Back in the day I ran a session for a couple of my Champions players for their street level characters. In it, they spent a week being bouncers at a run down bar, the "kind of place where they sweep up teeth and glass eyes at night." It was called "Bronco Bills Bustin Beer hall," and if you ever saw a certain violent 80's actioner about philosophical bouncers, you can summon an image up in your manly mind...
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| "The Double Douche..." |
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| Will also accept whatever that country bar in the Blues Brothers was called. |
In that session (it may have been two. I'm talking like 30 years ago) dealing with drunk bar bullies was how it started, then for the final fight some ninja's or some shit were brought in by the owners enemy to deal with the super bouncers. It was a fun rip off of one of my favorite 80's head cracking flicks.
I did touch on the place in sessions back in the day, cleaned up and just called "Bronco Bill's" but not for fights. I recall it did pop up as a meeting place or something. I think maybe a detective character followed somebody there or something.
Anyway, not long ago I finally saw the old John Travolta movie "Urban Cowboy." Pretty boring movie, but it did give me an idea. I was still in the low combat phase of this campaign, with the players role playing like crazy and doing character development and stuff. But I was purposefully going slow on that. I still wanted to indulge in some low-stakes chickenshit and surreal/silly sort of set ups before I started doing classic hero stuff. So I decided to sort of go 80's crazy and do a Roadhouse/Urban Cowboy mashup.
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| The salad days of Vinnie Barbarino. Before Xenu got his aliens claws on him |
So I had Bronco Bills continue in success, to the point where the once run down shopping area it sat in was undergoing gentrification (and yes, I was purposefully interjecting commentary on that subject, with both good and bad coming in with it).
The outside entrance had all this neon and a 30' tall digital screen above that constantly showed scenes from old cowboy movies, shows, and commercials...
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| Welcome to flavor country |
Other high end business had appeared on courtyard. A multilevel Asian American restaurant, a couple of cleaned up parking structures, and another bar "Club Future."
"The Courtyard." Upper left corner is the Club Future front entrance. Bronco Bills on the upper right. Parking structures on the middle and lower left, and lower right is the big Asian restaurant. The middle of the map reprsents the center of the courtyard with a fountain, trees, benches, and a foodtruck that showed up on weekend nights.
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| I like this roach coach because it looks like its from a Mobius story in Heavy Metal magazine |
Bronco Bills has been owned for a couple years or so by Shelly West, who is from a rich horse ranch family.
Also she happens to be the aunt of Juniper "Cowgal" West from the first sessions auditions scenario. This will be important. My conceit here that Bronco Bills is very popular with the popular Urban Cowboy scene, where folk dress up in western gear and hang out drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and listening to Country Rock (it made a big comeback).
The new bar on the corner, Club Future, caters to a sort of Future Traditionalist scene, young folk in to vintage 1980's new wave and cosplay. Geeks. It is owned by a young girl in her early 20's named Ginger Jones.
So here is the setup. Shelly West the Bronco Bill's owner is fairly unaware of it, but the Urban Cowboys had been picking on the Club Future patrons who come into the courtyard where the Urbans like to drink and smoke. Nobody put in the hospital yet or anything, but it is perhaps impacting Club Future.
Ginger happens to be the goddaughter or Patricia Kyono. The daughter of her old college best friend. That was the "in" for the adventure. Kyono asks the group to go to Club Future for a weekend evening and act like security (which Ginger so far has woefully little of) and hamper down any violent or threatening antics from the UC's.
When the PC's entered the scene, it was early in the day and ginger showed up to open the club. She always showed up before other staff. She showed them around. Pointed out a small back lounge to use as a green room, and as staff showed up they were introduced to the couple of servers, and also the couple of bartenders. One was sort of a celebrity DJ/Mixologist names "DJ Drinkypoo." He both spun the discs and made high end cocktails at the same time. And there was the one security guy, "Clive Alive." This guy secretly had Might 1 and regeneration, and both him and Drinkypoo and their salaries is one reason the financials for Club Future were on the margins.
The cowboy club also operated as a regular bar, so they opened early in the day. So by the time some Future Trads arrived to dance at Club Future, there were already some drunk UC's in the courtyard ready to bully any lingering Trads, but a couple of the characters showed up to shut it down.
Then arriving on a loud Harley was June "Cowgal" west. The interloper who caused some chaos for clicks at the first session Auditions scenario.
Juniper West honestly grew up on a horse ranch, and after her teens started streaming videos of her riding but also popular for modeling and makeup tips. Rich to begin with, her modeling and streaming got her a decent following. And in more recent times she fully adopted the Urban Cowboy scene and is very popular in that.
As Bronco Bill's owners favorite niece, Cowgal is big in that scene, and when she shows up and finds out that some of these people from the Justice Inc auditions were around, she went out in the courtyard and caused a fuss. "you're threatening my people!"
In tow was "Glen." an Urban Cowboy wanna be tough guy (as Rank 2, he could actually give a normal person a hard time, but any of the characters would flatten him unless he got lucky shots in). Glen fancied himself as dating Cowgal, but he is basically just a simp. He gets in Paladins face "why you wearing a mask, coward?" Paladin decided not to thump the dude. Honestly, I keep giving the characters opportunity for violence, but they often just stay chill.
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| He's also Glen in the movie Urban Cowboy. BTW played by the guy who was FBI director on Xfiles. |
But more significantly was the presence of Wyatt Winchester. Now in his 50's, he was one of the first members of the old Justice Incorporated as "The Marshall" two decades before. I decided that for a few years he was involved with bar owner Shelly West and had given her niece Cowgal training in fighting and other performative cowboy skills in recent years. Even though he was also a bouncer manager at his girlfriend's Western club, he was only mildly aware of the bullying going on in the courtyards, so he backed up Cowgal and was even ready to throw some hands.
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| this is probably not the last time I will dip into the old characters of people I never see again |
Cowgal and company huffed away, but she immediately got on the horn. That Ginger lady is bringing in these metahuman types to threaten her people? Fuck that. She made a call to Yuri "Heisenbrain" Heisen whom she met with some of the rejects in the parking lot after the auditions sessions. Heisenbrain had already gotten them together during the week to form a group called The Redeemers, and coming toot sweet to help Juniper West's aunt and the Urban Cowboys on this evening.
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| So Heisen middle left, above him is Schnoz, to his right is Count Carl. Below him is Savio Totalpackage, down again is Sally Strong, and her left is Ragdoll. |
Later that night, it happened fast. Heisenbrain, a workshop scientist inventor who has different portable tech in each appearance. Here he brought shield projector belt for some protection, a collapsable concussive force rifle, a device that deadens electricity and disrupts wireless enough not to turn down the lights of music, but to scramble cameras and handheld devices. The main item he wanted to try in the field was his Enhancement ray pistol, where he can give somebody with normal strength and stamina a good enough boost to add 30 to their health and give Mighty 1 and Sturdy 1 to them. His plan with that was to enhance the normals Ragdoll and Savio when the time was right.
Both Ragdoll and Count Carl had gotten into Club Future without any trouble. Ragdoll was on the dance floor and Count Carl was at the main bar, floating a couple feet off the ground, enjoying a cocktail.
While Ragdoll was just sort of a Harley Quinn clone, Count Carl was a little more interesting. When I was creating NPC's to practice the system a year ago, I was calling him "Carl Cleric" for some reason. By now he was count. Originally from the 1960's, he was a vampire who hunted other vampires and monsters and such. Armed mostly with a mallet and stakes, he had Mighty 1 and could fly and phase through walls as well as other things. I originally was going to have him be German, but for some reason I started talking as him with a cockney accent. That maybe goes with his swinging 60's look I guess.
This was around the time we knocked off for the night, and continue this the following week. Amber did not make the first part of the session, so when we started again I had her flying in the neighborhood sort of spying for incoming trouble. She did see someone over the club area. Her old nemesis from the very first session, the young inventor Blimpkrieg.
Though he was updated a bit during the week by Heisenbrain, he was not really a match for Seraph as she flew into and through him and got a high damage number, knocking him out. He floated unconscious as she swooped down to the clubs.
Unseen during the entire encounter was Schnozz, the street tough with a giant nose and Mighty 1, he was watching the back door.
Heisenbrain used his enhancement ray to boost up both Ragdoll and Savio a bit. It did not matter much... even with her agility and martial arts skill Paladin smacked Ragdoll away, realizing even with Mighty 1 now, she was still no match for him. He was basically all about melee skills. He hits hard and is hard to hit. Regenerator as well, though that would not really enter into things until a bloodbath a couple sessions later.
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| In the very first session of the campaign, I was calling her "Raggedy Ann. But realized I didn't need another reference that aged me. So Now its Ragdoll. |
Count Carl was not really into the fight, but he went ahead and took out his mallet and attacked Paladin. The man in black punched him hard and knocked him for a loop.
Meanwhile, Igneous was taking on the muscle woman Sally Strong in the lobby.
Both Sally and Iggy have Mighty 2 and some Sturdy 1 and 2 respectively. Also, Savio got hit with the enhancement ray ("hit me with the juice, old man!") but when he say Iggy was manhandling Sally, putting a crushing bear hug on her, Savio, who is smarter than he acts, went to the club bouncer Clive Alive, who was coming out of being knocked out by some kind of device from Heisenbrain, and asked if he could bum a cigarette. Savio stood out the rest of the encounter having a smoke.
Seraph showed up in the courtyard and saw both Cowboy bar owner Shelly and her boyfriend Wyatt Winchester, and asked them why they were victimizing Club Future. Shelly and Wyatt had no idea about the Redeemers coming in to cause trouble. They grabbed Cowgal and marched her into Club Future to put an end to the fight, and she did, yelling at Heisenbrain to call it off.
The aggressors were told to leave (Cowgal promising they would get paid), and Cowgal made to apologize to owner Ginger. Going so far as to have Paladin escort Ginger into Bronco Bill's so Shelly could introduce her to the crowd, and to tell them they should be grateful for other businesses coming in to the area and to stop bothering patrons in the courtyard.
Just as an aside, but I had an image I used for portrait a of Juniper West that her auntie had put up in the bar. It showed Juniper as a teen, in pre Cowgal days, actually working her families horse ranch. I wanted to humanize her a bit, because you can bet I will keep having her show up to stir the shit.
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| Before Cowgal, there was just Juniper West |
The Redeemers were not much of a threat for the characters, Sally Strong maybe being the most effective of them besides Heisenbrain. And Yuri Heisen is not a villain really. He just liked chances to field test his inventions. But really, this group of kind of losers was just a taste of group combat for the characters. Bigger challenges were upcoming.
But this was a couple of nice sessions to get the taste of the "neurodivergent situation" of the previous session out of my mouth. Doing something a bit outside the typical comic book stuff such as the Bar Fight scenario was sort of fascinating the players. I mean, you come into a superhero game you expect to be right out in the streets slugging it out with real villains. That would be coming soon, but no rush. I like the chill speed things are going. But for sure these guys would need bigger challenges. It's going to come.
Next time, the characters get places to live outside the office, and head towards their first big public fight. Stay tooned.
Cheers
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