Capitol City Crime Journal - The Red Report

The Even Heroes Bleed supers campaign continues to be a new, dynamic experience for me. Once again I turned over the Game Master reins to Mettle's player Mike to run an adventure of his own devising. When I get a chance to play instead of run I use my favorite vigilante-NPC of the game, Ultra-Rosa. A gun-toting, martial arts master and gadgeteer wizard with red body armor, an array of firearms and a specially modified red 2018 Chrysler 300. Paid off. A female version of the Punisher basically. 

Today she got to team up with our newest PC hero, the Olympian. He is a flying brick from another world, a human enhanced alien. Straight up Superman vibe except he is way cooler than the Man of Steel, just saying.

We, as a group, took this detour because the PC hero Mr. Zozo couldn't make it. In a couple of weeks I can't play, so then we are looking at the Olympian and Mr. Zozo teaming up. Making me pay attention to the campaign calendar. With all these side quests going on where everything begins to occur has meaning. Since old-school gaming encourages emergent play the game group is getting a wider world to play in and everyone at the table (including the two co-GMs here) do not know where this all leads and what dramatic outcomes await. My strategy is now no matter who can make the game session we have episodes/issues which can always be played.

To keep the story threads in order I've broken the run so far into several "comic book" series. The main comic line is Even Heroes Bleed. All other story lines have to acknowledge this story line as the main story of the campaign. Every PC hero in the game has had to walk the stage in this blockbuster line. Bug, Mettle, Red Runner, Ultra-Rosa, Olympian, Mr. Zozo.

Mike took us on the campaigns first side quest with the Capitol Point Casino Adventures. These adventures (and today's session) are going to fall under the Capitol City Crime Journal: The Red Report. We have had 10 issues now of this vehicle for Ultra-Rosa's exploits when she is being run by me as a player. The Olympian has had a single issue. This was the episode where I ran just him in an adventure against some visiting galactic bounty hunters.

Now, since I cannot make next session we are going to try and continue the adventure we started today (investigating the New Revelations Church and a string of murders) in Mr. Zozo's own comic book, Road to Redemption, featuring the Macabre Mr. Zozo. Pretty nifty. The game is getting really dynamic and all the PCs feel their efforts make a notable difference in the campaign world. The only thing the game suffers (and this is common in all ttrpgs) is how long it takes to play involved adventures. There are so many potentials and intriguing avenues for rich drama, we will never see them all played out. Ah, the frailty of an rpg world. Only so much of the game world gets told, only so many tales will be spun before life changes our real destinies. And we don't know yet what those will be!

Space Opera Character Sheet for Lower Frontier 2760

I actually made two. First one was a stab at a pretty standard one. Customized for the campaign's homebrew universe. It is not finished but has the look I'm going for. The reason it isn't finished is because I had a flash of inspiration and cooked up a real specific character sheet for the campaign universe. It came from a spec sheet for a roll of batt insulation I have laying around from my house remodel. It caught my eye because for a industrial specifications sheet it actually was well laid-out. I can appreciate someone taking pride in their work!

So I reworked it for the PC in this new game highlighting the fact she is a clone. The sheet looks like this- 

Pretty badass, right?

Need to produce the back page. This is where equipment and gun stats, adventure notes, all that other jazz, will go!

Here is an empty one for you all to print out and play with!

How to Go Meta on your Supers City-Wide Drug War

Most Superhero campaign cities are going to have their various gangs, organized crime families, and drug lords. And they all via for control of everything shady; gambling, loan-sharking, prostitution, drugs, armed robbery, murder, etc. And the heroes come up with all sorts of ways to put these mangy dogs down. But how effective are the PCs efforts, really? I'm not referring to tactics, what the PCs actually do, but what happens as a result of the PCs smashing up what was otherwise a violent, deranged, antisocial way of making a living. 

Most of the time it looks like this; so-and-so gang is fighting with so-and-so criminal family over the lucrative drug trade. The PCs arrive and smash both organizations beyond recognition. Yeah, the neighborhood is saved! And there is no major dealing, death and extortion in the bad part of town for a time. Until it is time to reconnect the PCs with the criminal underground and the GM provides  drug-dealing city criminals to replace the ones previously vanquished. 

Another common tactic of PCs with an ambivalent attitude towards drug use is to play for a reduced body count out on the streets. People are able to purchase what they want in relative safety and the love gang reaps in a Supers game is to beat hell out of the entire criminal underworld until you are down to just one player. In this scenario the PCs are trading leaving one gang in tact while all others are obliterated in exchange for being the "official" drug dealer of the city. 

But while the PCs eyes are off the local drug war ball these numerous urban blights, these self-spawning criminal gangs, are re-filling in the dark cracks and trying to get back in the business.

I wanted to come up with a mini-game to meta-game the overall drug war between the gangs of Capitol City to determine which one is coming on top, on the rise, and posing the greatest threat to the PCs.

My eyes fell on my copy of the satiric card game Grass.  It is a point-scoring game with protection cards and different types of "hazard" cards. The dealer who makes $250,000 first wins. So that is how you get multiple rounds of play as a hand has an opening and a close followed by scoring. Rinse and repeat. So the thematic coloring melded perfect for the exercise. 

I played four hands to represent 4 weeks of drug trafficking between 4 different "players". Each player was one of the primary gangs in the city. The cards have all sorts of thematic hazard cards so these made nice, punchy random events which could be noted down. Not very exciting. I have to say, I will not do it again. But I did get notes for a nice detailed timeline of events and relative cash asset values for each gang which I can use as needed. These stupid little things create elements which help make a living game world, but it is still a labor of love than something mind-blowingly cool.

FGU Space Opera Actual Play

Stop the presses. I actually got a session of the clunky, 1980's beast released by Fantasy Games Unlimited onto the (online) table (video chat) and played an impromptu session with one other player. It is Space Opera. If you get one person to on for the game consider yourself fortunate!

Like I said, it is a clunker. Poor editing, rules references to non-existent text, long lists of combat modifiers, all the stuff I cut my teeth on when learning how to play ttrpg's. 

But I always liked the cut of FGU's jib, and this kitchen-sink sci-fi rules set fires my imagination like TSR's Star Frontiers never did. Some of my allure was due to the ground combat system being based off of Space Marines, a set of miniature rules published by FGU, and the Starship Combat rules looked built to run Star Wars-sized Star Destroyer battles.

With willing PC online and a cleared evening, schedule-wise, I pulled out the charts and GM sheets I prepared ahead of time and gave the adventure's opening pitch.

The PC's name was a severe-sounding Sarah [Xara]. I don't no how to spell it so for the case of this narrative I will spell the PC's name SXara. SXara is Human or Near-human-Hybrid. 5'7, 125-135#, Elfin but Wiry. She dresses 'back in the day's 

ankle boots leather jacket, 80's video space-style short and swept hair, wild eyeliner and shadow and lipstick. Folding Machine Pistol. Freelance Troubleshooter with an extensive network of begrudging allies who all have long lists of grievances against her, to which she innocently shrugs and looks askance.

Minor Telekinetic ability and a heightened sense of danger. She is also a clone. In her line of work the mental implants which go along with each mission can cause severe cognitive dissonance over time. Suiciding and being awakened in a new clone is the most efficient way to flush damaging old memories from a person's consciousness. We tried to come up with an industry-insider slang term for this "procedure". I'm thinking the "Black Hack".

Anyways, her current job was contracted with the 42nd Mechanized Lift, a division of crack professionals enforcing Kardorian will on planet Dismas. Dismas City was the last city controlled by revolutionary forces. They have been sheltered under a powerful force shield for months. Capable of withstanding any bombardment. Intelligence Services have made contact with a Panumanic officer inside the city who can get Sara past the Panumanic checkpoints. Once on the streets of Dismas, she is to follow subterreanean power raceways and sewer lines to a basement server room. There she will place a Xenon Damper Field Collar on the right wire, and poof, the shield protecting the city goes down. Easy-peasy.

No minds were blown but a serviceable session with a good chance to engage with the system and try and role play into something was achieved. I threw in two of my own procedural rolls during the session. First one was a 10% chance of the bad guys already being onto the PC and the second was a 25% chance of being set up. These checks were triggered at certain locations where the character had advanced closer to their goal. Otherwise, it was made up on the fly and we managed to transition into some player-directed activity.

Character creation gives you a PC with a hastily-packed suitcase of skills and an ex-career to justify their existence, but this is old-school play. When you get down to it there isn't many mechanics to occupy yourselves with so it demands players and referee (Star Master) to know how to roleplay and know what they are roleplaying for. A strong identity with something specific to the broad definition which is "Space Opera" is usually a requirement as well, but a requirement routinely handled well by experienced referees. Truly set up as a tool of the imagination. The flavor, the magic sauce has to come from everyone at the table.

We both were old hands at such a thing and we engaged Agility Checks when using a vehicle as a deadly weapon and skill levels to overcome save rolls required during critical improvising  and jury-rigging stunts. Only NPCs fired shots in anger, and I called for Attribute Checks not so much for a pass/fail result (though you get that too), but let the Attribute Check trigger the game world to react. Good rolls trigger events favorable to the PC, poor rolls trigger something which makes the PCs life more difficult. Obviously, in the logic of old school game mechanics, having modifiers juiced by high skill levels is the way PCs stack the deck in their favor. And tonight the PC rolled well. There were two opportunities I can recall where an extreme dice result fell against the player, but it wasn't in a do or die situation, so they only experienced small setbacks during the mission adventure.

We also had some good discussion around player agency and how does a Star Master deliver the set up but also quickly allow for player-directed courses of action they are excited to pursue. Time and again, when I run a game with an old school system I enjoy the fact they require you to bring all the imagination. That everyone at the table has tremendous opportunity to exert responsibility over the story's action and drama. Creative stuff which is hard to do. But I never had to worry too much of losing the flow. The blaster rules are solid, stat'ing out NPCs is quick, and there are plenty of technological game toys to interface with in the rule book. And genre tropes to explore. The relationship between who employs her, who runs her, and clone technology was emergent and player directed during the session.  With a good set of GM sheets Space Opera can give you a great Space Opera game of your own creation.