a team.  Marvel Team Up veteran Spiderman is best as a buddy.  So, by ordering your affiliations, you already know a lot about your hero and it has a very Marvel feel.

Distinctions are pieces of information, catch phrases, titles, or other words or phrases that describe the essence of the hero.  Depending on a given situation, they may count for or against the hero.  When they are a positive influence, they add a "good" die (d8 in a system that goes from d4 to d12) to the dice pool, when they have a potentially negative influence, they add a d4, but also give the hero a Plot Point (which is the action currency of the game that allows heroes to really shine when it counts).  For example, Captain America has as his three distinctions "Lead by Example", "Man Out of Time", and "Sentinel of Liberty."  These traits add flavor to the hero and give flexible and interesting in-game mechanics that help shape play and allow character rewards for making in-character choices that a player would avoid if merely playing the "game."

Power Sets are the heart of the super hero identity as they represent inherent powers, technological or magical equipment, or whatever else (training, alien physiology, etc.) that makes the hero powerful.  The game suggests that you should be able to stat out a hero with no more than two Power Sets.  As I have thought through various Marvel heroes and seen how they did the 23 for the basic game, I have to say they seem to have done a good job with their rule of thumb.  Within a power set can be a number of individual powers that are somehow linked (using Captain America again, he has Super-Soldier Program as one set, and his Vibranium-Alloy Shield as his other).  The powers that make up the Power Set are each rated at a die level from d6 (ho hum, but allowing something a regular person can't do) to d12 (Godlike).  Generally, for any action, only one die from any given Power Set can go in the dice pool.  So, if you have two sets, you can general apply more powers in a roll.  On the other hand, each power set also includes one or more special effects that help customize the powers, and also limits which may interrupt or prevent the use of the power (e.g. Cap can lose his shield) until some condition is met.  The game gives good guidelines for describing and using powers that would appear to easily handle anything you have ever seen in the Marvel Universe, and if it not there, there are clear guidelines for developing new things to go in Power Sets.

On the one hand, the power curve seems a bit flat, with only 4 levels of powers possible (ho hum, Enhanced, Superhuman, Godlike).  However, the combinations, addition of special effects, and combination with other traits really allows this simple spread of power levels to describe a very diverse set of heroes without the need to have every possible attribute statted out in dozens or hundreds of gradiated levels.  The point is not to try to figure out the physics of superheroes and model that, but to model the way that things work in comic book stories.  The play reports I have seen and my own impression of the simple elegance of the system support that MHRP does just that.

After Power Sets are Specialties.  Theses are the "skills" of the game.  They are few in number and broadly defined.  You get a die if you are an Expert (d8) or a Master (d10) at something important.  There are, at my count, 13 skill Specialties offered in the game.  The focus is on things that come up in comic books, things like Crime, Science, Combat, Tech, Medical, etc.  The focus is on relevant playability, not modeling a complex real world inventory of what people can do.  It is possible that some other specialties could come into play at some point, but really, these do the job of handling your Marvel character.  They also allow for interesting interactions with powers and other traits to flexibly deal with challenges in the game. 

Finally, there are Milestones, which are triggering events that provide the hero with experience.  This is one of the more innovative parts of the character description.  These are not unique, as they have appeared in earlier games (the one that I am familiar with is the Lady Blackbird steampunk scenario where experience "keys" are similarly described).  However, using these milestones to describe possible story arcs and rewards for characters is new as far as the Marvel Universe.  Each Milestone is described by a 1xp, 3xp and 10xp level.  The 1xp level could be a thing that can happen often and the character can gain xp frequently by meeting the terms of that level.  Cap has two milestones (again, a hero may have one or two) and his first one is, for the included scenario, "Mentor the Hero."  If he chooses to aid a speficic hero he gets 1xp the first time he does it.  But there are lots of heroes to help, so he can pick up a fair amount of xp by being helpful.  The 3 xp is a once per scene trigger.  It is a bigger, scene defining moment.  One of Caps is to earn 3 xp when he ais a stressed-out (i.e. out of commission due to physical, emotional or mental stress) hero in recovery.  The 10xp is a defining decision by the hero and may be hit only once per Act.  For Cap, one of his is to get 10xp when he either gives leadership of th team to your chose hero or to force your chosen hero to resign or step down from the team. 

For me, these Milestones are really powerful role playing tools.  The xp rewards allow for purchase of advantages along the arc of an Event, so they have real game implications for success or failure, and they shape the character's behavior to deal with certain issues along the path of the overall story.  While all of the heroes in the book come with predefined Milestones, it is clear that each new important stage of a game/campaign, should be marked with the GM (called The Watcher) and the players coming up with Milestones for all the characters that make sense to the story they plan to tell together. 

Taken together, I see the character system as innovative, comprehensive, flexible and fun.  It is also demanding on a certain level, in that it requires real thought and collaboration between the players and The Watcher to make things like the Milestones and Distinctions work.  However, I think the collaboration it demands builds a better, more trusting and richer play experience.

If I have time, more tomorrow.

A Few Words on the Marvel Heroic Role Playing game

There is a lot to say about this great game and the company that produced it, and I can only speak to a fraction of it at the moment.  However, I wanted to get some thoughts down before I get to actually play the game (which will happen at the previously mentioned Taste of Marvel at the wonderful Labyrinth Games) and then give some more impressions after I get to experience it in play.

So, I am actually buying the hard copy book from Labyrinth and picking it up at the event this weekend.  However, since I prepaid, I received a prompt and efficient e-mailed link and coupon code for a free download of the PDF so that I could start looking at the game last week.  MWP was prompt and the download on Drive ThruRPG was easy.  This is the second game I have bought from MWP (I pre-ordered Leverage for a friend), and this interaction confirms my initial impression, that they do good work and are very competent with their customer care.

I have not read the game itself cover to cover yet.  As is my usual, I have done a combination of flipping through, looking things up (good index and TOC) and then started slowly moving the bookmark (so to speak with a PDF) through the volume.

Everything that I have seen so far impresses me. 

First, they have a foreward by Jeff Grubb who helped bring us the original Marvel Super Heroes game from TSR.  It is a nice piece, and it is classy to have him, in effect, hand the torch to the new game.  Despite many criticisms I have written here about the old MSH game, I have a great fondness for and terrific memories of playing it.  From the first pages, I get the feeling that MHRP will similarly gain a solid place in my RPG repetoir.

The look of the book is great.  The layout is clean and clear.  The art is well selected from a back catelogue probably hundreds of thousands of images in the Marvel library.  But the selected art fits with the themes of the sections they adorn and are not just randomly assigned.  The feel is very professional, very comfortable and it communicates well as the system is described bit by bit.  Right up front they have a breakdown of what things make up a character and a summary of what they mean, using Captain America's sheet as an example.  Then you can dive into the details of the rules immediately following.

Of course, before digesting all the nitty gritty of the rules, the first thing to do is to flip to the back and check out the official stats for the included heroes!

There are 23 super heroes fully statted out and ready to play in the "Mini Event" included in the book.  They include a good representative group from Mavel's popular teams: all of the Fantasitc Four, important members of the Avengers and X-Men, and of course a number of popular "unaffiliated" (at least before the Avengers Disassembled story arc) heroes like Spiderman and Daredevil.  I have no complaints about the initial group of heroes, though I do have some observations.

The group is very representative of the marvel Universe and should satisfy most Marvel fans as a first round of official stats. 

What is disatisfying for me, which is not the game's fault, is the lack of representativeness of the Marvel Universe. 

In this group of heroes, we have 8 women heroes and 15 men.  Marvel suffers from a lack of solid and interesting female heroes, and has never developed any female hero iconic as DC has in Wonder Woman (and even if she is constantly treated as a distant third behind Batman and Superman, no matter what DC does, it has been unable to not have her in that big three).  Here we have Armor, Black Widow, Emma Frost, Invisible Woman, Ms. Marvel, Shadowcat, Spider-Woman and Storm.  These are all solid heroes, but given the almost 2 to 1 ratio of male heroes to female, I hope that somehow the game can overcome the inherent gender issues in the Marvel Universe to get girls and women to the gaming table with the game.  Because I like it a lot.

Looking through the vector of race/ethnicity, there is a starker contrast.  19 of the heroes are white/caucasian background, with other racial/ethnic groups represented by two black Africans, an African American and an Asian (Japanese) character. 

Gaming should know no boundaries, and imagination should admit everyone.  Marvel, along with mainstream comics everywhere, has definitely got some major gaps in how representative its heroes are.  While Marvel has established an imaginary world where there are 9000 significant characters, many from all over the world and from all kinds of backgrounds, the most popular, the most promoted, and the most famous tend to be white and tend to be guys.  This game is not going to fix the industry.  However, going into the game and making the Marvel Universe your own to game in, one has to understand that the way things play out in character selection for the write-ups is pretty reflective of the Official Universe. 

The nice thing about it is that, if you don't like it, in the game, you can change it.

Hopefully, MWP can find some way to tap into those players who maybe don't see themselves in the "top tier" of Marvel heroes and nonetheless get them interested in the game.  With luck, that may bring in some more readers who may be able to exert some market forces for change in the official universe to balance out its cast.

As it is the rules make creation of heroes or statting up of your favorite (but as yet not officially released) hero fairly easy.

I'll have to talk about that tomorrow, as I am out of time to write today.