I ended up with two players out last week, out of my usual six, but it's a superhero game so we pushed on with Plan A. Well, sort of.
As our heroes awaken from the fade to black they sense a lot of nothingness ... and then some rocks ...
They realize something serious has happened while they help each other recover, knowing more is probably coming and that the Terminus is involved. Then something new appears ...
A huge, glowy, floating face (ala original series Star Trek) appears in front of them and introduces herself as the Norn, the Guardian of Life. The Omniverse has been destroyed but she has saved them, now the only remaining superheroes, and intends to undo the end of the Omniverse. To do this they will have to travel to 4 different parallel earths and stop an interdimensional bomb set up there by Omega.
I am amazed at how different players react to things sometimes and there is a paragraph of notes here about what to do if the players don't get it and throw rocks at the Norn etc. I've had players do stupid things before but once it's been explained to you that EVERYTHING ELSE IS GONE I have a hard time believing that people aren't going to get on board. Yes, it's kind of a railroad but this kind of thing is a definite superhero plot so shake it off and get ready to fix the universe!
My players, knowing they signed up to be superheroes, jump on board and our heroes say "let's go!" and so the Norn sends them to ...
This was another conversation. I have two players out, I have another player coming back for a week who wants to join in and I think we can all agree that fighting Nazis on a parallel earth is about the most fun one can have in a game like this. It's presented as the first stop in the tour and that makes sense as it is the most straightforward one of the bunch. But I wanted to save it until we had full turnout (or more turnout at least) so I opted to run ... well ...
Monkey Planet is another strong entry in "things you will see in superhero comics" so we went with that for this one. Of course I had done absolutely zero prep on this segment so I was winging it in a big way. Fortunately I did have everything in Hero Lab so I at least had 3E stats for everything ready to go.
As things come back into view our heroes look around and see a fairly normal-looking world. In fact it looks a whole lot like the Freedom City they know and love. That is until they look a little closer ...
... and see that all of the people around them are some kind of ape! The local cops gather, crowds of passers-by are terrified, and tensions are rising despite the team's efforts until Dr. Simian and the Primate Patrol arrive on the scene. There is a hurried discussion between the team and the Doctor about where they are, why they are here, and what is known of Omega and the Terminus. Immediate violence is averted and all agree to meet at city hall (nearby) to discuss safety measures with the mayor and the chief of police.
Though the entire place is both fascinated and terrified by our heroes the conversation proceeds efficiently. Early on there are inquiries about where they are from and what it's like there - "does everyone look like you?" is a complicated question when you have two battlesuits, a flaming guy, a frost guy, and two sort-of-normal-looking humans in the mix. Eventually though Dr. Simian announces that he has the Omega bomb in his lab where it is being extensively tested since he is the foremost scientist on the planet and has unmatched facilities and staff. Now that the dangerous nature of the object has been confirmed he wants to take the party to his lab to disarm the bomb.
Our heroes agree of course but there is some side conversation along the way as Patriot has recognized this Dr. Simian as a total twin of their own Earth's Dr. Simian - a genius villain who in the past has tried to turn all humans into apes. This is an alternate earth, and he has formed a team of superheroes here, but still ... there are suspicions within the party about what he's really up to.
Soon enough the traveling party arrives at the local Anthropoid Scientific and Technical Research Organization (ASTRO) Labs facility. Beneath this is Dr. Simian's giant underground laboratory which means the group passes through various tunnels, oversized elevators, giant sealed vault-like doors and ends up miles underground in a giant room which contains a giant glowing sphere ...
As the team surveys the lab, the equipment, the lab-coated monkeys working on the equipment, and most importantly the bomb ... from the adventure itself:
Dominating the building’s interior is a huge, red spherical object connected via cables to the various scientific instruments along the walls. The sphere pulses with a weird, crimson energy and makes the air itself crackle.
It is clearly not any normal kind of technology anyone in the room is familiar with but now that the Terminus connection is known some conclusions can be drawn. More machines are activated around the room and our two technical experts offer to toss in their two cents. As they move to examine the thing up close the up til now chatty Primate Patrol members quiet down and begin moving awkwardly towards our heroes all around the room ... "You must not interfere" ...
This of course begins the sudden but inevitable betrayal!
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| Yes, still trying out the projector. A published adventure usually means maps, so all I have to do is cut them out and then drop them in. |
The confrontation starts with MetaMorph shifting to a Bear form and trying to grapple Heavy Metal. This goes about as well as expected and things escalate from there. Brainape attempts to mind-control various characters in turn, Chimpanzoom speed-rushes an area and pummels all within, Elastigibbon uses stretching and spinning punches, Iron Monkey locks in on Red Phoenix with his force beams, and Dr. Simian blazes away with his chair-mounted blasters.
For our heroes, outnumbered but undaunted, Patriot flies right up to the doctor and starts punching but that forcefield around his flying chair is strong! Heavy Metal blasts Brainape, Red Phoenix returns fire on Iron Monkey, and Onryo starts blasting 'Morph.
This goes on for a bit with Morph and Brainape dropping fairly quickly. Iron Monkey eventually goes down to combined fire from Red Phoenix and Onryo while Patriot and Metal deal with the others. As the tide turns Dr. Simian shakes off his feigned confusion and sighs ... "Oh enough of this" and presses a big red button on his chair ...
...the overhead lights immediately change from incandescent white to a pulsing deep purple, and a loud humming sound fills the room. Everyone in the room blacks out under the influence of the inescapable purple light ...
GM Notes
The theme of the night was "rust". I've run this game before, many times. I've run this adventure before, a couple of times. I've run this specific part of this adventure before. Yet I felt like an almost-noob trying to keep this thing moving. It's rare for me to feel this clueless with a game I have chosen to run but it was challenging for the entire session. I have realized since that I have not really run M&M 3E since 2019 and my longer runs were years prior to that so I may have had it in my head that I know how to run this without really considering how much that layoff was going to impact me. It's as if 90% of what I knew about the system just drained away in that time. I felt some of this after the first session and I spent the intervening time reading back thorough the rulebook but once we hit the table it was not easy.
Some of this was due to the last minute change-up to Earth-Ape. I had not refreshed myself on the scenario or especially on the Primate Patrol's powers ... wow was that a mistake. It's one of the difficulties running a supers game vs. running a D&D type game: I know what a troll or an ogre or a red dragon does in a D&D game. Every hero/villain in a superhero game could (maybe even should) have their own unique set of powers. There are archetypes, of course, but the specifics of each character are often where the fun and the signature moves lie. I was reading some of these statblocks for the first time as the game got started and trying to nail down tactics for six different super-powered characters in real time was just not a great experience - especially for our second game in years.
Now the good news is that I did know my way around Hero Lab and its tactical console this time which helped immensely. But having easy access to the words and numbers does not equal knowing what to do on a given round with those words and numbers. So it helped, but it did not solve the main problem.
I also learned that I probably need to look pretty closely at opposition character builds as the Patrol, as-written, was having a very hard time doing anything to my heroes. I think Heavy Metal had a bruise and was dazed thanks to a crit but that was about it. With a bit of tweaking I could have both made the standard expected attacks better and also worked out some creative uses of their powers instead of scrambling just to figure out the basics. For example, in this particular scenario just restraining the heroes in some way is as good as knocking them out and I'm sure between a stretcher, a speedster, and a shapeshifter there was potential there, but I wasn't seeing it. There was also the barely-tapped potential of the mind-controller which should be a big concern to a bunch of non-mentalists but to be fair they did take him down first. Ah well - next time will be better.
The program and the projector did work well, so with actual (and extra!) time to prepare for the next part of the adventure it should roll much more smoothly. Of course I may have 7 players show up next time so I'll have to think of something extra to deal with them all.
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