More MEGS DC Heroes Action

The game has been chugging along for a solid two years now with no signs of slowing down! The current roster of superheroes inhabiting Capitol City are Mettle, a master of magnetic control, Olympian, Kordarian of tremendous strength, Mr. Zozo, a demon inhabiting a human host, and Perperbog, an Inuit Shaman of mystic might.

Even Heroes Bleed Issue #37, part two

Leave Your Guns at Home, Even Heroes Bleed Issue #4 part 1.

 If you don’t hit the record button you will not record the game session. Passed all sound checks, but yeah, jumped into the game without hitting record. Here is your session report for the latest issue of Even Heroes Bleed.

Mettle sets up some more Go-Pros and Bug Sits down at the end of the street by the open commercial space he hopes will provide a safe enough place to throw around super hero stuff. The high tech flame thrower is in Bug’s lap. First a biker shows up on his ride and then right after a ’68 Ford Mustang rolls up. White with blue racing stripes, it was White Patriot’s car, but since Superfrog killed his ass “Fire Bug” has been driving it. 

 He has been referred to as Tank Boy, Fire Bug, Gun Bunny, names the superheroes of the city have been calling him for lack of anything else. And this is really “bugging” Bug. And this is the first thing Bug asks the pair as they walk up and demand the gun be turned over. The masked pyromaniac says he is the Jury and the Jury has reached a verdict. “The Jury finds you guilty and the judge has passed a sentence of death!” Acting nonplused, Bug sits there and takes Jury’s best punches. Bugs insect-mimicry powers allows him to take a tremendous beating so he only bruises his fists. He turns and gives the biker dude a “what-do-you-want-me-to-do-now” look. The grumbling, burly biker possibly has only one good eye. A black patch, cloth, covers his left eye. His bare arms are wreathed in Nordic and Celtic tattoos. Bug stands up and swats Jury fifteen feet and the pyro hits the gravel with a crunch and a yelp. Reico, who is believed to be the leader of the Civil Guard is angered his “disciple” has been pushed around, steps forward and with blue crackling energy emitting from his fist gives Bug a terrific blow. 

“How can you stand the power of my ensorcelled fist? Reico states surprised. If Bug had any witty banter he quipped back with, I missed it.

“Just smoke him, why don’t we just smoke ’em Reico? Jury pulls a gun from his jacket pocket.

“No, this man has some form of power. What I need is my avatar, my champion to deal with such insignificance as this, this… Hedge Wizard. He grabs both Jury’s arms. You will serve me as the true chaotic flame you are. I pass on to you the spirit of ever-living fire, I give you the essence of the great Fire Giant Surtr!” Reico’s hands and arms go a vivid grey blue. A blue fire rims his eyes and Jury is enveloped in a wreath of explosive fire. Jury screams in agony and collapses to the ground. Reico turns to Bug. Now he is growing larger, his muscles are rippling and his arms and face are grey-blue. Electrical energy crackles around him. “You will now feel the wrath of Wotan the purifier and now my avatar will unleash a cleansing fire!”

Jury is no longer screaming. He slowly rises to his feet, still wreathed in flame. The whipping red flames sing with the fearful souls of those he has burned to death in this city. He is laughing hysterically and blasts Bug with gouts of flame from his hands. Bug feels the sting of this unnatural gout of flame bathing him. In desperation he lashes out with the power of a Rhino Beetle and sends Jury flying 80'. The force of his blow renders the pyromaniac unconscious in a heap on the ground. 

Wotan roars in frustration and attempts to rend Bug with his bare, blue, and grey veined hands. The hero and villain dodge and weave. Wotan fighting as a highly skilled warrior would, Bug sort of letting his insect-mimicry powers make him float like a butterfly and sting like a bee! Bug lands some solid blows, but Wotan laughs them off. "You give me good sport little man." I have not had a good wrestling contest since I last visited Utgard!”

Bug manifests the stinging poison of the Murder Wasp and his chitin-tipped fingers sink into Wotan’s pulsing skin. The blue of his arm turns purple from the venom and Wotan flings Bug from himself. Witnessing the unfolding stalemate, Mettle uses her magnetic powers to rip the hood off the Mustang (dude!) and wraps it around Wotan in a vice-like grip. Arms pinned, Wotan roars with rage and insult. Unable to defend himself effectively Bug lands another solid, insect-enhanced punch. Spittle flies from Wotan’s mouth, he is inarticulate from his rage of being denied the punishment he wishes to inflict. Mettle wastes no time and hurls the metal-wrapped supervillain a ¼ mile in the air.

Bug follows with a giant leap of his own and tries to enhance Wotan’s journey into the pavement over a hundred and fifty feet below. A loud crunch follows Wotan’s plummet into the street. Asphalt is pulverized under him leaving a two-foot depression. But Wotan shakes it off! Now there is murder in his eyes! “I have no time for these foolish games. I have my champion again, so I now ride on Valkyrie wings to my destiny!” The giant blue man with one eye and bone beads in his hair scoops up his unconscious companion. With one gigantic leap he clears the nearby buildings. Bug and Mettle pass on chasing the transformed biker and collect their GoPros. Mettle is excited about the footage she believes was caught.

“I think we have our city arsonist on film flaming away. We are much closer to seeing some people in prison now.” Mettle says satisfied. “Some positive IDs and the Feds at least can come down on these two.

Blood of Heroes Second Session Report

The recording of my vocals failed to capture me (though it recorded the players just fine) today so I will do a written session report to keep up with the game.

I have some of the audio because the two players, who have never played together before, used today’s second session to expand on their roleplaying and crafting this new superhero relationship in our Neo-Gotham, Capitol City! I will latch it onto this blog post after I get NCH to recognized my fucking software licenses, again, and I can finish the edit. 

After a discussion with Bug on defining how his insect mimicry “displays” we continued the battle which we stopped last session in the middle of. Mettle has knocked Creepazoid unconscious, and Bug continues to tangle with Bak-Trak as this zebra-mutant comes to aid his fallen comrade as a third mutant monster makes its way out of the river-side sewer drain. Mettle grabs 2 tons of metal debris and drops it sight unseen where she thinks the outlet is. Shortly thereafter a heavy thunk is heard as the debris is promptly launched into the air followed by the splashdown in the river. The creature calling itself Leather-Neck shambled up the bank onto the street where Mettle stands over the fallen Creepazoid. Disturbingly, Mettle sees the unconscious Creepazoid start liquifying into a jelly-like substance and soak into the cracked pavement.

Leather-neck is a heavily modified ape, its muscular body grafted in the most make-shift way with electronic components, cybernetic attachments and bristling antennae.

“Leave Bak-Trak alone!” Leather-Neck bellows and discharges an electrified net from its wrist gauntlet, wrapping up Bug. The hero topples over spasming and foaming from the paralyzing jolt. Mettle is staring at two angry enhanced monsters and is reminded of the zoo-animal theft reported in the news last week. An ape and a zebra were reportedly stolen from the Capitol City Zoo. A very odd theft to say the least, but here in front of her are an intelligent ape and zebra with strange and elaborate firepower.

“I can’t take both of them on myself,” Mettle thinks to herself. She gathers up more metal debris from the run-down dockside factory buildings and smashes it all into the zebra wielding those disturbing plasma eye beams. The impact sends Bak-Trak and the debris sailing 150 feet, downriver this time. The hit does what Mettle had hoped and the cyborg ape jumps into the air and out into the river to rescue his friend from the fast-moving Stewert River.

With the object of the fight still in her possession, Mettle scoops up the unconscious Bug and leaves the scene, the mutant’s “turf”, with the GoPro in pocket and Little Billy told to run home. Mettle gently levitates through the evening sky setting down in front of the local Elmview Urgent Care and brings beaten but breathing Bug into the waiting room. After she gets admissions sorted she walks back out onto the sidewalk.

“Time to see what is on the GoPro.” She says and hits play. The scene is of a squad of officers, FBEE agents by the logo on their flak vests, moving down the night street, weapons drawn. They post up along a chain link fence looking over a section of harbor. SUVs, pick up trucks and a panel truck are parked together in an open lot overlooking the river. The lot has the usual shipping equipment, container cars, cranes, fork lifts. The pick up trucks and SUVs are providing the illumination on the scene. Looks like gangsters doing gangster shit.

Then the situation lights up. The doors are pulled back on the panel truck and a 50 caliber machine gun opens up on the SUVs and the gang-bangers around them. There are orders to move in and the video takes to the air as the view shifts to a swirling night sky coming to land on top of the panel truck, crushing the cargo bay and the heavy automatic weapon. A disorientating flip and then a view of the panel truck being kicked into the SUVs and fire and people go everywhere. The GoPro then moves aggressively on a costume tough guy and once a pair of strong green arms strikes out and attaches to the masked man the view is back up in the night sky. The masked man trades blows with his assailant on the way down and splash into the Stewert River. Before the GoPro is swept away into the black current it is plain the green-armed assailant is drowning the masked man. Disturbed by the murder just witnessed, Mettel pockets the GoPro and walks back into the clinic to find out if Bug is patched up and good to go. The PA recommends Bug takes the rest of the week off from any heavy lifting and it would take some time to fully recover from the concussion(?) he had received from electrical shock and trauma. And take some of the Tylenol 3 she sends him out with.

Outside Mettel replays the footage again for Bug’s benefit. Like Mettel, he is disturbed by what seems to be the FBEE super known as Superfrog drowning another EE.

“Its on the news,” says Bug. “Not this per se but just over from where we were the Feds got into a gunfight with a criminal gang west of Adams Street Sewage and the Adams Street Bridge. Right down on the riverside docks there.”

Mettel wants to go see the crime scene. He wants to see if the digital video matches up with where the gunfight was.

“I don’t care if that guy was a criminal, you just can’t go drowning folk cause they have superpowers.” Bug agrees it is worth checking out. The question of what to do with the video may be answered there. North of Stokes Ave. in what used to be called Old Capitol City, the police and emergency services are crawling all over the place. There are multiple vehicles burnt out and smoldering from recently being foamed by the fire department. There are shell casings all over the pavement and the awful smell of burnt meat. Two rows of body bags, maybe eight in number, can be seen being loaded into ambulance. Everyone and anyone who isn’t cop is kept back by the yards of yellow tape.

Unable to get too close, Mettel gets into a conversation with Shamrock Bane, late night reporter for Channel 7 after overhearing an FBI and FBEE officer have an intense argument over lack of intel and the inability to plan an operation in Capitol City without the wrong people finding out about it the same day! Miss Bane gives the low down to the attractive party girl. A white-nationalist militia calling themselves the Civil Guard looked to try and deal dirty with the local Nubians. Drug deal, gun deal, not sure which, but either way the Civil Guard came to kill, not do deals. Looks like the FBEE got wind of this meeting and swooped into the middle of the gun fight. No one is talking, but she believes the numerous blazes were set by someone with a flamethrower on site. Maybe the arsonist which has been terrorizing the city? The FBEE is saying they made some significant arrests as well as some top gang leaders being killed in the exchange. Scene is just too damn chaotic. Hard telling who is working for the city’s good and who is working for their one self-interest.

Mettel knows the Nubians. She does work for them, moving drugs she imagines. She never looks at what she is transporting, currier code and all. This has all the potential of spirling out of control and the city’s underground business trade grinding to a halt due to an all out criminal race war. She asks Bug to come back to her place and think about what they want to do about the gang violence and the video they still have a hold of.

 

MEGS in the Morning

 Session 0.5 was accomplished this Sunday morning which inaugurates my use of Mayfair's MEGS rules as written in Pulsar Game's Blood of Heroes, Special Edition rule book.

Of four interested players, one couldn't make it, another has not commented since showing interest and the other two players showed up and we had a great morning game.

Not only is the original DC Heroes MEGS rules new to me, so are the two new players. The third player who couldn't make it is a friend of mine and he just makes my life more difficult. I will be seeing him again at the table with his fucked-up character.

We traded pleasantries, did what we could to get to know each other relevant to gaming and our interest in supers roleplaying. Next was going over their original characters and doing some full-on session zero work. 

Both were street-level, 450 point built characters. One player was all set with background and origins for Mettle, an enhanced entity born with augmented powers do to her mother being exposed to mutagenetic poisons. Not so easy life has brought her to a career as a drug courier in the crime infested south side of Capitol City. She keeps a low profile and makes her life as invisible as possible. Her powers are of magnetic control. Picking up, manipulating and throwing heavy metal objects around and all the neat shit Magneto would do. 

Bug, the other PC hero, was not completely formed, Bug's player was still struggling with their character concept. Great, this gave us all at the table to bang his character into shape for the upcoming campaign. Insect control, gives anyone an anxious, unnerving feeling when they are near Bug. Adults at least. Kids don't seem to mind him. Bugs literally are attracted to this hero, crawling out of his hair or out of his clothes. He mimics characteristics of an insect to increase his strength and make himself more resistant to physical damage. 

The player who wasn't there will be playing Mr. White, an exiled alien rabbit from the Dimension of Mirrors, the land of Alice and the Looking Glass. Mr. White searches for a way back home and wields magical guns and can turn two-dimensional. That is right, two-dimensional! How the fuck do you play that? Like I said, he is a friend of mine.

How the rules went with the session play coming up in next post. 

My Verdict on running/playing Champions

Don't do it. [One final comment on Champions. If someone set up a city set piece and I get to bring my superhero, join some friends, and throw down against the GMs super villain team for a four hour mega-battle on a Saturday afternoon? I'm all in! As a tactical supers "boardgame" for this kind of cinematic fun, I think it would be a blast.]

I found the biggest liability for running this game is something called Fred. My definition for the anagram is full rules equal disaster. It is too stupidly big (over 500 pages) with no option to "use what you want and leave the rest." Because someone at the table is going to get butthurt that rule a,b and c (found on page 5, page 36 and somewhere past page 200) isn't being used.

The next liability arises because players think/want/insist? all the rules of the game are in force all the time. You will never get a chance to make a quick adjudication at the table because someone will say "Wait, I think it explains it on page black hole suck of time. In essence people play Champions because they want to play Champions and this is not the same as playing a supers role playing game. You play Champions you just do that. Combat is a slog. The Speed Chart is a cluster fuck of "wait no its my turn." or "Is it my turn yet."

You will never be able to get on with the action of adventuring and campaigning because you will be looking up rules every time someone wants to do something. Or watch someone else at the table do it. Really impractical when your game should be faster than light supers action.

As a game master I believe making rulings on the fly just to keep the action moving along is an important skill. What I mean is, once I understand the internal logic of the game I can make snap decisions which will never be far off the mark from a "by the book" figure. In a game of Champions this becomes a discussion with people flipping through the book to make sure the situation is totaled up "by the book". It doesn't make sense. And none of the subsystems mesh. Damage has no relation to how you calculate attacks. Speed doesn't track with distance, you can't figure out say if a bomb is going to go off in 4 seconds can you get out of blast radius. Or you can figure out yes you could do it if we are not in combat time, but not if in combat time. Very opaque. There is no base mechanic. You just can't say you need an 8 or less to hit, or a 15 or less to hit on 3d6 (i do like a 3d6 bell curve) because someone at the table will dive into the book to make sure everything is figured correctly. 

New players are generally lost and experienced players generally play a rulebook instead of interesting supers with fucked up situations forcing drastic action from a list of nothing but bad choices. And all these details seem to drive players to expect specific details when in combat. How far away is something, how much can I carry, does it weigh as much as, how long will this power last... Things which in real comic action would have to be guessed at in split second action times. I stand by my earlier statement anything past 3rd edition (2nd edition repackaged) is awful. 

But now I know. I got a good run at the system with my original setting and some decent PC concepts the players came with and I threw my shoulder into it because I wanted to know can a good supers campaign be had with this system. As far as I can tell the answer is no. I have run and played now the classic Marvel supers from TSR, The Hero Instant, Prowlers and Paragons, and Icons. I have read and built characters with Mutants and Masterminds, Supergame, Superworld, Blood of Heroes (MEGS) and Villains and Vigilantes. When you include Champions (which I have the most familiarity with) that is 10 different systems (that I can recall there are probably a couple more) exhaustibly examined and understood and don't care for any of them except DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes, Mayfair Game's MEG system and the Marvel supers game released by TSR. I will most likely  do a blog post for both these systems and why I find them attractive for running supers games, but for now I have to give Champions a big thumbs down. 

Parting shot, Champions has always claimed you can make any superhero you want with their game, and this is true. But it is also true you can do the same with all the other games I listed above! I have translated the same few superheroes of my own in each one of the above listed systems and low and behold I would come up with the same character. Yes, I can build anything I find in Champions with any of these other games - and quicker! Most people who play Champions seem to be married to a piece of character creation software. If you need a computerized spread sheet and custom programmed software to build a character, I don't know. A superhero is an intimate creation and pencil to paper is a strong way to come out with a strong character concept.

Pace. Pace, pace, pace! Like real estate is location a supers game is all about pace. And it should be brisk. And that is why I will not use or play Champions and prefer the old Marvel system and the old DC Heroes MEGs.

Blood of Heroes Referee Charts

This is a PDF put together from making snapshot grabs from the DC Hero rulebook. It is rough. It is intended as my table side reference chart for live play of the MEGS heartbreaker Blood of Heroes from Pulsar Games. 

With my laminator I get a kick out of making durable reference sheets for the various games I play. Feel free to download a copy here if you plan on running any game with the MEGS system. The Action and Results Tables are used for everything in the game. You will want these two charts handy at the table so everyone is not flipping through the rulebook everytime someone needs to resolve an action.

The Blood of Heroes Rules for Character Interaction

My close read and implementation of The Blood of Heroes: Second Edition continues on its first early steps and I'm jumping to Chapter 6: Character Interaction.

Interrogation, Intimidation and Persuasion are character interactions you can resolve with a “Dice Action”. The AV/EV* and OV/RV* for a PC are already known. The Infl/Aura and Infl/Spirit of the NPC is determined by the Gamemaster. When the GM does this, either on the fly or prepped ahead of time, they are essentially setting a difficulty target number which needs to be hit. When the Players and the GM wish to roll for results to decide the outcome of these three types of character interactions they are resolved the same way everything else is in the game; with the Action Table and the Results Table. 

What about the other way around? What happens if a villain or any other NPC tries to use Character Interaction against one of the Players? Myself I try not to force the PC to do anything. Other gamers are more comfortable making the PC briefly restricted by puppet strings, and do it well. I philosophically try and tie my hands so it is the PC's themselves deciding whether the villain is bluffing or should they cut and run from a dangerous and uncertain situation. These rules for BoH kinda go half way. The PC can be bound to failed opposed and resistance rolls, but they can also spend Hero Points to ignore the effects.

Otherwise character interaction should be handled like any well done rpg does, with the Players doing stuff and the GM adjudicating results until the need for dice feels warranted.

This is a short chapter. Quick to digest. There are suitable descriptions of the three character interactions including additional chrome; Interaction Maneuvers. These can be taken or left as the GM sees fit without breaking the mechanic. Next I'll take a read through Chapter 7 Gadgets and after I will tell you my thoughts.

*AV=Acting Value, OV=Opposed Value, EV=Effect Value and RV=Resistance Value from the BoH rulebook. 

The Blood of Heroes & MEGS

Which is kinda one and the same. Pulsar games purchased the rights to create a Supers RPG using Mayfair’s DC Heroes MEGS (Mayfair Exponential Game System) mechanics, minus the DC licensed properties. Which is perfect for those like myself who like to create their own game world with original characters as opposed to premade setting with established characters. The final form this system took is The Blood of Heroes: Special Edition and is well known for the dreadful quality of the art, dated layout and awful NPC write ups for the limited setting Pulsar inserted into the book.

I’ve been taking looks at BoH for several years when my interest returns to Supers roleplaying. Reading reviews of DC Heroes, and MEGS in general, the system gets solid props and very little criticism. The only reason I hadn’t taken a deep dive into the game is because I didn’t push myself past the two-chart method of resolving action in the game, the core mechanic if you would. Swallowing another character creation system for a Supers game prevented me from giving it a solid go as well. Maybe I can make Champions finally work for me? I had most of the best books of the system. But in my heart of hearts I knew I would never return to this game for my dream Supers campaign, so running out of alternatives a serious read of BoH was now at hand. First I reread the intro with Anarchy Man getting into a fist fight with Clint and learned how to use the resolution charts. Not bad, pretty straight forward. Okay, so basic resolution doesn’t bother me and I’m not going to worry right now how this game handles superspeed. Making a verdict on how the game scales everything on the same exponential numbering will take some exposure to before I know whether it works for me. I am intrigued, this is the part of the system which gets most of the praise. A normal person has attributes of “2”. An attribute of 3 is twice as good, and a 4 is twice as good as a 3!. Time, distance, weight, even wealth, is all tied to this scale. For example a time of “0” is 4 seconds. Time 1 is 8 seconds, Time 2 is 16 seconds and time 3 is 32 seconds. Weight starts at a base 0=50lbs. Weight of 1 is 100lbs., 2 200lbs., 3 is 400lbs. See exponential progression. This allows the game to scale seamlessly ever upwards without breaking the game. Champions handles wildly different power scales well, but Chaosium’s Superworld not so much. Here the MEGS system goes as high on the power scale as you want with no distortion. The final test will be how I think of superspeed and initiative work out. Some have criticized the MEGS mechanics of BoH not handling low-powered characters very well, but I’m not seeing this. So everyman has a Strength and Dex of 2, but any experienced game master knows the color of your NPC’s is not so much in the stats but in their personality and skills. My first character I built with the system uses their recommended base of 450 points and as a low-powered superhero I was able to create the super I want and build in all the personality, color, powers and motivation I envision. Once I crunched through character generation I felt I was looking at a fast moving game which also eliminates all the tactical crunch I find hanging onto Champions. I can see running this game online without battle maps and minis.

This will also aid in world building. I don’t think statting out villians and gadgets will be as time consuming as found in Champions. No, I think this system will allow me to put forth effort in the hard part of Supers gaming, having a campaign world worthy of interesting game play. This is the number one reason why I love playing old school. The OSR has taught me not to depend on the system to make my game work. It takes a game worthy of playing in to be good. The system is more of an afterthought. Use the system which helps you run, not tells you how to run. Classic Traveller is a great example of this OSR principle of game design. The source material is my best world building reference, not the rulebook. In the game of supers this means comic books! Find the stories I like and build that. Certainly the BoH MEGS mechanics will handle anything I can dream up!