Marvel RPG - "What Price Three Souls to Save?"

 

So, this couple of session arc would be of the supernatural variety. When I give people a quick description of my setting and what I like to do with it, I call it "Supers/Cyberpunk/Future Noir/Future Supernatural." The Pacific island nation of Haven was not just historically a "weirdness magnet" but the post WW3 refugee crisis brought folk from all over the globe here, along with whatever folklore and myth they brought with them. So especially in the older, lower income parts of the city, I like to imagine there are lots of supernatural goings on. Western Euro, Pacific Islander, Caribbean, etc.

And in my old Champions games, specifically for the then street level Justice Incorporated characters, I created Sister Mary Alice, or "Malice." Sister Mary Alice was a nun at the big catholic church downtown, "Our Lady of Constant Sorrow," made in part of brick and stained glass imported from an old European cathedral in the 1950's. In stands still smack dab in the Eastern District of City Center, with much of the city built around it.

Some decades before, Sister Mary was assaulted and killed by violent gang members and entombed at the church. But Sister Mary's spirit was taken over by a spirit of vengeance, turning the soul of Mary Alice into a Revenant. Every some odd years the possessed spirit of Sister Mary would invade the body of a fit, mostly random, young woman to take on the vigilante mantle and go out seeking violent men to kill. 

Mary Alice could bestow upon her vessel the ability to levitate, pass through objects and produce ancient weaponry (favoring swords, axes, and maces). The possessed woman's body would be imbued with extra strength and stamina (of the max human potential variety). She was perfect for those running battles on rainy nighttime rooftops and alleyways. 

For this recent Rank 3 Justice Inc games, I needed to upgrade her a bit, mostly adding the ability to teleport and also a level of Mighty and Sturdy for the mortal form. Made her Rank 4 as well, which makes her more than a match for any of the characters individually. 

I also brought in a bit of a protege for Sister Mary, a young Latina girl in Day of the Dead makeup who was using her grandfather's heirloom military pistols to go out and blast violent gang members at night in the form of "Devota." The urban legend of Malice and the new, mortal vigilante were out at night taking care of business. Sister Mary Alice mostly being near to help her if she got in trouble and let her do most of the killing. Still, dead criminals were being found with both sword and gunshot wounds. 

Several sessions ago I had decided to start having a 15- or 20-minute encounter a character could face solo every session or two, just so they can have their own moments. The character "Ghost" was on patrol and ran into Devota taking on a gang on a rooftop, with Malice on hand to make sure it went well. You can read the sad tale about how all that went down for me here. I will probably not be mentioning it again in the foreseeable future. 

But this encounter would finish up this little dangling plotline. I won't go into deep detail, but the two-session arc would take place essentially on two maps, the ground floor of an enclosed parking lot, and a section of the roof of Our Lady of Sorrow.

I would bring in one of the members of the group "The Redeemers" who have been around since the very first session of the campaign (the runners up for a job with Justice Incorporated) and also appeared in the "Bar Wars" arc. 

Pretty much like most of the Redeemers characters I came up with Count Carl on the spot when I was practicing creating characters in Demiplane for my hoped for eventual Marvel Multiverse campaign. I really didn't have him all that fleshed out. He was going to be a non-evil vampire who hunts evil vampires. In his first appearance I meant for him to be German or Romanian, but I somehow just started doing a Cockney accent for him when he appeared in game. By his second appearance I decided, based in large part of the image, that he became a vampire in 1960's swinging London and I would basically just do an Austin Powers impression. That stuck. Vampire hunter, monster hunter, and most of all a detective of all things supernatural. He was a chain smoker and before he appears the smell of smoke would proceed him. 

He appeared in the morning in the Safehouse Paladin is living in. Pally woke up smelling ciggy smoke and hearing the news on. Going into the living space there was Count Carl floating in front of the big wall TV, smoking and waiting for him. 

Their previous encounter having been a brief hand to hand (Paladin handled him then no problem, though Carl's heart was not really into that encounter), the blunt and no-nonsense Paladin told him to go back outside and ring the doorbell. When he reentered, Carl asked that Paladins team members be summoned. When they arrived, he told them of the Revenant influencing the spirit of Mary Alice, possessing and innocent girls' body, and at least to some degree encouraging Yanet "Devota" Inez to be a criminal killer. He said that his friend, the blind elderly Dominican priest of Our Lady of Constant Sorrow, can create an area at the church that he can trap Malice in, and that as an experienced Exorcist (in the real world the Dominican Republic seems to have big history with that) can expunge the Revenant and bring peace to the soul of Mary Alice and free the unknown girl being possessed. 

Carl says that he predicts Mary Alice and Devota will appear the next evening to attack youths who will be doing a violent teen takeover of a parking lot near a theater multiplex. He wants the characters to be there to try and stop any violence they can, but to let Devota escape. The young girl apparently goes to the church after each appearance as the vigilante to pray (and that Carl knows most of this from being in contact with her only close living relative, her grandmother who has been going to the church for decades). The father will have an area of the roof blessed and prepared with candles and incense and will eventually lead young Yanet up to the roof, where Sister Mary Alice will no doubt appear to help her. At that point they can stop Mary Alice and the father will perform the exorcism. 

Part of my philosophy when running games, whatever the genre like DnD or whatever, is to provide different locations to do action in. I think that is especially important for a genre like this, as streets and office building rooftops can get a bit repetitive. So, an indoor parking structure and a cathedral roof section seems to fit the bill of keeping things fresh. 

So once the characters staked the place out, the youths soon arrived to cause a fuss among people going to their cars after a movie or dinner. They were prepared with bats and knives, and as soon as they started fanning out to mug and menace folks, the characters dug in. Paladin and Seraph beating on some of them, Nova trapping some in an energy cage, and Igneous generally menacing them with his giant size pretty much had them in check. But then Sister Mary Alice and Devota appeared. Yanet was hesitant to kill teens, though when a couple of the gang members accidentally knocked down an old couple while fleeing from Paladin she did shoot one of the youths in the leg. But she then took off, as did Mary Alice, but not before producing a mace to smash in the head of one of the teens.

Then off to the church roof, where they met Father Dom who eventually brought up Yanet who had removed her makeup to pray. They disarmed her, and Mary Alice appeared to fight them. I don't have to go into detail, but at rank 4 she could put up a decent fight and dish out some damage with whatever weapon she produced. I even had given her the power to animate a couple of the roof gargoyles to make it more of an interesting fight. But they were finally able to put Malice down, and father Dom freed the possessed body, and Sister Mary's soul from the influence of the revenant spirit. 

Sister Mary Alice's soul was seen rising into a shaft of light, and it seemed like she was finally free. 

The unconscious Yanet was flown by Seraph to the apartment where she lives with her grandmother. With granny being a devout Catholic, she of course thought Seraph was an angel at first. 

Some thoughts: At some point during this 2-session arc, Seraph declared to the others (while on the church roof I think) that this may be the most important thing they ever do. Not sure if they agree, but strong stoic type Paladin seems to be a religious warrior (a session after this he would give an NPC a bible), but he does not advertise it. Also, Igneous' player missed the second part where the roof fight was. Iggy's player misses a session now and again. Since he can grow up to 100 feet tall, he is always conspicuous by his absence.

Anyway, that nicely wrapped up the supernatural vigilante angle. A nice detour from the more science related stuff of previous sessions. But there will be more supernatural based foes in the future. Gotta keep mixing things up. 

Cheers

"Enter - Safeguard" I start actually challenging the characters

So in this two-part session (both talked about here..most sessions I am running seem to go across a two session arc), I would finally get the chance to hit the characters with some actual power. Not just a handful of Rank 3 "terrorists" but also with a new Supergroup of Rank 4 potential foes. As a reminder, the characters are Rank 3. There is a decent difference in those numbers. But all in all, the party did not get in as big a punch-up with them as I would like. But getting the characters out to a public place to face foes with high tech weapons, and foes with strong powers, was something I was working towards. 

After the Night Clubs scenario, the PC's had a about a week to do their own thing. Which included moving out of the Justice Incorporated offices. Ultimately they had a choice between a small but luxury apartment in a Kyono owned corporate residential skyscraper.  Or a larger single building to stay at and consider a safe house. Seraph was the only one opting for a nice private studio unit.

Kind of the perfect crib for a flying girl, and better than the 
old warehouse she was crashing at before this 

Meanwhile a small shipping and receiving building in "Japan Town" (ethnic neighborhoods and tourist area), at the end of a short street between a Japanese restaurant and a tailors building, had some of its small office converted to bedrooms, and stocked with TV, fridge, and other living essentials. The Paladin player Andrew whipped up a map for it between these couple of sessions as Paladin and Igneous moved in.

I started calling him "Iggy" because
I keep calling him Ignacius rather than Igneous

At some point during the week, Seraph was flying above the city like she is want to do. I had her spot another flyer, which you don't see that often in the city (except maybe above mutie town). It was a young Japanese woman in ancient traditional dress, and she was flying on a giant white feather the size of a canoe.

The woman did not notice at first when Seraph followed, but she did at some point and used a Japanese fan to summon huge blades of wind that shot towards Seraph. She backed off as the woman disappeared among the skyscrapers. 

Kagura is from the anime Unuyasha, which I posted about last year.  She is my favorite character on that show, and I created her in Demiplane last year while I was practicing making NPC's and decided I could use her for this. She woke up in this era and fell in with Boliver York of York Industries, and his sponsored superteam "Safeguard."

I found some cosplay/AI of her and I 
may start using these for her tokens

I pushed to have this little solo encounter not take a long time (lf you have read a couple posts back then you might understand why I would be concerned about things like this taking more than 15 minutes). 

So Friday came around and Kyono asked for a meeting at the Justice Inc. offices (more often than not she showed up on a video screen conference call). She said that her data monitoring department has gotten rumor of a possible violent attack possibly occurring Friday night at the Metroplex Mall, the second largest indoor/outdoor mall (largest I guess is in Japan). 

With little other info, the group hung about in the corner of the mall where things were maybe going to go down. Yeah, I know. Easy set up. Indeterminate occurrence at so and so time. Not every set up has to be complicated in comics!

The "terrorists" who do eventually show up on the scene are using advanced tech personal weapons, either rifles of some type or melee-based weapon.

The weapons also projected a light personal force field (Sturdy 2, but dropped to 1 after first hit of more than 10 points health) and also fortified the body with Mighty 1 and some extra health. So two of each, bo staff guys, armored arms guys, and laser rifle guys. 

Also this was where we introduced a new player. He was brought in by player Will (Iggy) so unvetted by me but turned out to be a good guy. He is running a Nova corps member. Calling himself Nova, because, well he's a Nova. With all those good powers such as flight, hard skin, and some pretty heavy energy blast stuff. This battle is where he would meet the other characters. In the heat of combat. 

A little Nova in the comics background. I have no idea what goes on with Nova stuff in recent decades. As a kid I collected a comic called Nova. He could fly, was hard to hurt, and had energy blasts. 

He was basically an attempt to recreate the success of Spider Man. A teenager gets powers out of the blue and has to deal with that and his new heroic life. I remember little else. 

But this new Nova is a bit different. Same power set. Fly, energy abilities, some Sturdy. He is also kind of dances to his own beat. 

He likes to decorate his military helmet,
kind of like the marines in Aliens. 

The party dealt with the terrorists fairly well. Iggy had grown to giant size (though not full size because of the close packed stores) but managed to take a couple of heavy hits from the laser rifle guys. Paladin really mixed it up with them. 

The couple that got knocked out were teleported away somehow, along with the couple of others when "Safeguard" showed up. 

Clockwise from top left is "The Wind Sorceress," "Mastodon," "Spider-Max," "Blackwolf," and "Aegis." 

So quick history lesson. Back in the day (and in the setting currently between 12-20 years ago overall) I had two major global industrial organizations in Haven called "York Industries" and "Kyono International." 

York Industries was the company of Bolivar York. I had a great mini for him back in the day. I might still have it. It was a David Bowie Goblin king mini. Since I had Bolivar be a Hellfire Club lord much like Marvel Comics Sebastian Shaw I had painted it to look a bit like him in terms of clothing he wore behind the scenes.

Was not this, but similar

York was the evil company. Sort of a Lex Luthor thing. He used tech, and people he swayed, for all kings of mayhem. Characters in The Protectors and Justice Incorporated (and maybe the Future X-Men thing I did for a while but forget if they met him).

Patricia Kyono and her corp were the good business. She put together Justice Inc and often interacted and helped the Protectors. After some years of various campaigns (and an alien invasion that I think I am going to retcon away in this new thing) , they all managed to prove Yorks's crimes and get him a lifetime in prison. 

For this new era, I have it that York's son, Boliver jr., has taken over the company. And of course he has evil intent, especially to those who harmed his father and the corp. He is a handsome, well educated chad with charisma, and often when he says his father was framed by the Protectors, Justice Inc, Kyono, and the Science Police, some people listen. 

Business in front, party in back

 a more casual look I have yet to use

So in the 10 years or so there has not been super groups around or heroes in geneal in public, Bolivar jr. put together his own superteam that has recently been seen out and about stopping crime, and BY has had a press conference or two about them, with them in attendance. He called them "Safeguard." And of course they will be used to his evil ends. 

A yokai sorceress from feudal days
who has powers over wind.

Mastodon is part of an ancient race the remnants of live
in a city of science in the south pole. He is Mighty 3 and 
can grow up to 100 feet. I created him to go against Iggy.

I got the idea from a Red Letter Media/Noiselund video...

Spider Max is a 15-year-old with Spider Powers. And orphan. Have not
decided yet if he is a Peter parker clone, or a clone of Bolivar sr. with
Parker DNA in him. 

he is a Canadian hipster who can turn
into a large super wolf. 

Aegis. Power armor with many functions.
Secretly Boliver jr (he will be in there 
sometimes and sometimes it will be
a Life Model Replicant of him.

Tank built by Mastodon. He usually drives.

We did not a get a big fight between the group. Wind Sorceress swooped into the courtyard to attack Nova out of the blue with her Crescent Wind attack. 

Spider Max webbed up Seraph in mid air, causing her to fall from 50 feet. The kid realized she was heading for the fall, and swung in to get her to the ground gently. "Sorry lady." So maybe these are not bad guys?

Seraph has already been nabbed in a net
by her arch foe Blimpkrieg two times. So
that's three nettings in several sessions. 

I forget if any more attacks went down. I really wanted Iggy and Mastodon to grow huge and go all Kaiju fight. But Paladin was yelling at Aegis that they were not the enemy, and Aegis, who was on top of the tank, was forced (cameras and possible film crews are always around) to talk it out. 

That was it for possible violence. I did get to introduce an NPC from the old days I used for comedic value. He was a police lieutenant back then, but now he is a police captain. His name is Louie DePalma, a name you might recognize if you like old sitcoms. I had him be an asshole back in the day and hate superheroes, and now at probably 69 years old he's grumpier than ever. Characters always hated him, and I think these new ones do too. 

Back in the day I remember a player came up with a song about him. They started singing it when he showed up on the table (I think I used a hobbit mini that had a hat). It was sung to the tune of the old song "Louie Louie" and I think some it went:

Loo-ee loo-i

Oh whoa every where he goes

Soo-per-he-rows

Loo-ee loo-ay

Oh whoa every where he goes

they both-er him

Same actor in the role.

Science Police also showed up. Both groups had reason for being here. Because both Kyono and York had lawyers nearby ready to intervene when shit quieted down. 

Here's the thing. Safeguard claims to be employed officially as security for York Industries. the Kyono lawyers argue that Justice Inc, as private contractors working in security and investigative capacity for Kyono International. With some of the properties in the Metroplex Mall being owned or its product related to these companies, their security forces have a right to intervene in terrorist situations. 

So the characters finally got into a little conflict with another group. I really wanted to see more of them mixing with them. See how they do with Rank 4 foes. But Safeguard is playing at being good guys and have to watch their step. I sort of fantasize about a full fight at some point and hopefully the Rank 4 Safeguard beat the hell out of the Rank 3 Justice Inc. Then have a training montage and JI comes back Rank 4 for payback. 

Just a word on the Science Police. The concept goes back to Superhero 2044 where they primarily started as nuclear watchdogs after WW3, eventually moving in the future to overwatching strong or illegal science, and meta humans. During the heyday of my campaigns, with the Protectors, whoever was in Justice Inc, and Kyono would fight against frequent York Industries agents and schemes. Whatever it was, for those years the SP was an important agency and often involved in the meta human chaos (though usually show up after a fight). Now, with a decade or so of peace and few super powered beings causing trouble, they have less staff and agents than they used too and mostly monitor mutant issues (mutantgs have a large neighborhood of low income and HUD housing). The SP being a bit weaker these days will be a running theme in upcoming games. 

So Seraph went after Nova and invited him to the office, where he met everybody and of course got a job offer. Rather than go to the safehouse, Serapah invited him to stay at her small apartment. I would have some fun with that. But that is a story for another day! Stay tooned. Cheers.

Finally found my Supers RPG to run online?

 

I have posted in the past about my deep background with Supers RPG's (also here), going all the way back to childhood starting with the very first superhero game Superhero 2044. Then Supergame, then Villains and Vigilantes, and finally Champions/Hero System. That was my favorite, and using my futuristic hero setting Haven (based in part on Superhero 2044's Inguria Island) I turned many of my DnD groups on to it as an alternative. There would be resistance (most were not comic book fans) but they would eventually be requesting it. They loved it, despite the crunch of Champs. It was probably my favorite genre, in large part having grown up a comic book kid.

Now several years since the last time I ran a supers session, and also now that I essentially run all games online, I have been hankering to give it a go on Roll20. But the crunch of Champs would make it very hard. I considered Mutants and Masterminds which was fairly popular online, but it has its own high crunch it seems. I don't want to have to learn nor run another crunchy ruleset. 

Interesting note: when I first looked into this about
a year ago, the deluxe book (the most recommended 
as far as character creation choices) was out of print
and going for around 300 bucks where you could find 
it. But it is now apparently around 50 bucks and easily found. 

Last year for a couple session I played online in Kickstarted supers system I can't even remember what it was called. It was based on 5th ed DnD. It was kind of fun, but the guy kind of lost it mid-session and decided the system was no good for what he was doing. He declared he was probably going to try another system, but I passed. Put my search for a system on hold. 

But now in recent weeks I discovered Marvel Multiverse RPG, a fairly new system. I always rejected a licensed supers game, especially based on Marvel or DC, but the attractions of this was it was fairly rules light, and had excellent Roll20 support it seems. I immediately ordered the book off Amazon, and started watching Youtube videos about it. 

It has an odd, what I think is kind of clunky dice rolling system, but it is indeed simple. I can work with it I think. And it based around Marvel is OK. My Haven setting is more or less an alternate future version of the Mavel Universe (I always had it 20 years in the future of whenever I ran it) as a base, though having grown up on comics I was very familiar with Multiverses. I had Haven be a kitchen sink of genres, and other comic universe stuff could enter into it. Sci Fi in general really. I even had a Jedi show up in some old session. 

MM RPG has a rank system to determine your supers level, from street level like Daredevil all the way up to Galactus, and how that all works with the powers is something I need to research more of. Also it is all a little bit of an investment. The physical book was almost 40 bucks, and for Roll20 I will need to buy the in-platform version. For full functionality (sharing rules with players, a character sheet builder, etc) I think I need a subscription to something called Demiplane. But money is not really an object if I could get this off the ground with some decent players. 

I have plenty going on with my DnD right now. But I am around 30 sessions into the campaign and already past the point where I get a wander lust for other genres and systems. So as always it is sort of life raft building time. My research shall continue, but I am hopeful for supers action!

Cheers