Marvel Heroic Roleplaying - Greenspace: The Exciting Conclusion!

Last night was, as the post title suggests, the final session in our digression into Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.

Overall, I have to say I'm really enamored of this system. I loved supers games, and I collect them, but it's hard for me to find one that makes me want to run something other than TSR's Marvel game for pure four-color superheroics. I'll do With Great Power... if I want to go all indie, and I'll do Mutant City Blues if I'd rather have a strong investigative element, but I think MHR has perhaps become my game of choice for this genre.

Now, if I have a complaint, it's that it's too tied into the established Marvel universe. I'm not a comics fan, honestly. Superhero comics are too sexist, overall, for me to be a huge fan. But I love superheroes, and for me, RPGs are the perfect place to express that love, because I can tell superhero stories without anybody getting put into a fridge. It would be nice to have some sourcebooks to draw on for MHR games that don't require me to either use canonical characters or file the serial numbers off, but fortunately statting characters isn't all that hard (and FTR, I don't at all begrudge MWP for doing a purely licensed game; it's just lacking, slightly, for my purposes).

Anyway, I really do want to revisit these characters again, and when I do I plan on doing a more classic "organization of evil supers" kind of thing.

For the moment, however, last night's game:

The characters, recall, were being attacked by a giant wave of moss. Pink, thinking quickly, grabbed it and threw it, buying everyone some time. The moss attacked, punching at the group, but not really doing any damage. Arcanix used his magic to pull the remaining moss spores out of the Inquis Sorcerer Supreme and Inferno torched said spores. Arcanix then donated his magical energies to the Sorcerer, but he fell over and started sputtering (too much magic?).

Pink dodged around and tied up the moss-tendrils, and Duplex blasted it with his lasers, weakening it. And then Inferno cut loose with a fire blast that incinerated it.

In between scenes, the Sorcerer woke up. He told the characters that Inquis was less a magical sort of society and more about science. The whole planet was powered by solar lenses and cells, which the heroes realized explained why the Phylum had targeted it. Arcanix asked if, between them, they could find a way to blot out the sun for a while, and the Sorcerer said that they could probably nudge the planet's moon into an eclipse. Duplex figured that, with a sample of the moss, he could find a way to create a ray that would act as an herbicide for the Phylum, but he needed a lab in which to work. The Sorcerer said that the main medical facility had been scrubbed clean of the Phylum by the automated sterilization systems, so that might have what they needed.

The characters took to the air, but as they approached, found a huge field of thorns. It started throwing up thorns, and Inferno and Pink got cut up a bit (this was good for Pink, really, because her milestone involves taking trauma). They got to the hospital and Duplex blasted through the thorns, and Pink forced a window so the others could get in.

Immediately, the sterilization measures kicked on and Spore was nearly destroyed by them. The Sorcerer put up an umbrella (magic!) over him, but then the robots came and zapped him with lasers. Pink punted the robot down the hall, and Arcanix covered Spore in mystical armor to protect him. That scene over, we entered a Transition Scene.

Spore rebuilt his body (healing all of his physical stress). Inferno tried to get the alien machinery to work, but couldn't figure it out. Pink remain injured (see earlier issue). Arcanix and the Sorcerer worked their ritual to cause the eclipse, and Duplex used the robot that he zapped Spore to create a computer program that would alter the satellites controlling the solar lenses so that they fried the planet's surface with the anti-Phylum ray. And then we started the last Action Scene, up on the roof.

The opposition was the Phylum itself, represented by the doom pool. The moss and thorns attacked, but Inferno whipped up a Fire Shield d12 to protect them. Spore spread out so that the Phylum would come after him, and the Sorcerer tossed up a magical shield around the pylon sending the signal to the satellite.

But remember: The Inquis are technologically advanced. The sent in an incendiary missile, but the characters largely avoided that damage. All the managed to do was torch the encroaching plants. The next volley of smaller, explosive rockets did some damage to Spore (who absorbed a rocket), Arcanix (who mis-timed a teleport), Pink (who threw debris at one when it was too close, and became stressed out because of it) and Inferno (who blew one up too close).

Arcanix realized then that while the prophecy said that the chosen one was meant to die to save the world, he'd thought the "world" in question was Earth. But now he realized that Pink was meant to die to save Inquis...and he couldn't let that happen. He grabbed her and moved her inside the mystic shield (which made him his milestone but cost Pink hers, so that's a bummer).

The building was collapsing, and Duplex and Spore held up the pylon. Inferno torched the base of the building and then quickly put out the fire to solidify and stabilize it (comic science!), and then titled the dish back up into position. 

Just then, the Inquis aircraft swooped in...and blew away the next volley of rockets. The Phylum had been cleansed.

The characters met with the leaders of the Inquis nations, and received their thanks and a promise of friendship. They went back to Earth and the Inquis established inter-dimensional relations with Earth (Carlson was thrilled), and Duplex carried back a cartload of alien tech ("Look, this one cures cancer! For the Inquis. Don't know what it'll do to us."). The heroes were welcomed back to St. Louis as, well, heroes.

Epilogue: In deep space, the Phylum homeworld. "We've lost two worlds. Activate fifty more spores." And then the last page, a room the size of a football field, covered in spore-pods, ready to launch.

(Hey, it's me. Gotta end on a somewhat creepy note.)

Game Notes and Spies

I ran the first session of Night's Black Agents yesterday. Rather than letting the write-up bounce around my brain's to-do list for a week like I have of late, I'm gonna do it now, and then take some notes for the MHR game I'm running tonight, and then probably build a fire in my kitchen because it's fucking cold in here.

Moving on!

Well, although my last entry was some notes on the game itself, I realized that I didn't talk at all about the characters. So:

• John Smith, ex-NSA spook, trained as muscle, bag-n-burner and an asset handler. Smokes a cigar at the completion of a mission (Symbol), sees his landlady Rossa (in Barcelona) as a source of Solace, and has a Safety refuge in his summer house in Zurich. 
• Wolfgang von Hanover, formerly of the BSI, trained as a cobbler and bagman. Carries a silver mark (Symbol), has a brother named Fritz (Solace), and a nice family hunting cabin in the Alps (Safety). 
• Delia Lockwood, formerly with the IRA, a black bagger, cuckoo and hacker (the player is trying very hard to keep her distinct from Clarice Focault, her character in my Edge of Midnight  game). Delia carries her mom's rosary (Symbol), has a younger sister named Sharon (Solace) and a beach house in the south of Spain (Safety). 
• Amelie Rousseau, formerly of the French Police Nationale. Amelie is an investigator, analyst and watcher. She holds on to a label from her father's vineyard (Symbol), has an 8-year-old niece named Jacqueline in Normandy, and enjoys staying at a hotel in Morocco (Safety). 
• Saul David, original of Moussad. Saul has a photo of his dead brother (Symbol), confides in Samuel, a bartender (Solace) and has a condo in Punta Cana (Safety). 

As I mentioned in the notes, I ran (S)Entries, the starter in the NBA book. An aside: I really like it, because it assumes that you're going to write up your own vampire conspiracy and leaves room to tailor things accordingly. 

So we start off in Croatia, as the characters arrive at a little motel to take a meeting with a fixer name Georg Rudek. They arrive severally, and the folks who hadn't met introduce themselves (most of them know Wolfgang, as he's prepared papers for them in the past). In retrospect, I wish I'd milked this scene a little more and had the players be more specific about how they were contacted and so on, but hey. 

So then Rudek arrives, and presents the operation: The characters are to steal a laptop computer from Brigadier-General Malcolm Lennart, a Canadian working for NATO. He's leaving Sarajevo in six days, flying home to Canada, and Rudek's principals want it stolen before then. After that, they make contact with Anton Dedopovic and travel into the Serbian zone of Sarajevo to deliver the goods and get their remaining cash. They don't want Lennart killed, necessarily, because that will put scrutiny on what he was doing.

And what's he doing? Rudek doesn't know (and it isn't relevant anyway). Some of the characters speculate Lennart may have stumbled upon a Bosnian or Serbian war criminal and he's playing it close to the vest, for whatever reason. But Rudek notes that he's taking that laptop home every night and he hasn't filed any reports, so that's a breach of protocol. 

Rousseau calls up a contact she knows in the area for dirt on Rudek and Dedopovic. Rudek, she says, is pretty much a standard fixer; in the pocket of the Russian mob, but sticks to his word. Dedopovic, however, is a killer, rapist, war criminal and all-around bastard, but he does stay bought, at least for the duration of a given job. This does not fill Rousseau with joy, but the operation continues. 

The characters head to Sarajevo and do their intel. Lennart is pretty clean; not much money, steady girl in Alberta to whom he remains faithful, and a pretty boring life. No addictions or unsavory appetites, and no way to buy him or pressure him easily. Smith notes that he was supposed to finish out his NATO training in Naples, but requested a transfer to Sarajevo (the characters guess this may have had something to do with his investigation). Rousseau obtains a nondescript delivery van and spies on his house, noting the security system, while Smith reactivates an old Cover identity of his (William Hayne, an American solider working for NATO) and has Hanover forge him some new papers. He goes on base to watch Lennart there. 

From all this, the team builds up a pretty good picture Lennart's schedule. Lockwood breaks in one morning before the cleaning lady gets there and plants bugs and cameras, and hacks his Internet connection so they can see what he's looking at. They find that the data on the laptop is locked up pretty tight, but he seems to be using online searches for information about a variety of topics, many of them energy or electricity related. 

The characters decide to build a clone of the laptop with some identically named files, but corrupted data. They accomplish this (and I gotta say, I love Tactical Tag-Team Benefits), and then David mixes up a knockout drug and has Lockwood put it on Lennart's toothbrush. He falls asleep in bed, Lockwood breaks in, swaps the computers, washes the place for all her bugs, and leaves.

They watch him the next day (making sure that he doesn't have any copies), but Lennart leaves work in the middle of the day, comes home and makes a call, which turns out to be an order to move his flight to Canada up. The team initially suspects he's got copies stashed with his girl in Alberta, but nothing else supports that - he doesn't have the training to do online stash safely, and he hasn't sent anything overseas in a long while. The characters decide they're done (and figure if Dedopovic wants to have them go to Canada to follow up, that's a new deal they can negotiate). 

They look into the area where the dropoff is supposed to happen - it's a cemetery, and a good place for an ambush. Rousseau half-heartedly reminds everyone that Dedopovic supposedly is good for the job, and they make contact.

Next time, we'll run the drop.