Marvel RPG in Haven - "All Creatures Great and Small"

 

I was never that into beastfolk in DnD or any other media. Though I have long had a soft spot for Gnolls in my games. I mean, hyena-men with the builds of basketball players (I think listed as 7 feet in the orginal MM) is kind of a cool concept. Other than that, in my current Haven campaign there are cat-human hybrids Manx McAllister and his twin grandaughters I have been using as NPC's. But also my latest fascination with the anime Chainsmoker Cat was covered in a recent post. 

All this had me thinking more on beastfolk in recent weeks, and as of a week or two ago I decided I wanted more of this going on. So as a base for it my mind drifted to the furry community. 

I swear to god this is not a usual part of my thought processes. My deep fandom goes to hard sci fi films, comic books, rpg's, and some minor things in my orbit like certain anime. But Furry fandom was not really all that adjacent to me. I would say the closest I got to it was collecting maybe a half dozen issues of Omaha the Cat Dancer back in the day. 

That was decades ago and I am not really sure if furries existed yet and if that fandom was as sexually charged as it seems to have gotten. Nuff said I guess. But I decided that in the future setting Haven the furry community is just one of many such scenes. Much like the "Urban Cowboy" bar scene I tapped into in early sessions months ago when the character got involved in a kerfuffle between two fan scenes in two adjacent nightclubs.

Remember Juniper "Cowgal" West?

So here were my thoughts prior to introducing this stuff. Furries are a scene much as they are now, and the scene has been accepting of the "Anthro's" that are a sort of sub-culture of them. Anthro's are basically furries who go to more extreme lengths than just big floppy costumes. They tend to be heavily tattooed, very often get a certain amount of plastic surgery and/or dental work to get a bit of animal aesthetic. Then the next step are "Moreau's," who have had physical enhancements, either chemical or cybernetic, and even in some extreme cases (such as the Hyena lad "Hardee" at the top of this post) some animal DNA therapy. I will admit I am in large part inspired by an episode of Batman Beyond I saw many years ago that featured "Splicers," surgical genetic hybrids. 

I also had dreamed up that Mutants are sort of in the equation. With a large mutant community in New America City (they take up a neighborhood area they call "Xavier") many refer to it as "Mutie Town." They got political advocates and lawyers who fight for their rights.  In the decades after WW3, with the world mutant population having boomed, the Science Police have currently (in multiple countries) taken to policing the mutant communities. And we all know what more policing of a group leads to. I have not written down every possible notion about the political and sociological ins and outs (all in my head pretty much), but what I am thinking is that Anthros, the "Moreau" ones at the least, are trying to piggyback on upcoming mutant related legislation, and the mutant community is not having it.

But the Anthro's have their resources. I came up with two attorneys who are actually themselves part of the furry community.  Not Anthros' just furry cosplayers. 

Above: Peter Pedigree and Sonny Gold. And yes, those are just masks and costume attachments. They don't go into court with those (usually). 

So here is something I had not thought about originally. But the Furry/Anthro situation could be compared to certain LGBTQ issues and situations. Was not my intention, and it's not something I will lean into. I mean, I think mutants in Marvel have long been compared to racial and gay community issues. Not leaning into that, but I will mention it in a later post if a player vocalizes on that. 

I should mention at this point that a couple of days before former president and former Science Police director (see previous post) Russel Logan got on a Zoom call to the characters, and updated them on the Manx McAllister clone situation. See this post for his origin. He has been in Science Police custody since the character took him in to them. Logan gave them the lowdown he had just found out. On day one the creature acted like a rabid cat. On day two he believed he was Manx McAllister and demanded to know why he was there and why he looked different. On day three after behavioral staff explained he was the product of a teleport accident gone awry at Manx's birthday party, he was reflective. By the next day he was asking to be referred to by his new name "Sheut Neko." Neko being Japanese for "cat," and Sheut is one of the 7 aspects of the mortal soul in Egyptian spirituality, "Sheut" representing the shadow self. See: William S. Burroughs "Seven Souls"

Anyway, Sheut Neko apparently had gained teleportation powers at birth and escaped the facility. Back to the sessions.

So I did up some maps to a Furry members only nightclub, in the more upscale parts of uptown. 

The frontage of the nightclub "Felix the Cats." The limo belongs to the Furry attorneys, and there are not other cars because only VIP parking in the front. 

The Furry bouncer
"Chubs" McGill

 The characters are out on a night patrol, and they witness mutants approaching the front of the club, and a woman with apparent water powers entraps the bouncer in a curtain of water, and they enter. 

"Cascadia"

"Quatrain" He has the four
arms, Mighty 1, and Sturdy 1

"Swift" She's fast

"Bounce" He can become a 400 lb
rubber ball with Mighty 1 and Sturdy 1

The mutant squad enter the club and head to the lawyers table. The Furry attorneys seem to be meeting with members of the Anthro community. Besides the lawyers there is also a leader in the community ( a cat guy of course), some beast girls for some reason (groupies or something, I had yet to determine where I wanted to go with that. I just like the images), a male and female hyena Moreau's (sort of security for the group), and also Sheut Neko the Manx McAllister clone, who had already found allies within the Furry community.

Sheut was incognito at first, so used a hoodied image until he revealed himself.

Hardees sister Har Har

Community leader Chris Catfield

The females were there mostly for color, and because I had already collected a ton of images. But this black beauty I have in mind to eventually hook up with Sheut Neko. Seems about right. 

"Liz" is not exactly a beauty in my mammal eyes, but I like the image. 

This ended up being a two-session arc. The characters followed the mutants into the club and basically stood by as Cascadia approached the meeting table and read them the riot act for their trying to horn in on mutant legislation being worked on (I have not thought it all through, but I imagine healthcare related. Also, I don't know yet if the more extreme surgeries, especially the genetic splicing stuff, is fully legal). Paladin and Seraph were the closest to the table, and while Cascadia was saying her piece "Bounce" in his 400 lb. rubber ball form just dribbled sort of threateningly near the PC's. 

As the session was coming to a close (two hours or so a session at times feels just right, sometimes it just flies by). As usual Seraph tried to be a voice of reason, and told them police were probably on the way and they should leave. I just decided they would do so. One of my faults is that I almost always expect characters in my games to get right in the grill of potential foes. If this was my DnD they would have. But they remained sort of distant other  than Seraph being the voice of reason. Even with some minor assault and battery on the bouncers, the characters were not going to stop them, though were watching them closely. It had been a long week and I was tired, so I just figured I would end it. 

By the next morning I had regrets. I had put a good bit of work on the maps, the bar concept, and all that. But role play and my descriptions, along with the characters never really going right to the fisticuffs, sort of took the night. I sort of worried about the session being a non-starter for a couple of days. But in life one of my processes is to worry something to death until I had an epiphany, and that happened here. I would not let the encounter end. The mutants had not made it to the exit yet. So I dreamed up a continuation of the moment. 

Not that I needed more NPC's (favorite player Amber often goofs on me for using lots of NPC's, in this campaign especially). But I thought of a way to delay the exit of the mutant intruders. I decided that literal furry heroes, protectors of the community were present at the club. So when we started the following week, I had them run over and block the exit to tell the mutants they had committed battery and needed to wait for the police. I had them be a hero duo. I called them "Foxclaw and Hopper."

Though a furry without any physical alterations, Foxclaw's use of animal themed cybernetic equipment qualified her as an Anthro. I figured she was a cybernetics engineer who had created her and Hoppers equipment. Besides her Furry association, she also thought of herself as a bit of a crime fighter in general. She had her gauntlets that besides being clawed had a Mighty 1 grip strength. Her boots gave her a minor leaping ability, and her suit was micro chain that provided her a Sturdy 1. And her goggles gave her Heightened senses 1. 

Hopper already had some cosmetic mods, but Foxclaw had given her cybernetic leggings that granted her a decent leaping ability, and Mighy 1 for her kicks. Bit of armor for Sturdy 1. 

So mutant Cascadia assumed the two Furry heroes were acting on the orders of the Furry lawyers, so she sent the partially armored and 4- armed Quatrain to go and put some pressure on them, while having Bounce and Swift get Foxclaw and Hopper out of the way. The young speedster girl Swift did not have much in the way of offense but was prepared to bash somebody with a booze bottle. Meanwhile bounce, in big ball form, was blocked by Paladin and Igneous. He made some ricocheting attacks on them, bouncing off one and into the other, and back and forth. But Iggy  just grabbed the rubber ball man up in his usual grapple and dragged him outside where police where just showing up. Cascadia did some water attacks on the Furry vigilante's, while over at the Furry attorney table Nova flew over to block Quatrain from attacking. The tall mutant grappled Nova, who much like Seraph likes to do, started trying to talk the foe into just giving up on all this (way too many pacificists in this group). 

The cops were now coming in. Cascadia called off her peeps, because the plan was to not do more than basic assault and battery. They are activists, so expect to be arrested at times without sending anybody to the hospital. So the action ended fairly abruptly, like it does a lot with this group. Police Captain Lou Bannon showed up with more cops, and detained everybody in the club to figure it all out. 

Captain Louie is an old NPC from back in the day, when he was a lieutenant. He was usual comic relief, being a no-nonsense guys who was constantly irritated by meta human and their shenanigans. Older now, he is even more grumpy. I based him back then on Danny Devito's character from the old show Taxi. 

The mutants did not resist arrest, so they would be taken to the normal police station for processing, and probably not spend more than the night (as I may have mentioned the mutants have their own lawyers). But a couple of Sci Pol agents were called in to go along to the station to keep an eye on them a bit. There is a lot going on with the mutant community, and it is being watched by the Science Police, but usually there has to be major damage of harm for them to be locked up at Sci Pol headquarters. This was not considered any kind of terrorism. Basic police stuff. 

With things having calmed down, Iggy talked the bartender/owner about some stuff. Like what all this might be about. She is a normal human Furry, but dressed up like an old Marvel hero and called herself "Tigra."

He got some info on that was going on with this Anthro/Mutant stuff. And also about what Sheut Neko is doing with the Anthros. Since he has the mind of Quantum scientist Manx McAllister, he is aware of the miracles Manx had done with Teleporters, not just his recent de-aging with them, but also the fact that as a child he was combined with his pet cat in an accident, there is the possibility that Anthros would not have to go through expensive and painful procedures if that process could be duplicated. So Manx clone Sheut has brought that possibility to the community. More on that will come up later I hope. 

So another not too challenging combat situation in this session. I've decided that if I am going to rank the characters up anytime soon to Rank 4, I am going to need to pump up the challenge. I hope to do that next session with an arc that will fulfill that need. Stay tuned. Cheers. 

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 in Haven - more and more prepared to Wing It in sessions

Both my Marvel and DnD campaigns are on the weekends. Doing Friday and Saturday sessions is recipe for missing players here and there. 

My "Haven" campaign with Marvel Multiverse is on Fridays, and the DnD campaign on Saturday. And both are going better than I probably deserve. I might do another post about the makeup of each group (currently with the exception of one person the Haven campaign has come to be made up of players from my DnD night), but I will just say that Friday has tended to be a night I might most likely be missing a player or two. This is the price you pay for running on weekends. Maybe not me lately, but some of my players at least have a life. Especially if they have kids. If you are a family person you will go on vacations and such pretty much on the weekend from time to time. 

For the Haven sessions, I had early on settled into doing two sessions arcs with little story bits. It mostly just happened that way. With short sessions anything with meat on the bone should take a couple sessions at least. An encounter situation bleeding into the next. Player Amber mentioned the other week (she is smart as a whip at times) what I knew already; that I tend to run episodic sessions. Which works well for this kind of game I think, and very much how I always ran my supers campaigns going back to Villains and Vigilantes. But I have also found its useful to be prepared to do some little side encounter here and there depending entirely on who is available. If we have three players, we usually go for it. I mean, we only play for a couple hours on Friday night. I just started finding that I should be more prepared for little quick side things that can be done that night, but also these can potentially lead to more growth in the campaign and the characters. 

I do have the next couple of session arc chambered for some weeks now, but I keep tossing in quick little adventures. And I do have experience with this. Back in my Champions days we could play even if most of the group cancelled. That is how Justice Incorporated sort of started. Not enough players for The Protectors supergroup main campaign, so have a couple of JI characters stop a bank robbery or fight some gang members or something. But these little one session bites have been fun. And I tend to have players who love RP and character development. So many sessions first 45 minutes might be just the characters having a meeting. I will then have a choice of starting a little adventure arc or tossing a quick encounter at them. And I have been enjoying the little ones. Some I might have prepared way ahead of time. And some I might just whip up a half hour before the session. I have found that sort of exhilarating lately. 

And I have plenty of city images that I have been collecting since this started. Streets and rooftops. All you gotta do is make a blank page in your Roll20 pages, drag an image unto it, and you are almost there.

Endless amounts of this stuff online. The only thing is, if I don't have a foe done up in Demiplane, I need to do one up (I do have things like gang members and basic gunmen prepared at all times). But I have gotten pretty good at knocking out characters. Last year before the campaign I spent a lot of time whipping up NPC's. So I do have some chambered. But often I will need to spend a few minutes doing on up and finding and image for a token. 

Not too long ago we were down a couple of players, and the Paladin player had to miss a rare for him evening and with only about an hour and a half to play since we waited a bit (he is a valuable player in this campaign and has been very reliable, so I forgive his lack of pre-session communication), after a bit of role play and character interaction, I suggested that since they often say the characters go out to secluded areas to train, that they do a little "Danger Room" character vs. character training. I grabbed a map of a country road (from my collection of DnD session random images I often use) and let the three characters present we had; Iggy, Nova, and Seraph, go to town on each other. And not in the way you are suddenly thinking, you dirty dog. 

They actually were a bit confounded and maybe even resistant. "Uh, what do you want us to do?" I said "Train with each other. Have a fight." Just a few minutes into it, they were loving what I thought might be a rare bomb of an evening. But that is me, an experimenter. OK, not really, In past decades I did this with Champions sessions all the time. I even had a short X-Men of the future campaign as a teen so you know a danger room things happened at least once. Long time ago so don't remember details. Anyway, the point is, it was a hit. Amber said they should do it again soon. Especially funny moments include Igneous at 100 feet grabbing one of them and throwing them into the other. Also Seraph flying up to his ear and reaching in with her bo staff to beat on Iggys ear drum. I also realized I could nab a hand image from the free Roll20 marketplace and made it big and give him control of it so he could indicate where he was reaching.✋ Yeah, it was a blast and I only had to set up the map and let them have at it. 

Then the following week there was a point I gave Paladin a few minutes at night on the rooftops. I know I could count on the Paladin player to help make it quick (the player is no nonsense like the character and I think maybe former military), and it really was just a 10-minute thing. He had said he spent some nights sort of getting to know the city since he was from another country (the Mediterranean or something like that). So I had a couple members of the York Industries sponsored superteam Safeguard see him while on patrol and Blackwolf, an Alaskan who can turn into a giant supernatural wolf, engaged him in a couple rounds of combat before Wind Sorceress said that their sponsor would not like them going in on their own like that and flew them away. Before that though, Paladin gave Wind Sorceress a copy of the bible. He had yet to indicate he would have such, but he is part of some ancient religious warrior group.  So yeah, a quick little side things which I like to do for characters to give them a sense of their own life going on (he did not even mention it to the other characters for a couple sessions). 

OK, to keep this from getting too long, I will talk about the last couple of sessions that were pretty much prepared a half hour before the sessions. That this campaign has gotten really easy peasy to be prepared for is just one of the aspects I am loving. But yeah, hopefully soon get into another actual arc for them. A campaign does not live on mini encounters alone. YMMV

Cheers