Marvel rpg in Haven - "More News at 11" or "The attack of Front Butt"

To follow up on my last post about "winging it" I just wanted to lay out the last couple of sessions real quick (yes, I am finally caught up on posting about my now several month-old Marvel Multiverse campaign) which as far as the encounters were both put together about a half hour before the sessions. Usually something that can take about an hour. And the more and more I get used to the system the faster I get with rolling off my NPC sheets and all that in combat. There is usually around 45 minutes of character stuff having nothing to do with combat (thought a little action might happen ad hoc), so this is kind of perfect without having it be a "two session arc." 

I actually get online about a half hour before game time anyway. In part to just make sure my maps are ok and all that. Also, I usually during that time have a beer or a cocktail to "grease the wheels" and get myself in a fantasy state of mind. Maybe pack a bowl with some herbal refreshment. 

Or if tasty pre-rolls are on sale at "the place"

In last week's session the party was catching up on some things in a meeting at the Justice Incorporated offices. Guests were lined up, including "Russel Logan," a former president and director of the Science Police who was a major figure in my campaigns of yore. He gave them some inside info on what the Science Police were doing with the Manx McAllister clone from the house party a few sessions ago (retired now he acts as a consultant to both Sci Pol and Justice Incorporated boss and friend from old campaigns Patricia Elizabetha Kyono). And also, an appearance by Manx McAllister himself who came to complain about the Just Inc. handing the clone over to Sci Pol in the first place without calling him first. 

Scruffy retirement R. Logan, who back in the
day I used a Snake Plisskin miniature for 

Manx McAllister who is unretired since he de-aged himself
in the teleporter experiment that created the dark clone

At the end they went into the reception area and saw out the window that there was some smoke coming from a couple floors of an office building. They went there Lickety split. 

So again, whipped this up a little bit before the session, because with half the night spent in character interaction, I did not want to start an arc. So I just put some maps together and made an arsonist foe real quick. 

Igneous grew to his 100 foot form and helped rescue folk and
ultimately use his dinner table size hand to pat the fires out

I like to use little animated affects for fire and weather effects. The players love it. Above: Seraph, Nova, and Paladin deal with the arsonist after rescuing some office workers. Below: Iggy leans into the 10th floor and pats out the fires with this big dinner table size hands. 

The mercenary arsonist "Firefall"

It was running late so knocked off for the night, but in the next session started right with the characters dealing with police and firemen down on the street. Paladin was handing the armored arsonist over to the police, Iggy was being congratulated by unafraid firemen for helping them by growing big and patting out the fire hotspots up on the 10th floor. Seraph and Nova also were being thanked by the victims they flew down to safety. 

They were approached by a small news team of young 20 somethings, led by fresh out of college "Miranda Veracruz De La Hoya Cardinal"

If you ever watched later seasons of 90's sitcom Married with Childred, that name might sound familiar. I stole it from a recurring character on the show when Al Bundy and pals got in trouble out on the streets of the city. 

I think Al and his pals gang called themselves "NoMam"
a sort of women haters club. Yeah, TV used to be able to
do things like that without everybody getting cancelled.

Miranda on the show was basically a parody of a thing Los Angeles local news stations were doing in the 90's (and maybe in other cities). They suddenly had all these "man in the street" ladies of Latin descent covering stories. Maybe an early DEI thing, I dunno. But they were always young and pretty. Back then the station I watched had Lauren Sanchez. You might recognize here nowadays as the wife of Jeff Bezos. 

"Cha-Ching $$$"

Anyway, young Miranda Veracruz introduced herself as the niece of famous New America City newsman Rodrigo Cardinal, and she is trying to make a name for herself and her team. She gets by the police taped off area, and starts doing quick interviews of the victims, quickly moving to their saviors Seraph and Nova, and asks them for some exclusive words about what happened. 

They were really standoffish with the young reporter, but she managed to talk them into going to her favorite restaurant down a nearby side street, which since it was after the lunch hour would not be crowded.

What Miranda was offering was a dedicated news team situation. She can contact them with tips on things, and they can give her and idea where they might be mixing it up in places in the future. They were not especially up for the idea, some even suggesting it might be an ethical situation. But she convinced them to take her private number. 

When lunch was over and they were all leaving is when I used my next "insta-encounter" low prep situation. Down the street they saw a couple or three gym meatheads come smashing out of the front windows, followed by an obese and angry patron who seemed to have recently gotten powered up by somebody he referred to as "The Power Broker." Seems like despite being a big guy, he was picked on by the fitter guys. Now he had returned with a bit of Mighty 2 and Sturdy 1.

His butt is not really in the front. But you have
probably seen those super heavy guys who 
have a big cleft in the belly.

Once involved in the situation, the group tried to stop Front Butts rampage. Iggy mostly was busy trying to keep Miranda Veracruz and her crew from getting too close (in the image above you can see him using his big hand to keep them at bay). Nova had to dodge big 40 pounder free weights that Fronty tossed at him. Paladin jumped right in to lay blows on the guy, even after Iggy grabbed him with a giant hand grapple. But Seraph, always the heart and soul of the group, got them to back off, and talked Front Butt down from his anger so the arriving cops could take him into custody. 

These were easy to put together encounters as I say, and I could get used to it. But I want to get to more meaty things. My two session arcs, as I call them. And start to do some next session. Stay tuned. 

Cheers

Marvel RPG - Ain't no party like a Quantum Scientist party!

 

So after the last sessions adventures in The Liminal Zones, the group had a meeting with employer Elizabeth Patricia Kyono, and she tells them that the grateful McAllister twins have invited both her and Justice Incorporated to Grandpa Manx's 86th birthday party they are throwing for him the following Saturday night. Knowing the twins a bit as both genius quantum scientists AND party girls, she says that the party is likely to be as much about them as it will be about Grandfather Manx. 

(for more info my cat hybrids in the game in my last post and the one before that)

And so it is. Not just many members of the higher science community, but also many McAllister Scientific employees both old and young, and a certain amount of B and C level celebrities who have gravitated to the charismatic and energetic McAllister sisters. 

The Bottoms is the southernmost area of New America City, and is a district of low-income neighborhoods, in large part made up of a diverse ethnic population originally started by refugees  after WW3 from places like The Caribbean and parts of South America. The Twins Maxine and Tabitha's house is part of a strand of wealthy lake front properties that you often get in otherwise poor areas. And such was the cat sister's pad.

Arriving with Kyono via stretch limo, the group headed in, and in the main hall Manx and his granddaughters were on the dance floor cutting a rug. Old man Manx still had some hip in his hop and was doing all sorts of 80's and 90's moves (the Robot, Roger Rabbit, etc).

The grand hall had a stage for live band and DJ, but also in the room were a couple of vintage teleporter pods. As a matter of fact, family heirlooms. They were the very groundbreaking experimental pods Manx's parents invented in the 70's, and the self-same ones that young Manx god stuck in as a kid and got spliced with his pet cat.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. 

In the main room the twins had their father, Manx jr., video call from a big view screen on the wall, wishing his dad a happy Bday. Manx jr. went into biology like his late grandmother, bucking the quantum science the rest specialized in. He was doing research in The Savage Land, and was sort of me planting a seed to eventually get the group to go there when I think of a good way to do it. 

 

I had not fully fleshed it out yet, but in the moment I decided that he had been down there long enough to have been a father figure or something to some younger dinos. When I plan the adventure out I will go deeper with what is going on there.  

The party was raging inside and out back in the pool area. But for those in the house Manx sr. had the music turned down and declared he is going to do a little experiment as a party trick. He explained the pods where his hybrid form was created as a kid, and he showed an old device that he said his parents copied his bio data when he was 21 years old in the course of their attempts to figure out how to separate the cat DNA from his human form. Though as 21 years old he had gotten used to who he was and did not let them continue their quest to "cure" him. But tonight he would use that info from his much younger self for a little experiment. 

At this point a man who had yelled a few things out during the video call with Manx jr. spoke up again. His name is Boris Brutorz, a Russian biochemist and former colleague of Manx jr. As a matter of fact, Boris and Manx jr. worked together to cure Boris of an affliction. The Russian scientist was complaining about how the quantum scientists in the McAllister family were dangerously playing god with their ongoing experiments, and that only his old friend Manx jr. was doing the right thing by engaging in bio science. Manx sr. bluntly asked how he got into his party, and that he was one to talk, having gotten in legal trouble in the past with chemically doping himself and others in his work of the past, and actually causing a real danger, which we will become clear in a moment, dear reader. But Manx said that since his son Manx jr. not only helped cure him of a dangerous affliction years ago, but that he also helped him with related legal issues so should shut the hell up and let everybody enjoy the party.

Note: this guy is an old NPC of mine from Champions games of yore. In a way he was my Bruce Banner, and my incredible Hulk. 

Biochemist Boris Brutorz

So old man Manx went into the pod, had assistants activate it, and teleported from one 75 years old pod to the other. 

He was the first human to ever be teleported,
and here he was doing it again all these decades later

Manx came out of the misty antique pod chamber, and as planned he had used the data his parents stored of him in the 80's, and he was reassembled in that form. A 21-year-old cat human hybrid. 

The twins Maxine and Tabitha were angry and appalled that he was going to use the ancient tech (updated with some modern addon's of course), especially since their personal research was trying to get portal technology viable rather than the breaking down and transmitting bio matter. Now they were just flabbergasted. 

"Sis, we've seen old pics of gramps, but 
they don't do justice to how foxy he was.."

The whole crowd were amazed, and many not yet really understanding what happened. Were they being punked?

Boris Brutorz was mad upset with all this, and though it was thought his old affliction was cured, it came back with a roar. He turned into his own raging alter ego, "The Brute". 

Again, he was my Hulk for my games many years ago. And if the image looks familiar, yeah, back in the day I imagined him looking like Hanover Fiste from the 1980 Heavy Metal film. 

"Don't worry, I got an angle"

First the enraged creature smashed one of the pods, while yelling and cursing in Russian. Manx cried out. These pods were precious to him. The characters jumped right in to fight Brute, with Igneous growing to his 24-foot size and knocking the raging monster across the room, out through the plate glass windows, and out to the crowded pool area where the party was still raging. 

 

As a Southern Californian who grew up near Malibu I have
been to a bunch of pool parties like this in my life. 

The others came as they were, but Amber did up a version of Seraph
with a sexy party dress special for the session. Yowsa!

Out at the pool, they managed to take down Brute after taking some lumps themselves. Brute was Rank 5 compared to them being Rank 3. But he was not exactly Hulk level power. But formidable to give them a really good fight, which is the stage of the campaign we are in now.  

But something else was going on in the house. The teleporter pods were sparking and misting, especially the big cable that connected them. The characters came in to check, and there in the haze was an odd site. A glowy eyed and pitch-black apparent clone of young Manx. 

The creature was confused, then bared fangs and popped claws as the crowd grew to gawk at him. Everybody was sort of perplexed as to what happened except for Paladin who started giving Manx shit for doing such an experiment in public, and what danger the creature might be. Manx explained that extra bio matter is included in the teleporter system to account for any dangerous glitches that could occur in a teleporting form, and that the damaged pods has caused a full copy, albeit different looking, of Manx. 

The creature ran off into the lake and swamps area, and though the party gave chase he got away. A fleet of police cars surrounded the neighborhood, as Science Police showed up and questioned Manx and the twins. Even his granddaughters were raising eyebrows at the de-aged Manx for what he did. But he was still in the glow of being a young man again. 

We had to end there. But ramifications of all this will surely appear in upcoming sessions. I mean, of course they will heh heh. 

Cheers

I think Gilligan's Island helped inspire my Superhero Setting

 

I mentioned once or twice that my Futuristic supers/cyberpunk setting HAVEN was based in large part on the Pacific island techno nation described in Superhero 2044. But there are plenty of inspirations, and why I like it to be a pastiche of genres. Comics (both superhero and otherwise), cyberpunk, future noir, supernatural, etc. 

It may not be pretty, but I can't
stop displaying it..

But it's that weirdness magnet nature of it. A place of magic and intermittent gateways to and from other places. The kind of stuff that for centuries gave it a haunted reputation that kept pacific islanders or adjacent Asian countries from inhabiting it for extended periods. Which meant that the United States could colonize it with no shame.

Though many Karens and Darrens may disagree

There were two weirdness attracting locations in my childhood TV time that caught my attention. One was a show called Green Acres (existing in the same continuity with other hick shows produced by Paul Hennig such as Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction). 

Hennig with our favorite
 (and most feared) TV Granny 

Starring old timey character actors Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. Two New York socialites move to a rural dump of a farm, and tons of surreal and fourth wall breaking things start to happen. The husband is baffled, and the wife is clueless (it kind of felt like everybody was in on a conspiracy to drive Mr. Douglas insane). I don't think there were ever aliens or anything, but clearly there were odd things going on in Hooterville. As I got older, I was convinced a cult was at play in the county. 

As an aside, when I eventually watched reruns post puberty,
I was convinced everybody was sleeping with Mrs. Douglas.
I had weird fantasies I guess😇

The other weird show was Gilligan's Island. And a strong case for weirdness magnet. That pacific island often seemed small in the distance shots. 

But in general, depending on the particular episode sometimes, it would have to be much bigger. The Gilligan fandom wiki describes it at between 200 to 400 square miles. That is between the sizes of San Francisco and Rhode Island. Fairly sizable. But like anything in that show it was changeable. Sometimes it just had a volcano. Sometimes it also had a mountain range. And though the castaways sometimes found washed up crates of supplies, it clearly had enough food sources to keep everybody healthy, and the Skipper plump. Freshwater sources, and even natural gas. But it seemed changeable. And maybe part of its magic was it actually changes sometimes. 

And totally a taboo place. It is large enough to surely have been able to support at least a small population. But was never settled, even though it has multiple nearby islands, presumedly smaller, that supported natives. Not just that, but secluded, often hostile tribes. By the 1960's there should not have been much of that in the pacific. So if Gilligan's Island is at least partially part of some extra dimensional space (like The Isle of Dread is in some later editions of DnD), some other nearby islands may be as well. Some of those natives also practice what seems like a form or Caribbean Voodoo. 

The island also has, at times, chimps, and even a gorilla. Not species native to the Pacific. One could say they were part of a ships cargo that got wrecked in the past. But maybe also interdimensional gateways. Also in one episode a spider the size of a dinner table, though of course that could be from radiation, but hey, still weird. 

It's kind of jacked up and crippled looking, so 
the radiation thing makes sense. 

In the past, I have had monsters on the island of my setting Haven and will likely in this campaign. For example, keeping with the Pacific supernatural themes, am planning to have the group have to face an evil, anti-colonial shaman controlling a giant animated totem. 

Kind of racist, maybe potentially?

So lots of other weirdness. A jungle boy shows up. An advanced robot. A surfer who somehow surfs in on a tsunami from Hawaii...which the wiki says is over 200 miles away. Yeah. There is something to this island. 

When a young Kurt Russell decided the acting
life was for him. Hubba hubba. 

When the stuntman in the suit decided
the acting life was for him. 

OK, yeah, so these poor chumps were stranded on a magical, maybe cursed island. It was sort of the Twin Peaks of the Pacific. As a kid I thought it was all pretty funny. As an adult, it makes me think. But I am a gamer so it damn will should. It's all about imagination. And the show and its elements sure tapped into it. 

I will admit, when I was a kid and was altering the Pacific island nation setting from Superhero 2044 into my own vision, Gilligan's Island was probably not always on my mind. But over those early campaigns and the ones well into adulthood (crossing three decades) it no doubt got mentioned. But I am sure my young mind was informed by its elements. Without the show, for me the Pacific would have been being a Southern Californian surfer growing up and being exposed to Pacific Island people and culture, and otherwise what I saw in old war movies. Not all that weird. 

But the touches of weirdness are not all Pacific Ocean in flavor. The worldwide crisis of WW3 around 40 years ago caused the biggest migration crisis in known history, and Haven has very diverse populations. Caribbean, Russian, Latin American, and others reside in Haven. And in certain enclaves in New America City. The southernmost part of the city, "The Bottoms," comes up against swamp land, and the beliefs of groups like Caribbeans and Creole bring some of the mystique in their history to the proceedings. Old Town and The Bottoms is steeped in a certain amount of mystery. Old buildings. Think the Bradbury Building in Bladerunner. 

One of the characters for sure keeps things Weird. He is Ra Ta, a little alien who flies around in a small UFO. His player is an 18-year-old with school and work, so he pops in for an hour or two here and there. So I just assume he comes in and out of a liminal space. He and the player are pretty funny, so I don't mind. 

But yeah, bottom line, I like my weirdness whatever the genre. And I get my inspiration wherever I find it. Just as it should be. YMMV.

Cheers