Marvel: Into the Salt Mines

Last night we finished up the Marvel Superheroes portion of our supers extravaganza (it's gonna be a while before get to the next one just for scheduling reasons, but that's fine). Here's last time.

Our heroes get up in the morning and meet up at the entrance to the mines. They enter and descend past the bits that are still in use, and into the strange, dark areas that are supposedly discontinued. And then Night Fyre steps on a pressure plate, and the whole end of the tunnel swivels like a lazy Susan, carrying her and Magnus into another spoke and leaving Whispers and Mirage with a dead end.

Mirage starts feeling around with her hyper-touch powers, looking for a way to activate the spoke (and she feels gears turning beneath the ground). But then she and Whispers hear clop clop behind them, and see the terrifying red eyes of the Black Horse! The Horse charges and kicks at Mirage! Whispers runs up and body-checks the Horse, knocking it away and staggering it. It squares up and prepares to charge again.

Meanwhile, in the other spoke, Night Fyre and Magnus suddenly find themselves in the psionic cage of the Caped Man! He steps forward and demands Magnus' surrender, but Magnus, of course, isn't having it and pulls a sharpened playing card out of his hat. He plants it in the Caped Man's leg, and the Man falls back, yelping in pain (but keeps the cage active). They hear a whooshing sound from down the corridor a ways...

Back at the Horse fight, Mirage pulls a rope out of her kit and lassos the Black Horse. She yells to Whispers to get the Horse under control, and Whispers activates one of her lesser known powers - animal mimicry! She speaks to the Horse, and tells it to calm down, and the Horse, very perplexed, does so.

The two of them have a conversation, and the Horse reveals that it was sent to distract them while the Caped Man and the White Rabbit capture Magnus. The Horse, however, isn't really interested in hurting anyone, and Whispers kinda seals the deal when she gives it the apple slices from her go-bag. The Black Horse agrees that it would happier somewhere else, somewhere with grass and sunlight. 

Back in the other spoke, the whoosing is revealed to be the White Rabbit! He zips up to Night Fyre and rabbit-punches her in the kidneys, nearly dropped her (only her iron will keeps her standing), but then Magnus pulls a little grenade filled with black goop from his hat and drops it. It explodes into tar and sticks up him, Night Fyre, and the White Rabbit, and the Rabbit panics and tries to jump free.

Night Fyre teleports out of the goo and the psionic cage and appears next to the Caped Man, who has pulled himself to his feet and prepares to psi-blast Magnus. She unleashes a concentrated blast of heat and he falls, quivering, suffering from heat stroke.

Magnus talks to the White Rabbit, who agrees that this sucks and he wants no part of it. He tells Magnus that Soliloquy is working on a multiversal device and wants Magnus as the battery. He agrees to get lost if Magnus lets him go, and Magnus pulls a vial of a solvent that dissolves the tar from his hat. The White Rabbit, now freed, zooms off into the dark. 

Night Fyre helps the Caped Man to his feet and Magnus finds a bottle of water somewhere in the hat. The Caped Man shows them how to activate the corridor turntable, and they wind up back in the original spoke with Whispers, Mirage, and the Black Horse.

The group of them talk and Mirage asks whether the Caped Man has a name besides "the Caped Man." He says he doesn't; he was nothing, and then he was the Caped Man, and there was nothing in between. But maybe he could take off the cape and be someone else, he doesn't know. He does know that he has no desire to be hurt on Soliloquy's behalf anymore. 

Whispers gives the Caped Man an address and tells him and the Horse to meet her there tonight, and she'll help them get set up somewhere. The Caped Man tells them how to get to the center of this labyrinth, and warns them that the Woman in Green still awaits, and she's not going to be talked out of loyalty to Soliloquy. He says that she's capable of putting up a force field that repels anyone hostile to her or Soliloquy, and she uses weighted scarves to fight. He then gets on Black Horse and they two of them gallop away.

The heroes move forward through the labyrinth, and eventually come to the center - and therein find a huge machine and a fairly ordinary-looking man standing on it, eyes shut, hovering a bit off the ground, muttering to himself. As he does, parts of the machine slowly form from nothing and slot themselves in. Behind the man is a rectangular frame with a custom-made hollowed-out indentation, clearly made for Magnus. It even has a space for his hat.

A woman in a green dress stands out in front of all of this, and points to the heroes. She demands that Magnus surrender, which of course the heroes refuse (Mirage points out that Magnus never consented to be a battery, but the Woman in Green doesn't seem to understand that). Her eyes crackle amber, and a wave of force hits the heroes.

Whispers, Magnus, and Mirage all summon their will and keep their hostility under control, and the force melts away. Night Fyre just struggles against the force and manages to keep her footing. She blasts heat at the Woman, but it dissipates in the wake of the force field. Whispers puts herself between the Woman and the others, and the Woman swings scarves in a menacing circle, but Magnus hurls a playing card and slices them in half! (The Woman immediately produces more.)

Mirage sends a duplicate up on the dais and then channels her strength through it, grabbing Soliloquy. His concentration breaks and the machine pieces in process vanish, and he howls "Woman! Kill the others, get me the magician!"

Whispers grabs the scarves the Woman is holding, but she drops them and produces more! She lashes out and strikes Whispers and Night Fyre with them. Night Fyre is staggered, but Whispers barely notices - just how strong is she!?

Magnus reaches into his hand and pulls out a set of inhibitor cuffs, and Mirage leaps (with Soliloquy in tow) down from the dais. She lands next to Magnus, and Magnus, who had been planning on putting the cuffs on the Woman, shrugs and slaps them on Soliloquy.

And then Magnus' eyes go all starry. The force that has been preventing him from teleporting to his Top Hat dimension snaps back like a rubber band, and the last thing Whispers, Mirage, and Night Fyre see is Magnus vanish into nothing...

...and Magnus reappears high above another city, and looks around, sighs ("not again"), and starts to fall. 

Marvel: Evil Horse!

Time for thrilling horse-based heroics! Here's last time.

Our heroes are in the park near the waterfront in beautiful Believeland, when suddenly a big ol' black horse with demonic fire-eyes appears and starts busting up the place! People run, but the heroes spring into action. Magnus reaches into his hat and pulls out a vial of holy water and throws it at the horse, but it doesn't seem to have any measurable effect. Mirage creates a bunch of duplicates to surround the horse and reach out menacingly, and the horse kicks at one of them. Its hoof goes right through the duplicate, though, and it backs up, confused.

Whispers mentally probes the horse and realizes that it's acting as a distraction - someone else is here, about to take advantage of the chaos. She grabs Mirage and tells her this, as Night Fyre teleports onto the horse's back and tries to wrangle it. 

Magnus sees this and reaches into his top hat, and pulls out another hat (yo dawg) - the Hat of Wranglin'! He throws it to Night Fyre and she catches it, and is immediately imbued with the power of rodeo-ing! She continues to try and grapple the horse into submission, but it is far too strong.

Mirage picks up Whispers and levitates them up to get a bird's-eye view of the area, and Whispers, using her immense brain-power, spots a man with a handlebar mustache and a big blue cape watching the proceedings. Magnus pulls a lariat out of his hat and ropes the horse, and the horse gallops into the sky and pulls Magnus towards the Caped Man.

The Man gestures at Magnus and he finds himself in a cage made of psychic energy. Touching it causes pain, and of course Magnus' teleportation powers still aren't working. Night Fyre's are working fine, however, so she poofs over and tries to pull the cage away. She gets the same psionic feedback for her trouble.

Whispers notes something moving towards the battlefield really quickly ("Speedster incoming!"), and Mirage lands and socks the Caped Man and knocks him right the fuck down (Mirage is quite capable of lifting cars, so she packs a punch). Whispers reads his punch-drunk mind, and learns that he's called the Caped Man...and that's it. The horse is the Black Horse, the speedster is the White Rabbit, and somewhere there's a Woman in Green (which Whispers saw on security footage). They all answer to - were created by? - someone called Soliloquy. And they're attempting to kidnap Magnus.

As if on cue, the speedster zooms up and it's a huge, anthropomorphic white rabbit in a waistcoat. Magnus is initially overjoyed, but then the rabbit slaps on a pair of manacles that click and whir and restrain his hands ("Rude."). The Rabbit looks to the Horse and says "There, get him back to base!" but Night Fyre grabs the lariat and tries to teleport around the Horse to hogtie it.

It...doesn't work. Night Fyre misjudges the 'port and winds up on a food truck. Whispers, not sure what to do (and not aware that she has superhuman physical endurance and strength - it's never come up!) body-checks the White Rabbit and knocks him down. He looks up at her, obviously not expecting this outcome. The Black Horse tries to nudge Magnus onto his back, but Magnus dodges, and the Caped Man picks himself up and levitates into the air.

Mirage follows ("You want to have a levitate race? FINE.") but the Caped Man puts her in one of those psionic cages and that stops her. Whispers shoves Magnus out of the way and winds up pushing him halfway to the water's edge ("what the hell?"). The White Rabbit, skittish at the best of times, decides that's enough of this and leaps into the air. The Black Horse follows, galloping through the sky, and the Caped Man jumps on its back as it passes.

The heroes pick themselves up and Night Fyre burns through the cuffs to get them off of Magnus. A dude has been livestreaming this, which means that Whispers' existence has been exposed, but she refuses to identify herself to the adoring public (and mentally starts working on a script to replace her image with Rick Astley in the footage). The heroes get cheered for driving off these strange villains, and they retire to Whispers' lair. 

Analysis of White Rabbit's fur shows that it matches the fur they found in the robots' gears, and Mirage's hyper-touch power confirms particulate salt. The manacles are designed to contort with the wearer, preventing someone getting leverage or being able to move their hands, and they're clockwork and, like the robots, made from custom pieces that were apparently created out of nowhere.

The heroes decide to rest up and then head to the salt mines to investigate this "Soliloquy" character. Magnus tries to vanish into his Top Hat, but the power still doesn't work, so instead he crashes with Night Fyre.

Marvel: Special Pint-Sized Issue!

You know, like the opposite of a SPECIAL GIANT-SIZED ISSUE! Little quickie session last night because we were playing online because Michelle and I were recovering from illness. Here's last time. On we go! 

The morning after their big fight with clockwork robots, our heroes head to the local hub and HQ of the NDEAC (National Department of Enhanced and Altered Crimes), Site 121. In contrast to the similar places Magnus has seen in his multiversal travels, this place is pretty cheery - the architecture isn't brutalist, there are actually colors and gardening and landscaping, and there are framed pictures on the wall of the lobby depicting some of Believeland's famous events involving superhumans.

The heroes meet with Agent Carlson (every universe has one), who takes them into the building to where the robots are being stored. To get there they all walk through a kind of metal detector; Carlson explains it's a quick analysis to make sure they aren't giving off any energies that are going to react explosively with anything down here ("learned that the hard way!"). 

Night Fyre and Mirage walk through with no issues; the machine makes different noises for each of them. Whispers, of course, isn't physically present, but is watching and listening through button cams on the others' shirts. Magnus walks through and the machine...does nothing. Carlson has him go back and walk through again, and again, nothing. A technician calls Carlson over and they have a quick confab. Magnus eavesdrops, and hears the conversation: "Nothing. He just doesn't have superpowers." "Oh, he's one of the ones without powers. That's fine. Just don't mention it, maybe he's sensitive about it." Magnus, who absolutely does have powers, is somewhat perplexed, but doesn't press the issue.

The three of them (plus Whispers, watching) enter a lab with the wreckage of the robots laid out on metal tables. They get to work doing analysis, started with just looking real closely. Night Fyre finds tufts of fur in the gears of the robots, and an analysis in the...furn-alyzer shows that it's rabbit fur. Magnus opens up a chest panel of a robot to see if there's a little wheel for a rabbit to run on or a control cockpit for a rabbit to pilot the robots (stranger things have happened), but nope, the robots are powered by steam and electrical discharge created by the steam (comic-book science!). 

Magnus does reach into his hat and pull out a rabbit ("Just checking if Mr. Fluffles was still there"), but it makes him think about the rabbit fur and how long and thick it is. This fur would have to belong to a rabbit...almost the size of a man. Whispers digs into the databases and looks for heroes or villains with a rabbit-theme, maybe something like Night Fyre, only a bunny instead of a bird. But no dice; the Lapine Avenger died some years back, and Evil Pink Death Bunny is doing life in prison. This is something new.

Mirage examines the robots from the perspective of metallurgy and archaeology, and notes that the parts used to make these things are clearly custom made, but there are no stamps or machining marks...almost like they were created in their current form, out of nothing. Whispers widens her search, looking for superhumans themed around Alice in Wonderland (white rabbit, after all). She does find something - a couple of years ago a dragon appeared in downtown Believeland, smashed up a block, but then was beaten back by the heroes of the city and just...vanished. The thinking at the time was that it was driven into its home dimension (Believeland does have a higher-than-average dimensional travel rate), but maybe it just un-created? Whispers discovers that someone nicknamed it...the Jabberwock.

The heroes decide to reactivate one of the robots and see if they can get a sense of how it was being controlled. Magnus and Night Fyre take it into a "danger room" for safety, while Carslon and Mirage watch from a booth. They heat the water in the canisters until steam courses through the robot, and it "wakes up"...but then stands there placidly. Magnus reaches into his hat and pulls out a thaumometer (a gizmo that detects magic), and it gets a slight reading from the robots, but it seems to be background energy rather than anything actively happening. He does note, however, that what counts as "magic" varies from universe to universe, but this at least gives them someplace to start.

Mirage, realizing that the robot isn't a threat, enters the room and uses her enhanced power of touch to analyze further. She feels that the robot is covered in a very fine layer of particulate salt...like you'd get if you were hanging out in a salt mine. Whispers jumps on the research, and finds that there are spokes in the mine that are active, spokes that are decommissioned, and spokes that have been bought by private interests. But strangest of all, there's a spoke that appears on a recent map but not on a map from just five years ago. Almost like the spoke just...happened.

The heroes thank Carlson and head down to the waterfront to investigate the mines, though first they stop to get lunch at Lucifer's Lunchbox, a food truck from which Lou sells hellfire-seared pork and deviled eggs (Believeland has an amazing food scene). Whispers joins them ("get me a combo, don't ask what's in it"), and as they're eating, they hear breakage and screams from down the wharf! 

"Dammit, I'm just trying to have a taco," mutters Night Fyre. They rush off to see what's happening, but what they discover is weirder than they were expecting. A huge black horse has appeared seemingly from nowhere and smashed up a couple of food trucks. It lowers its head, its eyes glowing the yellow-red of Hell ("I didn't call this horse!" yells Lou from offscreen), and charges. 

(Get your Bad Horse jokes out now, next time - horse battle!)

Marvel: Clockworks and Melted Pavement

Last night, thrilling super-heroics! Here's last time.

The heroes race across town in their super-mobile! OK, they drive their cars. Night Fyre drives a Hyundai. 

They arrive at the warehouse to find that three thieves running across the parking lot, pursuing by the three clockwork robots. Mirage springs into action, creating multiple illusory duplicates to confuse them. It works (the robots aren't very bright), and Whispers does a quick mind-probe, but discovers the robots don't have any minds to probe. That's good, no chance of killing them. 

Night Fyre teleports into the midst of the robots and prepares her heat-generating power, but Magnus reaches into his hat and pulls out a couple of grenades. He tosses one into the midst of the robots ("Look out, grenade!" Night Fyre: "Huh?" BOOM), which damages them, but throws Night Fyre back. She gets up and charges back into the fray, aiming heat at sensitive bits, but one of the robots walks over to her, spreads its arms, and lets out an electrical discharge. Night Fyre falls to the ground, twitching.

Mirage sends one of her duplicates into the warehouse to check if there are control panels for these things (who knows, maybe they're security). But realizing that the robots are tough and that Night Fyre is injured, she concentrates and sends her own strength through one of her illusions. The duplicate punches a robot and dents it, and Magnus runs over and pulls a healing potion out of his hat.

Night Fyre quaffs it and her eyes get real wide (Magnus: "Active ingredient is methamp...whoops"). She jumps up and heads back into the fray. One of the robots punches her and she feels brittle bird bones crack, and decides "screw this." 

Meanwhile, Whispers intercepts the thieves and focuses her mental probe on the one that looks to be the leader, and learns his entire life in a second. She also learns that they got a tip for this job from a woman in a green dress at a bar called the Salt Mine...except she knows the location where they found the bar, and it's a vacant lot. But this guy has clear memories from earlier tonight of being in that bar. Very curious.

She calls an ambulance for them ("the robots hit us with darts, man!"), and then heads over to the warehouse to look around (Mirage's duplicate isn't getting anywhere; Mirage is concentrating on other things).

Back in the fight, Night Fyre focuses all of her power into her heat generation and releases a blast of energy that superheats the steam in the robots! All three of them explode, but the shrapnel flying at Night Fyre liquefies before it hits her. And then, she collapses, spent. 

Whispers, in the warehouse, finds a crate smashed out from the inside. That'd be where the robots came from, but there's no documentation on the crate. Very weird. She emerges back into the parking lot and sees the melted pavement, and picks up Night Fyre to carry her over to safety. She hands her over to Magnus and notices that while she was carrying Night Fyre effortlessly, Magnus seems to feel her weight. Curious...but no time for that now. Whispers, intent on maintaining her secret identity, flees the area and leaves Magnus, Night Fyre, and Mirage to talk to the cops.

Whispers heads back to her lair and accesses the security feeds of cameras in the area of the Salt Mine. Spooling back, she sees the bar just...appearing, piece by piece. The three idiot thieves walk by, see it, and go in, come out a bit later, and then the bar just unmakes. Whispers is still trying to figure this out when the others arrive (Magnus with them, still apparently unable to travel dimensionally).

Mirage doesn't think it was an illusion - the bar interacts with light and so forth, and the thieves went into it normally enough. They don't see anyone else entering, but Whispers saw other people in the memories she accessed from the thief. So did someone just...make a bar? And if so...why? This all seems like a lot of effort for a fight with some robots. The thieves were clearly set up, but surely this wasn't all for them. Distraction? Activation of the robots? 

The heroes figure they could learn more by examining the wreckage of the robots, so that's next on their list.

Marvel Superheroes: Magnus' Multiversal Journey

Last night we started playing an interesting supers campaign. Basically the players wanted to do a supers game, and of course I have a zillion, several of which I actually love and want to run. Since Cael wanted to play a character who could move through universes, we decided his character would stay the same, but the other folks would make new characters as we switched worlds (and game systems). So, our first game system is:

That's TSR's Marvel Superheroes from 1986. Yes, gaming has become substantially different in the ensuing decades, but I have a soft spot for this game (affectionately known as "FASERIP" after the seven basic attributes). It's the first RPG I played or ran, and I credit it with getting me into the hobby - I was aware of D&D before I played Marvel, but the in-crowd clique at my school played D&D and I was not in that crowd (think for a moment how profoundly weird that sentence is), so Marvel was really more my speed. Plus I knew super-heroes; I grew up watching Super-Friends and various other similar cartoons. 

Yes, the system is very much a product of its time, but that's fine. We'll see if I still like it after I've run it a few sessions with the wisdom of nearly 40 years of GMing experience. 

So, this particular game takes place in a world (IN A WORLD) very much like ours. We decided to go the DC route of having a fictional city that incorporates elements of a real-world city. So our city is...Believeland! 

Believeland sits on the Great Lakes, and is a shipping hub. There's also extensive salt mines that go out underneath the lake and the city; some of these mines are still in use, while others have flooded or been decommissioned. The city has a renowned culinary school and food scene, and the competition between up-and-coming chefs can get pretty cutthroat at times. There's a now-abandoned and shut down nuclear power plant on the outskirts of the city; supposedly there's no nuclear material there anymore, but more than one super-human has "had an origin" there.

Also, there's a year-round fair on the waterfront, and every season there's a three-day event, with rides and booths and so forth. 

The city has had its share of super-heroic weirdness over the years, too. Some 30 years ago, a villain released a whole bunch of balloons filled with a toxic gas, but was thwarted by two heroes named Big Chuck and Li'l John. More recently, a villain with a bass guitar that created vibrations that might have destroyed the city attacked, but was foiled by a hero called Sterling. And then a bunch of genetically modified lizards invaded; a hero called the Piper stopped them and rounded them up. So it's your basic four-color weirdness.

But our heroes are three more contemporary folks...

Mirage, aka Rose Ramirez, is a professor of archaeology at Bachs University. While on a trip in South America she fell into a cenote. Time and space went wibbly, and she emerged with superpowers - she can levitate, create illusory duplicates of herself, and can even reanimate the dead! She also has an allergy to silver, however. She keeps her identity secret.

Night Fyre, however is out and proud. Rhea Salerno was a normal working-class person in Believeland who was exposed to some kind of radioactive waste while on a job. The stuff gave her the power to project and control heat, to teleport, and to focus all of her energy into one mighty burst, but it also changed her form - she has feathers up and down her arms and legs and a beak-like face. She does a lot of work with Food Not Bombs and similar groups. 

These two folks were brought together by Bella Green, aka Whispers. Whispers is a homebody, hacktivist, and radio enthusiast, exposed to some kind of weird energy that enhanced her intellect and gave her telepathic powers. Whispers found Mirage and Night Fyre and called them together to foil a plot to steal the crown jewels of Maldonia from the Heinens Vault in downtown Believeland (the perp in question was a supervillain with photokinetic powers called Strobe, looking to use the diamonds to boost his powers). Whispers acts as the group's "guy in the chair" and unofficial leader.

And so as we open our story, it's a beautiful early summer day in Believeland! Whispers in the park in the center of the city, typing away on her laptop. Rhea is nearby doing a food drive, and Rose is attending a conference at a downtown hotel. And suddenly, people start pointing at the sky and yelling - "Look, he's falling!"

The heroes look upwards and see that, yes indeed, a man in what seems like a tuxedo is plummeting from the sky. People in weird costumes in the sky isn't exactly unknown in Believeland, but this guy is falling to his death. Whispers gets on the phone and texts Rhea and Rose, and Rhea springs into action!

She tries to create a cushion of heated air for the man to fall on, but can't quite seem to get it to solidify. Whispers points out a construction site and tells Night Fyre to use her heat to inflate a safety tent, but she can't manage that either. But fortunately, that wasn't Whispers' main plan.

Rose casts an illusory duplicate to make it look like she's still in the crowd, and dips into an alley to become Mirage! She activates her levitation powers and kicks off from the wall to give herself a little forward momentum. She catches the man in midair and starts spinning around to slow him down a little while they descend. 

The man introduces himself as Magnus the Magnificent (though he lists a bunch of other titles as well - the Marvelous, the Mysterious, the Magnanimous). He makes vague references to "other universes", but Mirage doesn't have time to deal with that while heading for the ground. They land safely and people applaud, and Magnus reaches into his top hat and pulls out a bullhorn. He says "I have been saved...by MIRAGE!" The crowd cheers.

Whispers texts the other two and asks them to meet up at her hideout later. In the meanwhile, she does some digging into extradimensional travel, and learns that it's a lot like tuning a radio to a particular frequency. Given time and materials she could probably make a machine that does it, but Magnus apparently can "tune" himself. Fascinating.

The four of them meet up in a basement lair that Whispers uses, and Magnus introduces himself to the others. He says that he appeared in this universe after escaping from the "Lincoln Dimension" - he explains that all Abraham Lincolns in all universes are actually invaders from the Lincoln Dimension, but they never get a foothold because they always get assassinated. Very weird.

Anyway, the four of them chat a bit, Magnus says he generally appears in a universe and does a little hero-ing before moving on, the others say that's fine, welcome to Believeland. And then an alarm goes off!

Whispers checks her computers (she's hooked into all the security cameras in the city, of course). She sees that three dudes in balaclavas have broken into a dockside warehouse used to house goods before they go through customs. One of them shoots the camera, but like, that's not the only camera, and she can still see them congratulating each other. "OK, so they're idiots."

And then they round a corner and find themselves starting at three robots. The robots are human-sized, but appeared to be made from clockwork. "Steampunk is a thing on this universe?" asks Magnus. "Not...usually," replies Whispers.

As they watch, the robots raise their fists and fire flechettes at the thieves from housings on their knuckles. The thieves stagger backwards and flee, wounded, and the heroes get ready to roll! Thieves or not, not one deserved to be robo-murdered!

Character Creation: Marvel Superheroes

When I was 11 years old, my mother bought me a copy of TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying game (Advanced Set) before we went on vacation. We always went on vacation late in the season, so there weren't other kids around to hang with, other than my brother. I'd play Marvel once or twice at summer camp, and I was looking forward to creating my own superhero...which, really, I'd been doing since kindergarten or so.

Oh, baby.

That was my intro to gaming, and it was just combat for a while. But there were plotlines. They were intricate. I can't really remember much of them, but I remember my brother's character (Oriole), who was a member of a strange, non-human race. He could shoot webs from his hands that changed color over several rounds, and then exploded! Awesome!

Anyway, I made up lots of heroes (and villains) over the years, many of them modeled on existing characters, many more modeled on obvious tropes (there was the luck-controlling Leprechaun, f'rex). But some were just weird, and that was OK. I introduced everyone from babysitters to girlfriends to gaming through Marvel, and so it remains one of my favorite games.

And so, without further delay:

The Game: Marvel Super Heroes
The publisher: TSR
Degree of familiarity: See above.
Books required: Just the Player's Book is required, but I have the Ultimate Powers Book and I'll be using that. 

 

OK, we've got seven steps. I'm going to do this largely randomly, because I enjoy the challenge it creates, but I reserve the right to say "that sucks" and alter a die roll if need be.

Generate a physical form. I roll a 27, which means "Induced Mutant." That is, I started human and then something happened to make me a superhuman. That's fine. It also means I can take a +1CS to any primary ability when we come to that.

Generate an Origin of Power. A roll of 84 means I got my powers from Chemical Exposure, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

Generate Primary Abilities. FASERIP. Stands for: Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition and Psyche. And in case you don't know, stats in this game get descriptors as well as numbers. For instance, Thor has Unearthly Strength, while Spidey has Incredible Strength. I roll for Primary Abilities on Column 1 (determined by my physical form), so here we go.

The rolls: 72, 6, 53, 20, 48, 26, 81

Fighting: Remarkable (26)
Agility: Poor (3)
Strength: Excellent (16)
Endurance: Typical (5)
Reason: Excellent (16)
Intuition: Good (8)
Psyche: Incredible (36)

OK, so far, my best stat is Psyche. That measures mental endurance. My Agility sucks rocks - I'm not going to be dodging or throwing anything. Strength isn't bad; I can bench about 800 pounds without much strain. Endurance, though...ouch. I have a free +1CS to up a stat. I think I'll boost Agility to Typical; that gives me better than 50/50 odds to make FEATs with that Ability, at least.

Generate Secondary Abilities. Health is how much damage I can take before I drop: 52. Not much. Karma is a measure of my experience, and it's used to alter rolls (though it'd be the first thing I'd house-rule): 60.

Resources is how rich I am, and it's a die roll: 46 gives me Excellent Resources. That's not shabby.

Generate a Weakness. Every hero has a weakness. Mine, besides my low stats is...Energy Allergy! Which means what? Checking the Effect and the Duration, I get...Fatal. Ouch. Duration is Limited with Contact, which means I take damage from a specific type of energy for 1-100 turns after initial exposure. I'm going to refrain from naming the energy until I know a little more about this guy.

Generate Powers. Here's the fun bit. I actually generate Powers, Talents and Contacts here, but let's do Powers first. A roll of 46 on the table nets me 4 Powers, which is respectable. I roll on the Power Class chart, and then on the individual Power table, and since some of these eat two slots, I'll do my Powers one at a time.

First, I roll 19 - Energy Emission. A 44 on that table gets me Kinetic Bolt. Let's look that up. It's basically what it sounds: A bolt that does damage based on the Force table. The only problem here is that it's going to rely on an Agility roll. Well, I'll deal with that later. Let's see how tough it is: 95! Holy shit! That's an Amazing-ranked Power. Awesome! I could knock down walls with that shit!

Ahem. Next power: 86 means it's Power Control, 5 means I get Control. This means that I have some control over other people's Powers. It's not a bad power, but it does eat two slots. I'll keep it, just because it'll be interesting. First off, I roll for a Power rank: 16. Good. Yuck. Well, OK. A roll of 92 (now I roll high) on the "Power Control table" means that I have Power Control - Negation, which means I just totally turn off the target power. If the roll succeeds, which considering it's a FEAT based on the target's Psyche, ain't likely. OK, moving on.

Final power: 50 gives me Matter Conversion. OK. 38 gives me Disintegration...which also costs 2 slots. Damn. I'll reduce my Resources by 2 ranks (down to Typical) to take this, because I've got an idea about where this character is going. A roll of 47 gives me Excellent Disintegration. That means I can affect 16 cubic feat of solid matter in a turn, which isn't shabby at all. My range is 6 areas - which means (hang on) good lord, an area is 44 yards. I think we'll drop the range down to Typical (2 areas, still fine) and bump the Power rank up to Incredible. I can Disintegrate 36 cubic feat of material in a turn.

OK, moving along to Talents. A roll of 68 gets me 2 Talents. First Talent: Chemistry. Second Talent: Detective/Espionage. Eeeeexcellent. It's all coming together.

Finally, Contacts. I have 2 of them. For my first Contact, my hero has a buddy in the security team where he used to work, before "the incident." The buddy, Duncan "Donuts" Billings, is now a staff supervisor for the night shift at the place, and so can sneak his ol' pal some gear every now and then.

For the second Contact, I want a street-level contact, basically a scumbag who doesn't really hurt anyone (he steals cars, that kind of thing). He snitches to my hero in exchange for not getting his ass busted. His name is Jimmy.

Give your character life. OK, time to tie it all together.

Hans Holmer was a security guard for a big chemical firm, not much more than a merc (or a mook). One night, while he and his buddy Duncan Donuts were making the rounds, some whacko in powered armor blew a hole in the wall and started laying waste to the place with these force beams. Donuts ran to sound the alarm, but Hans got stupid and tried to shoot the guy. The guy turned his blasters on Hans and put him through a wall, straight into a room full of experimental chemicals. Hans steeped in the stuff, unconscious, for hours until the attack was over and Donuts found him. Over the next few weeks (in the hospital), Hans changed. He found he was able to turn solid matter into sound with a glance, and that he could project a blast of invisible force at a target. This last was devastating, but hard to aim - as it happened, the chemicals and the trauma had done some cortical damage. Hans used to be a crack shot. Now it's all he can do to type straight.

He didn't learn about his third ability until after being discharged from the hospital. He saw the whacko in power armor again, flying across the city like nothing was nothing. Glaring, he reached out to the systems allowing the armor to fly and shattered them. The whacko (actually an eco-terrorist named Earth's Avenger) crashed to the ground. Hans disintegrated the ground around him as he tried to stand, and kept him down with his force blast. The cops arrived and subdued the terrorist, and Hans was taken away and debriefed.

He was given the opportunity to work with other heroes, but he hasn't made up his mind yet. He's still bitter about what happened, and he's not sure if he's really cut out for life as a costumed clown. He's got the costume, though - his old uniform from the chemical plant was stained from light gray to a deep purple, with irregular black and blue patterns, almost like an acid wash. Hans put it on and hit the town, solo, a few nights later, interrupting a drug sting that was about to turn into a bloody ambush on the cops (Jimmy told him what was up). He disintegrated the bad guy's guns, watching them disappear in an ear-splitting crash, and blew the drug dealer's cars upside down with his force blast. When the cops asked who he was, he said, "Call me Fragment."

Hans doesn't bother with a secret ID; he didn't have any family to begin with. That sets his Popularity at 20. Fragment has a gained a following in the city; club kids are starting to wear shirts with his suit's pattern on them.

Oh, I should detail his weakness, that form of energy that can kill him. Fragment is vulnerable to harmonics, sounds that are perfectly blended. The right kind of machinery can generate these sounds easily, and if he's exposed to them, the chemicals in his brain that were altered in the accident (the ones that allow him to break things with a glance and a gesture) turn inward, breaking him down instead.