This
session brought two PC's out of Capital City and away from the shores
of Lake Eerie to the hot desert country of southern New Mexico. One
of the PC's was new to this “side” game I run when the regular
session of Clockwork & Cthulhu is running light of players for the scheduled game. He
was a bit skeptical of playing a homemade furry animal and other
strangeness game, but threw himself in with gusto. Since
Anthropomorphic USR runs on the (U)nbelievably (S)imple (R)oleplaying
chassis he had a character made up in around five minutes or less. So
Bob the Platypus joined Gorilla Dave and the agents of CHROME in
their attempt to get to the bottom of the PC's kidnapping from the
zoo, their genesis into enhanced beings, and who is behind all this
madness. CHROME, understandably, finds secret underground genetic
labs complete with nuclear reactor rather dubious. Not to mention
posing unacceptable safety concerns for the two million plus
inhabitants of Capital City!
I
used the PC's Specialisms as jumping off points for starting the
session. Bob chose Detective +2 Wits as one of his Specialisms so he
was put to work pouring over the data CHROME had gathered from the
destroyed lab and the zoo's security cameras and computer logs. The
result of this research revealed the zoo's security system was hacked
from an IP address in Moriarty, New Mexico. This happened to be the
last known whereabouts of Cybermind, a notorious criminal computer
hack. If Special Agent Scott Roger Scott could tie Cybermind to the
zoo kidnapping he would be able to do what the FBI failed to, bring
this international bad guy down!
The
PC's were outfitted in the latest CHROME livery, stretchy combat
suits which provided +2 Damage Resistance. Bob armed himself with a
short katana and an auto pistol while Dave stuck with his robot-head
helmet and acidic poo-flinging powers. S.A. Scott was in charge per
usual and assigned four other agents to round out the squad. They
boarded a chartered jet out of Capital City airport and flew down to
Albuquerque. Bob and Dave wanted to approach the target at night, so
after the sun set they rolled out of town in a nondescript van
provided by the Albuquerque field office. Their ultimate destination
being the abandoned amusement park and ghost town of Snake Gulch.
I
started making my USR hacks in an attempt to leverage my existing
setting books while at the same time doing away with crunchy rule
sets. For Anthropomorphic USR I am digging through my old Champions
material I purchased in the early two thowws, more for nostalgia than
anything. Some of you may recognize Snake Gulch as from Sharper
Than a Serpent's Tooth. Coupled
with the Millennium City source
book you would think I would have all I need to run some fantastic
Supers action. They both
retailed for $24.99, but scored them each for $10.00. The game store
in my parent's town was going out of business so everything in the
place was slashed. Both books
are rather nice to look at. Glossy cover, fine production values and
each one over a hundred pages
long.
I
had to really dig through these Hero
published books with a
highlighter to find useful text. Text which would invoke the feel of
four colored comics. There wasn't much to highlight
actually. Many maps of locations, stats of the major NPC's to be met
along the way. The usual long
and pointless backstories of the villains, snore. This
is the adventure, the city book, well maybe more useful. It gives me
a street map. What? There is
organized crime in the city? Street gangs? I never would have
thought!
I
have to say the DIY OSR products being produced over the last six or
more years have really shined a light on the poor utility of standard
RPG products that are usually on offer. Once
you use Vornheim, the Complete City Kit
in like every game you run the pages of useless information in your
usual city guide can just make you angry. I recently used AugmentedReality, The Holistic City Kit For Cyberpunk Games, majorly
influenced by Vornheim,
(at
PWYW it way punches above its weight) to prep for my next Classic
Traveller session. It took me seconds with random rolls on a few
tables and I had an adventure outline, all hooky, which could sustain
open, sandbox play as well as providing enough color to breath life
into my game environment. It seems a game like Champions, which
Sharper
Than a Serpent's Tooth and
Millennium
City were
written for rests on the thick, crunchy combat rules. No need for
imaginative content because the game will grind to a halt as soon as
combat starts. It's what I remember back in high school and it is
what I experienced again at GenCon last year. Which misses out on a
lot of what supers role playing has to offer. So I guess on my list
of RPG projects to complete now I must add Supers City Kit and Supers
Secret Hideout Kit to give poor GM's like myself a chance out there.
A chance to do what we do best; take some interesting game elements
and run fast with your players, letting
them move the action and drive the story. Once you strip the stats
from Sharper
Than a Serpent's Tooth you
are left with a
predictable railroad led by bread crumbs to standard set pieces. Ugh.
There
is actually one interesting bit. The opening gambit is set at an old
west theme park. I got rid of the original Viper staff and replaced
the characters with automatons. Old and unused the PC's came at the
place at night and started poking around. Bob headed straight to the
Sheriff's office. After listening to the automaton brag about the
good old days running with Wyatt Earp and the like Bob liberated the
robotic
sheriff
of
his badge, hat, boots and six shooter. A three foot platypus with
spurs a jingling now hit the streets of Snake Gulch, bad ass Ape and
several CHROME agents in tow, determined to sniff out the bad guys!
They
eventually entered the saloon where they found tracks into the
cellar. Here the automatonic poker
players activated, started accusing each other of cheating, and one
stood drawing his smoke wagons squaring
off with the PC's. The novelty of the situation quickly wore off when
the robot started squeezing off live rounds. After taking out the
stiff limbed robot it did not take long for the PC's to find the
secret cellar entrance to a more modern part of the theme park. With
different use of their Specialisms and reacting off of their die
rolls they eventually penetrated secure doors and found what could
only be described as a complex computer lab plus living quarters.
Surely this was Cybermind's secret hideout. But where was he?
The
PC's did subdue a man in army fatigues, horribly disfigured, green
skin, frothing mouth filled with fangs, the usual. He was able to
draw blood
on Bob the Platypus. Hopefully he isn't infectious. A
difficult hand to hand struggle ended with gorilla Dave dropping the
bed on top of the disfigured army guy. The
ID scan done by the CHROME agents came up empty. Was this Cybermind?
Has he been so transformed the
ID scan cannot recognize him? Two of the CHROME agents carried out
the unconscious stranger while the rest of the squad penetrated
further. Here the PC's encountered the central computer room, in
alert, plus all the wires in the room, from the computers, lights,
generators, bound into a central form crackling with electricity. It
forms facial features and speaks! “My
specimens, my children you have returned!”
Now
your average Champions combat, let's see, with two agents, two heroes
and a big bad could take like an hour to run. We had six minutes left
in the session. Instead
of counting hexes, tracking endurance and stun the PC's could
concentrate on how to take out their unknown adversary. The strange
creature could make multiple attacks, striking out with various
electrical cords. One of the CHROME agents was fried to death before
Bob the Platypus, still wearing a cowboy hat and badge, was able to
cut the main power cable. Gorilla Dave soaked damage from electric
cord creature so
it took a coordinated team effort to take down the creature. Here the
session ended and began my game design deliberations.
There
is a few things to tweak and/or modify with my rules set. That is to
be expected. The big takeaway, for me, is to stop looking at
adventure and game books for game and adventure material. Unless they
are being done with this OSR spirit, of trying to facilitate the GM
at the table in real time, the shit is useless. Today's session got
more mileage out of the PC's leveraging small bits of color than
anything else out of these once expensive game books.
For
source material I need to go to source material! Much like I did with
USR Sword & Sorcery the best bet for good gaming “stuff” is
go read the actual comics which got me excited in supers to begin
with. That and making stuff up myself, Nuff said!
