Justice Incorporated - "The Battle of the Bars" or "Pain Don't Hurt"

 

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...

"The Double Douche..."

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. 

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...

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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

Justice Inc - the Campaign Continues (and an autistic player freaks out during an encounter)

 (note: halfway through this session I would have an interesting, and kind of troubling situation with one of the players. Most of the first half of the session was a meeting where a new players character was introduced. A mutant college girl with electrical abilities. The group doing the usual role play razzle dazzle. It was great. But the last hour or so of the night was not. Stay tuned.)  

So leaving off from last week, the characters had taken part in "auditions" for an unknown potential employer and met all kinds of weirdos (or at least maybe weirder than them). They passed the audition, informed by "Wilmington" of such, and piled into a couple of self-driving luxury limo vans to head to a meeting point. 

Meanwhile, some of the runners up of the auditions event had met in the parking lot and suggested to group together for their mutual benefit (they would eventually call themselves "The Redeemers"). I would be using them soon enough, but not in this session. But the sooner I start doing up challenges for the characters the better.

So they go to the venerable old Winston Bldg downtown. As I mentioned I used this building for the old Justice Incorporated games. In it were the JI offices (on a floor number and suite I never write down so probably different every time I mention it over the years).

There they meet Japanese Irish corporate CEO industrialist (and one of the richest people on the planet) Patricia Elizabeth Kyono in person. 

So they are informed of the history of her side thing Justice Incorporated. Once a street level organization, helping the downtrodden and higher-level people alike who find themselves victims of some unjust situation. With the organization in limbo for almost 10 years (in the setting), she wants to bring it back, this time with a group that has more power to it, similar to a typical superhero team situation. With an offer to maintain secret identity's if necessary, a place to stay if needed, and a few grand a month, she gets them to agree and gives them a special debit card, that can be used to withdraw cash, use as a bank card (Kyono owned bank of course), and even as a communication device and keycard to use the buildings private elevator and roof access. 

With the characters agreeing for now, they get introduced to Rachel, the offices receptionist and assistant. 

While permanent, off site accommodations are being looked into for the characters who need it, most of them crash at the offices which has three small bed chambers (not made for permanent stays) and a reception couch. Even with them staying there, and Rachel always being available, nobody has realized yet that she is a Life Model Replicant assistant model, produced by Kyono International. 

I am not exactly sure where Paladin came from 
(the Middle East maybe, the player said he came 
to have on a plane to attend the auditions, so he 
had no place to stay).

Seraph is a being from another dimension who had
been living in an abandoned warehouse, so she 
crashed at the office as well.

Igneous is a descendant of Titans who just wanders
the Earth. So he crashed there. 

Living in a professional workspace can be...
problematic to a certain degree

So not everybody had to live there. But the space is all appointed, with a main office, conference room, kitchenette and gym with small sauna. 

So yeah, most of the characters did go ahead and just start living there. And with the characters having got to know each other a bit, they went about their week. Seraph, the winged girl, actually trained a bit; some combat basics with paladin in the office, and with Igneous. He took her to an abandoned part of the railyard in town and had her fly around dodging big rocks he would throw. 

OK, so during that week of in game downtime I wanted to try something out. In my old campaigns, I would sometimes like to throw a quick encounter at a character solo. Like something designed to be quick, like 20 minutes max. Stop some muggers or something. 

I will call the player I did this with "C." He is a young dude in his late 20's I think, and I was fairly jazzed to get him on board originally because he has streamed probably at least 100 hours of running the Marvel Multiverse RPG online. Sessions with 4 or 5 players that went over four hours in some cases. I will admit I had only watched a few minutes of it here and there. Most of the videos have less than 5 views. I do not want to point him or his streams out, because as it turns out he clearly has some form of emotional issues and out of at least some compassion for it I do not want to identify him. 

But you don't have to look too deeply to find multiple instances of him identifying as neurodivergent in his videos. Like, totally embracing it. To me, using that term, is kind of broad. Forrest Gump and his chocolate box level of variety is what I think is under that umbrella. OK, cool. I always like to say "we are rpg players...we are all autistic." 

He seemed like a cool guy and I like him. It seemed a big surprise to him that I was calling for unique characters to be created. Like most others it seems who play this system, he prefers existing Marvel characters. Everybody is playing an X -Man character.  I was like, no, we get to be creative in my space. He came up with a character who was a Daredevil legacy character. His mentor was Matt Murdock in his 70's. The character was blind as well, but had Daredevil-like senses, but even more advanced. To the point he sort of had powers that gave him visions of possible future outcomes, and he could "see" down to the molecular level. Interesting. 

He was the one character in the group invested in crime fighting. That and C's experience running the game seemed a no brainer to try this.

OK, so back in the day I had this vigilante NPC I used for some Justice Incorporated stuff. Her name was "Sister Mary Alice," or "Malice." She was a revenant, a young nun who decades ago had been assaulted and killed and returned for vengeance. She would appear every few years for a time, having possessed the body of a young woman to use for her activities. 

Sister Mary could imbue her vessel with enhanced strength and resistance, and she could levitate, phase through matter, and teleport. She could also produce most any archaic weapon she wanted; swords, axes, spears, etc. Back in my old Justice Inc. campaigns she would commit murders that the characters would try to stop. I have her as Rank 4 in this system, which for sure made her a strong foe for any Rank 3 character. It's the strongest I ever had her in the history of my games. 

So, I would introduce her with this quick solo encounter. 

Also for this I created another female vigilante, "Devota," a young Latina woman in Day of the Dead makeup who was on a similar quest for vengeance as Mary's, but since she was mortal was using the pistols of her late Green Beret grandfather to take out men of violence. 

I actually had a T shirt long ago with a day of the dead lady on it, and back then I thought she might make a nice gritty vigilante character who was wronged by men and was taking her vengeance on them. I thought she would make an interesting indie comic book character. A wronged Catholic girl who brought justice to the hood. 

I was always fascinated by these. Growing up 
in Los Angeles I saw plenty of this over the decades.

You see the Dead Girl imagery a lot
on slot machines 

For this I would have Mary Alice raising from the grave once more and possessing some random young woman, in order to assist and protect this new, unpowered killer who was on a similar quest as hers. Local news reports spoke of dead gang members being found with both bullet and sword wounds. 

I had even had characters who moved around the city notice graphitti of Devota in rough parts of town, where she was already becoming an urban legend much like Malice was. 

So I had C's character on patrol in the bad part of town encounter her on the hunt. Actually, it was her disguised in trench coat and blond wig, luring several gang members to an alleyway then up on to a rooftop, before she revealed herself and started blasting. 

For the gang I used Baseball Furies from The Warriors

C's character showed up on the roof to confront it all. He seemed OK, until Devota started blasting on the gang members. This is where he started to have his apparent doubts. Sister Mary Alice rose up out of the rooftop as an apparition, created a sword, and ran it through one of the gangsters, at the same time telling Ghost not to interfere. At this point C was getting flustered, muttering "I don't know what to do!" and then "my neurodivergence!"

C was kind of paralyzed it seemed. Continuing to state things like "what should I do?"  I was all like "what do you want to do? What would this character do?"  I mean, this was a character based on Daredevil. And we know what he would do. Start punching faces maybe. 

It turned into a surreal situation. This guy ran over a hundred hours of this system online for a handful of people. I thought if anybody could help me make this a quick 15 minute encounter, it would be him. But I was I guess putting him on the spot. But it surprised me. I did stuff like this in all the genres I ever ran, something happen to a character while alone. Champions. Call of Cthulhu. Even Runequest. I think just a few minutes of that really gives a character some personal agency. Not all the time, but especially for a comic book thing. All the Avengers etc do some things alone. I have probably had people hesitate now and again. My past players were often friends of mine I had outside DnD. But this sort of gob smacked me. And I have the other players just hanging out while 10 minutes turned into 45. 

I finally coerced him to attack Mary Alice, and he did, but found his attack only did minimal damage. I told him she had great "Sturdy" and was a Rank 4 foe and he freaked out more. Again with the "but my neurodivergence!"  C had clearly decided at some point in his life that he would declare his neurodivergence at any opportunity. I had never encountered this before. If this was somebody new to rpg's you could expect some not knowing what to do. But I thought he would be perfect for this. Was meant to be the short showcase of the session but to me was a disaster. A failed experiment. 

I had the gang members scatter, and Devota took off down a fire escape, and Malice vanished as well.  I had the other players sitting there all that time just watching this play out. Not good. The teenager playing Ra-Ta the alien had checked out for the night. But I carried on for a bit to try and finish up the session.

C's character had called in the other characters Ghost to help search the area, but all the foes were long gone. 

I followed up with Kyono calling a meeting the next day to talk about a friend of hers, a goddaughter, who was running a night club and was having some trouble with the other nightclub across the street. We would get into the in the next session. But the waste of the better part of an hour and the seeming failure or doing little solo missions, left a bad taste in my mouth. 

We did not hear from C for several sessions, though he was still a member of the Discord. I think he was not there for the last 20 minutes or so of that session with the quiet freak out. At some point later, he messaged the group, just the other week "sorry guys, have been having some health issues." He did not mention neurodivergence there, but I am guessing yeah, he is dealing with issues. 

 It has been several sessions since that night, and I maybe should have tried to reach out. But I just gave him space. I hope it had nothing to do with a fairly gritty encounter. Guns and vengeance girls out of a Tarentiono movie. But shit, Quenten is one of my inspiration muses for style in my games (yes, even DnD) along with Sam Raimi and James Cameron. And Haven is, as I constantly stress, a kitchen sink. A pastiche world. Inspired by standard comics, cyberpunk, superhero deconstruction, gritty supernatural, future noir, anime, and 80's action movies. And I'm running for adults here.  Its going to be PG and sometimes its going to be rated R.

What're you gonna do. I could have handled it differently. I guess? I mean I was calm and kind during the encounter he was having a bad time with. Nobody else had much to say, maybe some being miffed by the wasted time.  Safe to say I am unlikely to try the "solo 20 minutes" things again. But maybe will have some split the party moments in the future that would be kind of like that. Anyway, as of today we are several sessions past that night, and I worked hard to present some fun stuff to make up for it, and it seems to be paying offing. Campaign is at the moment going well. 

Next I post on this, I will cover the following session that I based on two old movies, Roadhouse and Urban Cowboy. I called it "A night at Club Future." Cheers. 

OK, there was that first session of this Supers/cyberpunk Haven campaign

 I rarely post about actual game sessions and what happened in them. But I think since I have this Marvel Multiverse rpg campaign going on, and that it was literally years in the making, on top of that having a great group of players I worked hard to put together, I think it is worth it for me to make a more detailed record of the campaign, however long it may last. For myself. My blogging motto, especially in this time of record low popularity of such, is "do it for yourself. 

Also, the MMRPG seems to be a low-profile game that not a lot of people are playing. And most of them who are usually just do one shots with existing Marvel characters. I was warned early on in the process that the system was more geared to supporting Marvel style characters, especially Spiderverse ones. You have to get a fairly expensive particular expansion book to access certain powers and abilities such as climbing walls or using snares of some kind (all the books, electronic or physical, are highly overpriced so maybe another reason for a lack of popularity). 

But after spending a good chunk of last year coming up with unique characters in Demiplane (linked to Roll20), I determined that despite some arguable deficiencies with the system in general, character creation was easy. A couple of the players with little experience with it were able to do up a great character with little effort. Demiplane guides you through the process very well (the same cannot be said for the Roll20 character sheet). So, the grand experiment began. 

(note that this first session was weeks ago. As of last night we are up to 6 sessions I think. Also, this post will represent the first session and a half or thereabouts. The first three bled into each other fairly well. )

So the Justice Incorporated campaign began. You can check out the second half of this post to read about the basic info of Irish Japanese CEO Patricia Elizabeth Kyono, the set up, and the characters. 

But in a nutshell, Kyono is one of the world's top industrialists who in the old days (app. 10-20 years ago in the settings timeline) had a little hobby of starting "Justice Incorporated: Security, Investigations, and Restorations." She would dig up interesting street level exceptionals to go on jobs. Everything from protecting a neighborhood from a street gang, to going up against evil corporation shenanigans. With lesser powered, but still interesting, characters those old JI sessions felt like episodes of the A-Team, or 80's action movies. 

BTW back inj the day Just Inc. was the backup campaign for when the big boy supers' team "The Protectors" did not have enough players for the night. Two or three were perfect for a JI session. But my cup runneth over this this campaign; I have a pool of 7 players (on average around 5 will be playing in a particular sessions). But since this was a beefed up Justice Incorporated, I decided they would be more "Super" than mere street level. In this system those old JI characters would be rank 2 under this system. This campaign starts at Rank 3. That is sort of Jr. Avengers level. Think Hawkeye, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and such as that.

Often in the old days, the set up was simple. Kyono was younger, so would be coming out of a high-end night club or fancy restaurant, and either be mugged or witness some crime, and the characters would be near to take care of it. And then she offered them a job. Eeezy Peezy. 

Honestly, though I never confirmed it for myself, I always thought of Kyono maybe setting up the whole thing in hopes of meeting vigilante types. I mean, the city was crawling with them then. But for this new thing, she advertised for an "audition." In newspapers, magazines (it's the future, but print has made a comeback), and in some cases sending a drone to more high-profile characters with an offer to attend. Here is a snippet:

Wanted, exceptional individuals who might fit with a new, small team of especially effective field operatives, diverse in ability, to assist with operations related to security, investigations, and restorations. We are a private organization, and this is in regard to a private LLC. Are you highly skilled in practical combat, athletics, tactics, mental acuity, misc field science ability, and/or people skills in potentially high stress situations? Or perhaps you are a fledgling superhero who is less mercenary and looking to prove your commitment to justice but need the experience to lived out your dream of filling the shoes of Protectors long gone?

Again, check this post for more info on the characters, but for one reason or another of their own they all showed up. Seraph, a flying girl from some side dimension, was on her way into the auditions held in a Gordita Beach high school gym, and she had the first encounter of the campaign. Blimpkrieg, an inventor and balloon enthusiast, thought she might be part of the auditions testing and caught her in his net cannon. But Ra-Ta the little alien in his mini saucer showed up and blasted Blimpy with a ray. He was knocked out and would have fallen to his death, but Seraph swooped in and saved her attacker. 

With the intro of Blimpkrieg, I was setting up the first few sessions of being kind of silly and surreal. But I was slowly building up to more serious stuff. And really, I did up most of the NPCs I had available months before in Demiplane for fun, so they tended towards the "made up on the spot" feel. 

So around the same time some other characters were showing up and walking through the parking lot of the no longer functional high school gym. Near his bitching sports car was "Savio Totalpackage, an arrogant Cuban fitness streamer and his followers "The Savio Squad" doing jumping jacks and calling passerby's out for not being as awesome as him. A quick and mildly violent moment or two took placed, with Savio and his pals standing down in the face of some intimidating characters. 

Savio and his "Totalpackage." He was one of the few NPC's
that were only Rank 2 (the player characters started at 3). Not much
of a threat, though to normal people is fairly badass,
normal people being pretty much rank 0. But he was there to
be sort of a joke. Though I have kind of a fondness for him. I grew
up on the beach in SoCal knowing guys like this.

Savio's babe. "Shotty Too Hotty"

Btw, Savio did not even get in teh school gym. Due to his parking lot bullying and trying to bring his whole gang in with him, he was denied entry to the event. He would hang around outside though, where he and some of the other failure would meet to scheme to start their own group. More on that later. 

You are going to find that they aren't the only kind of goofy characters. In fact, most of the three dozen or so attendees were of silly variety. they all gathered in his defunct gymnasium, with a research team, a couple scientists, lot of security, and plenty of equipment for testing folk. Even a couple stuntmen to spar with more hands-on types. 

Many of the attendees were just athletes looking for an exciting gig. Like the masked former player turned street hero calling himself "Basketball Jones."

You could hardly tell he had a bad knee
while he was dunking those baskets

The athletes were out pretty fast. The more promising people were set at another bleachers while the finals were happening. 

There was not a ton of action. I did not want much in the way of fighting. This was about getting to use the rolls from the character sheets for various testing. It would turn out that this was a pretty high role play group. So it worked out well. Lots of character development. 

There was a near fight tahat I wished could have happened. A strong woman named "Sally Strong" was tired of showing how much weight she could lift (she had Might 2, which is sort of pick up a bus level), and when player character Igneous, a man with rocklike skin and related to Titans of old, stepped up to be tested by staff, Sally jumped in and wanted a punch up with him. 

Sally is not evil, she just has a chip
on her shoulder

I was hoping for a little combat practice, but Iggy grew to 24 feet tall and that was enough for her to back off. 

Iggy has Sturdy 2, Might 2, and 
has some kind of lava power not 
yet tapped into. Oh, and he can
grow up to 100'. He is peaceful, 
almost Buddhist in nature

I was hoping for a bit of knocking around, but Iggy has size change so grew to 24 feet and that was enough to back her off (for now. Their punch up would happen in a later session). 

When the man in black character "Paladin" (he is part of a modern-day continuation of the Knights Templar or some such) finished a sparring test, and was heading to the potential winners bleachers, them from Magnificent Seven on a boombox was heard, and clomping into the gym on horseback was a young woman. She is kind of my favorite creation for this, which is why I featured her in a hectic encounter moment. Her name is Juniper West, or "Cowgal."

I have a pretty deep background for her. She was raised on a wealthy horse ranch and formerly was a fitness model streamer who got popular when she toon on the Cowgal persona. Even speaking in an exaggerated old west accent. Characters would not find out until a later game, but she was mentored by a former Justice Inc member "The Marshal" (who was a player character back in the day) and trainer her in fighting and shooting skills. But she is more of a troublemaker, doing stunts with a drone filming her for Youtube clicks. She was not attending the audition in hopes of getting a job. She was just there to cause a scene and get digital content for her channel. 

I was also thinking ahead to a later session where I was going to have June West be a community leader of sorts for the popular "Urban Cowboy" scene and a nightclub catering to them. 

So in the gym she shot rubber bullets at nearby archery target pads, swung her lasso around, and got of the horse to try to catch Paladin who was walking by. he deftly grabbed the rope, and found she was being playful about it. She flirter with him but he was not having it, and she was escorted out of the gym by security. 

The character Paladin is still a mystery to me. Belongs to an 
ancient order of early Christian soldiers. Sort of like
from Indian Jones Last Crusade. Trained in some
 other part of the world. Comes off fairly blunt and direct 
(i.e. his is kind of a prick). Because of his directness he would
soon become defacto leader and mouthpiece of the group. 

(so this was about when we had to knock off session one for the evening. I have to say everybody seemed pleased. Most of them probably were expecting a little character into then some big superhero fight in the streets or something. And I will admit, in the old days we often started a campaign that way. But I really wanted it to feel unique, a little serious and a little silly, and to go against expectations for a genre like this. And as always in my games, going back to childhood, a little bit of superhero deconstruction. Whatever it was, it is a great group, and it their role play and character development as we went really go me jazzed. This was working out! )

OK, then session two the following week:

The characters really did not have to do a lot to be the winners of this. I mean, predetermined by me, but secretly Kyono, who was watching via camera, had pretty much decided on all of them before the auditions even started. A lot of work to put on these auditions, but a good way to make the folk who would work for her feel special and also let her see what other talent was out there. 

So they were told they were chosen byh "Wilmington," Kyono's exec assistant, and would be driving via roomy luxury vans to meet their new benefactor and boss. 

Though I used Kyono a ton in the old campaigns, it was too long
ago to remember any other named assistants or employees, So I did Wilmington up and just said he has been around forever. I imagined him pretty capable, like Alfred from Batman. 

So I had it in my mind to have Cowgal and the runner's up from the audition have met in the parking lot. There had been this diminutive, bald scientist guy (to be played by Bryan Cranston) at the event, and he would be the leader of this little group who would end up calling themsleves "Redeemers," and when they eventually foud out about Justice Inc they would become their own little team for hire. They would be showing up in a couple sessions, to be used to go against the player characters in what I hoped would be a nice dust up. Give them their first foes. 

from left going clockwise: Hiesenbrain, Schnozz, Count Carl, Savio Totalpackage, Sally Strong, and Ragdoll.

So tghe player group were driven to Center City business district, to the offices of Justice Incorporated in the venerable Winston Building. This older era skyscraper was the setting for Just Inc. in the old sessions as well. 

This campaign will for sure be filled with " 'member berrys." I am already tapping into the old stuff for my own nostalgia feels if nothing else. Even having the Winston Building in a campaign again gives me the vapors. 

With the first half of session two havikng been finishing up at the auditions, the entire second half would be the groups first meeting with Kyono and would take up the rest of the session. At least a half hour of which was the group just having refreshments in the offices and waitng for Kyono to show up. The players really engage with each other, and finding people of that style is what I vet for in any campaign I do. And as usual it was paying off. They did not care that this was not high action. At least not yet. 

The meeting would bleed well into session three. Just awesome. 

So next time, the meet and greet with Patricia Elizabeth Kyono, the official meeting and job pitch, and a tour of the Justice Incorporated offices (expectations to be managed😏)

Until then, cheers and hope the summer is being enjoyed!