Parzival
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Is a little Stir Crazy this year...
Posts: 347
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Post by Parzival on Jan 15, 2024 23:47:31 GMT -6
Highlights: A ditzy beautician with an over-groomed lap dog named Fufu. (It fit the story line, I swear.)
Much discussion of whether telling the truth to the above NPC is better than trying to scare her by pretending to be pest control people out to handle her “snake problem.” Answer: Yes, it would be.
Attempt to quietly enter an abandoned warehouse results in shattered glass falling two stories onto concrete… but the bad guys don’t hear it (they were, at least, in a basement). They had bad rolls; the bad guys had worse.
Air control stands in for elevator, with a whole lot of karma. But it worked.
Fire makes a handy lantern when you don’t have one.
Honestly, this evening was a little slow as they spent much of the time trying to figure out how to convince the NPC into letting them into her apartment. Once they got in, I had to improvise a lot to make the effort worthwhile. After that, the “breaking and entering” bit at the warehouse was the entire “action” sequence for the session. But we paused with everyone knowing a Big Fight will likely happen to start the next session.
Oh, and yes, the moon rock sniffer has sniffed out the moon rock. Probably.
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Parzival
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Is a little Stir Crazy this year...
Posts: 347
|
Post by Parzival on Jan 22, 2024 22:45:11 GMT -6
And the saga continues… It was all one big continuous encounter. Cautiously cracking the door to the warehouse basement storage room, our intrepid heroes see an enormous woman dressed all in green lounging in a chair, thumping it against the wall in obvious boredom. In front of the chair is a table with a metal carrying case in the center. Nearby is an (expensive) videotape camera (ca 1985) on a tripod. From the ceiling dangles a single lightbulb. Our “Anonymous” hero conjures up some DarkForce to cover the lightbulb, plunging the room into (ordinary) darkness. The large woman (Anaconda) reacts, cursing the light bulb for burning out and “Sidewinder” for not supplying a flashlight. She thrashes about in the dark, knocking over chair, camera, table, and metal case. Themis, the fire controller, sends the “torch ball” into the room to distract the supervillainess, while “Anonymous” uses air control to slide the case into his grasp. They take off running as Anaconda spots them both— then Themis snuffs the torch ball, plunging Anaconda into darkness. She flails out, but misses, and when she tries to run after them in the dark, winds up slamming into a wall. (She rolled a 07 in an Intuition check to find the door; instead she found the wall.) Racing upstairs into the warehouse, “Anonymous” realizes Anaconda is too fast for them. Rather than trying to find the door, she blows out a plate glass window pane on the front of the warehouse with a summoned wind punch, and leaps into the street. Themis flames the staircase behind them, and follows. Anaconda is slowed, but the fire goes out as soon as Themis leaves control range. It’s a foot race now, but, Anonymous boosts their speed with a helpful push of air (this is becoming a standard trick of his). Themis keeps putting up fire walls to delay Anaconda— and it’s working. They’re out pacing Anaconda and staying out of her constrictor range. Ducking down an alley, Anonymous tries calling up DarkForce walls to block their pursuer, but she just punches through them, accepting any DarkForce damage they inflict. But enough delay happens for Anonymous to turn to the side and run for the local police station, and the wall of DarkForce blocks Anaconda from seeing this side run; she pursues Themis, who runs into another alley, still surrounding Anaconda with flames. Anaconda is looking a little scorched. Alerted by Anonymous, the cops show up and get in a shootout with Anaconda. Themis climbs a fire escape to get away. Anonymous leaves police station, having convinced the desk sergeant that the case contains a helicopter part (he doesn’t want to turn the moon rock over to them because he fears they will connect him to the original heist.) Themis sees the battle with the polices end abruptly as Sidewinder teleports into the seen, grasp Anaconda, and teleports out.
So the evening ended with the moon rock recovered (but not returned), and the Serpent Society very, very, unhappy…
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Post by scottenkainen on Jan 28, 2024 10:31:40 GMT -6
Interesting play style; much more D&D than Marvel Super Heroes.
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Parzival
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Is a little Stir Crazy this year...
Posts: 347
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Post by Parzival on Jan 28, 2024 19:19:10 GMT -6
Well, their only other RPG experience is 5e. Also, they have poor fighting capabilities and low Health numbers. They’re also secretive in what they do— so far little of their efforts have been public— not only does the public not know their secret identities, the public doesn’t even know their heroic identities, or even that such heroes exist. Ironically, the “secret” identities— that is, their normal life selves— are better known! (Sort of like how everybody knows who Bruce Wayne is, but nobody know’s he’s Batman… or, early in his career, that there even is a “Batman.”) But that situation may change, soon.
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Parzival
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Is a little Stir Crazy this year...
Posts: 347
|
Post by Parzival on Mar 19, 2024 15:22:36 GMT -6
Lots to catch up on since my last post.
Interestingly, in our last installment, Anonymous (as Jun Liu) did *not* turn over the rock to the cops, but instead took it back to Sasha’s secret lab. Sasha himself went home to the family penthouse a few blocks away. He contacted his father and revealed that he had recovered the rock and stored it safely. His father wanted to regain the rock immediately, so Sasha arranged an exchange with Jun Liu, and then met an armored van from Roxxon, with Jones, Sr., following behind. Unfortunately, the quiet exchange did not prove so quiet, as Jones, Sr., asked about the “moon rock” in a busy street in Manhattan while people were getting food at a popular restaurant, and had stopped to stare at the armored truck. And then Sasha noticed that someone was taking pictures…
And yep, the whole exchange made the afternoon edition of The Daily Bugle, above the fold, with photos of Sasha and his dad and the case and the truck.
If that makes you think “uh oh,” you’re right.
Back at the penthouse (Jun Liu went to his own apartment to rest), Sasha got an alert from security that someone had entered the building. At that moment, the private elevator to the penthouse “dinged” and through the door came a security guard… a little too swiftly, and with too big a smile for Sasha to believe. He realized (successful Psyche roll) that the guard was an illusion sent by Black Mamba, and when it tried to grab him, the illusion shattered and it vanished in a puff of DarkForce smoke (Black Mamba also uses DarkForce in her abilities).
The Serpent Society was not done yet. Sasha (rolling well again) spotted movement from an air vent, and saw Cobra uncoiling into the room from the vent. Reacting quickly, Sasha opened the briefcase that held his claws, grabbed the claws, and threw the case at Cobra. He missed, but apparently it threw off Cobra’s own shot, and his gas missile went wide (an 11. Apparently, I was using Anonymous’s dice). In the next round, Sasha/Themis got in a good claw strike, but took a solid hit himself, knocking his own feeble hit points down even more. I was certain this was going to be a bad fight for Sasha, and a lesson in not being far from one’s crime fighting partner… until on his next strike, Sasha absolutely NAILED Cobra with a claw slash (94!!!), stunning Cobra for 6 rounds! The snaky dude dropped like the proverbial stone. At that moment the real security showed up. They called up a gurney, strapped Cobra to it, and hauled him away. Of course, as Sasha was on the phone with security a few minutes later, he heard a commotion, and realized that Cobra had escaped, probably thanks to Sidewinder.
What’s going to happen next? I honestly don’t know. Roxxon has the moon rock back (hmmm), Sidewinder knows the Serpent Society won’t likely get another easy shot at it, and revenge really isn’t his thing. So I’m thinking for this round, the villains are done (at least the current ones), and it’s time for a new comic book adventure to start. What that’s gonna be? Scratching my head on that one… (Hey, if anybody has an idea, let me know.)
One of the things I liked about this was how the combat turned out. As I said above, Themis/Sasha Jones is a very weak combatant. His Health is absurdly low, and his fighting and throwing skills are substandard, especially compared to most supervillains he’s likely to face. In this instance, he couldn’t call up fire to help him, as he didn’t start with his claws (which also hold the control device for his fire abilities), and didn’t want to risk exposing his secret identity. But the MSH combat rules take care of that via the color bands and the Slam/Stun/Kill results which literally anyone can roll. So even if your strikes can’t defeat an opponent’s armor, or he has Health in the hundreds, you can get lucky and actually win! (In this case it helped that Themis/Sasha had the Martial Arts “Talent,” allowing him to Stun or Slam the much stronger Cobra. It’s interesting that he got the Stun result with claws, but the “Hack & Slash” chart allows this. I take this to mean that the pain of the cut is so great to cause the opponent to pass out, rather than thinking of it as a “stunning blow” as with a fist or heavy object.
It’s really amazing how great this very simple system is.
[EDITED because I had retold the earlier acquisition of the stone]
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Parzival
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Is a little Stir Crazy this year...
Posts: 347
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Post by Parzival on Apr 9, 2024 9:41:11 GMT -6
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