Random Saturday Notes - Wrap-up of my First Run as a Player in 4E

We finished the adventure last night and the whole thing was quite a bit of fun. We only ran through two encounters but that was one more than last time so it was a little better. First was a pendulum trap/rat swarm combination that wasn't all that threatening and we plowed through it in about 3 rounds with little damage. Next was a gimmick encounter that  was very reminiscent of an AD&D module in a bunch of negative ways - more on that in a future post. Despite that we triumphed in the end, slew the evil cleric, rescued the girl, collected a bunch of loot, and returned to Phlan in triumph, and that's really all one can ask for.

Things I learned:

• Even in a party of 6 characters it's possible to have skills in which no one is trained
• Even in a party of 6 it's possible to have languages no one can speak
•  Leaders will spend about half of their time doing something other than attacking in any real fight so an over-emphasis on offense is something to watch out for, especially at low levels. My level 1 cleric had a choice for his one daily power of either a party-saving big area effect heal & ongoing healing boost, or a glorious triple-damage single-target weapon attack with his fullblade. I chose the heal and I'm glad I did but it's still very tempting as a battle cleric to go for the potential 30-40 point strike and blow something away in one mighty wallop.  
• MISSING SUCKS!

(Yeah, I rolled a few more single digits last night, including a 1 for initiative in the climactic battle. Brutallus' initiative mod: +0)

This was a one-shot so I'm not sure when I will play again. This same friend wants to run a full-weekend marathon D&D game in about a month as a birthday bash and Lady Blacksteel and I are trying to arrange things to take part. So far it looks like about 8 players are tentatively in so it could be a lot of fun and there is already some chatter about classes and roles within this super-party.

So Brutalus Maximus IV, Cleric of Tempus goes on the shelf for now. I can see us running some occasional one-offs with a different DM throughout the year so hopefully he will get another chance to take up his sword in 2011.

Atomic City: The Animated Series

I'm reading through Icons, a new rules-light supers game that came out last year and I really like it. I briefly considered using it for my initial run with Atomic City instead of M&M. I've decided against that for now but it is very cool.

Tone-wise it really isn't much different than the silver age concept I had already, and the art is great. setting the mood perfectly. That's not really the problem.

Mechanics-wise it's not terribly complicated though it does have some interesting wrinkles.I'm just not sure it has enough crunch to keep me interested long term for a planned campaign - I like some crunch in my ongoing games. The designer makes a point of using it for pick-up games and I think that's where it's going to come in.

One of the interesting approaches in the game is that the DM never makes a roll - only the players roll dice. Hitting the bad guy? Player rolls to attack. Bad Guy attacking the player character? Player rolls to dodge. Not having played it I can't say for sure but I'm betting this has an interesting effect in play. It sort of changes the point of view to a more character-centric one rather than a neutral overview. Rather than "Batman swings at the Joker then the Joker swings at Batman, now Batman swings again" it's "Batman swings at the Joker, then dodges the return blow, then pummels him again!". I think it's a subtle difference but it could change the flavor during play and in telling the story afterwards. I'm not anxious for D&D to do this but in this kind of game, especially if you run it solo, it could be very genre-appropriate. Others could benefit from it too - I wonder if a Star Trek game run this way would feel just a tad bit cooler?

I'm probably going to let the Apprentices play with it a little bit and see what they think. It might turn into some kind of side campaign as "The Animated Series" but I'm not sure when I would have time to fit it in with any regularity - I'll have enough trouble doing that now with the campaigns I'm already running. Even if I don't though, it's near the front of the bag of tricks. Going back to pick-up games and one-offs, I think it could be a fun way to flesh out some other Atomic City stories without derailing the main campaign. I like the idea of a big city with multiple supers in it and multiple storylines happening simultaneously and now I see a way to do it.

For those interested there is a good review here

The main site is here though there isn't a ton about the game there. Read about the App pricing model - it's a great concept and I look forward to seeing how it does for them. It works great for me, but that may not be so great for the company.

Contemplating the Star Wars campaign for 2011

I have a confession to make. A near-sacrilegious one for a gamer of my vintage: the d6 Star Wars thing is just not clicking for me.

I love the basic system and it works well but there are a ton of fiddly little bits that show up that I do not like as much. Plus the Apprentices have certain expectations as to how Jedi should work and the gimped starting Jedi templates (only 1 or 2 of the 3 crucial skills) are nowhere near the leaping-about-slashing-with-sabers-force-pushing-badguys vision from the more recent movies. It's not all the system's fault - my own lack of familiarity with the rules as a whole is mostly due to my own lack of intensive study of them beforehand but that lack and my inability to string several sessions together in a nice neat row has resulted in some very clunky sessions as I try to play fast and loose but end up checking rules on how to do something and finding a whole little subsystem that I can either learn (in the interests of mastering the whole system) or ignore (in the interest of speed). I end up feeling that as much as I like d6 when it's sitting on  the shelf, Savage Worlds could do it better in play - and there's no lack of Savage Worlds conversions out there. But I have another option.

I really really like Saga Edition Star Wars too, and I have most of the rulebooks. It's good, really good. Plus I already know the rules - it's basically somewhere between 3.5 d20 and 4.0 d20 - so I am already way ahead of it on system mastery (something I feel is important when DM'ing a game) and it will also help the Apprentices as it will feel a lot more familiar coming from a D&D 4E game too.

There's also a question of material - the vast majority of the d6 material is set in or right after the Rebellion Era. Now there's nothing wrong with that, Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers will always be my "home" when it comes to Star Wars, but it's different for my players in this case. Being of the younger generation they've grown up with the prequel trilogy (I know I know) and the Clone Wars animated series. Now there are some d6 conversions of some of this material out there but it seems like a less than optimal solution when I have a couple of books full of material for this era already sitting on the shelf, albeit for a different system.

So I am looking at starting up Star Wars as a new campaign using the Saga edition and set in the Clone Wars era. Actually it will be right before the Clone Wars start as I run them through a conversion of the old Volturnis Star Frontiers adventures. I'm going to make it a regular part of the rotation and not just a fill-in as the d6 experiment was, and that should help keep it alive too. I admit that some of this is part of starting fresh with the Aprrentices for 2011 - We will have a new 4E campaign, a new M&M campaign, and a new Star Wars campaign now with Basic D&D being our fill-in when some of our group is missing.

I'll post up details on each of them as they develop. I've kind of made Fridays my M&M post days and I'll probably do something similar with Star Wars too just to keep some order to this mass of ramblings.

As for d6, it goes back on the shelf for now. I'd love to play it at this point, but maybe not run it. If I stumble across a group in DFW that's running it I will give it a try but for now I'm going to set it aside and go forward with my "all d20 all the time" approach. It's not something I started out aiming for, but it has worked out that way. We will see if this "system synergy" thing really works - or if I should just chuck them all and go with Hero System for everything instead.

 

D&D Characters and the Common Man

Barking Alien raised something in a comment about this post and I thought it was worth discussng.


As I am coming to understand, most old school D&Ders disagree with your opening statement. The D&D PC is NOT special. He is NOT imbued with abilities above the norm. He or she is a fighter just as the baker is a baker, the thief was a street urchin, the miller runs the mill, etc.

They (tradition D&D fans) take great pride in the fact that their not so special character with the 6 Strength and 10 Dexterity somehow survived to 6th level. What skill the Player must have had to overcome these inherent weaknesses (not to mention luck since the bad and good of the game owe a lot to random chance).

That's a good point but I disagree and here's why:

As far as the old school D&D thing, old schoolers _now_ make a big deal about old characters being like a normal person. They didn't back then. It's mainly come about as a reaction to the increasing power levels of 2E-3E-4E. There were complaints back during the AD&D days about how a 9th level fighter could jump off of a 1000' cliff and survive, so characters doing outlandish things isn't even a new complaint - some people hated it 30 years ago.

The concept of the "Normal Man" or 0-level characters (NPC's) in the game shoots this idea down pretty thoroughly IMO and they were there back in AD&D1 and Basic D&D right from the start with their own line on the attack charts and their own line on the saving throw tables too. Gygax even writes that the PC's ability to advance in levels sets them apart from normal people. From 2E onwards it's even more explicitly stated that PC's are special, so I'm comfortable with the statement.

That said the idea is not totally incorrect - compared to 3E & 4E characters, older edition characters do look pretty mundane. For their time though, they were by no means just like anyone else. Low ability scores aside, by 3rd-5th level they are far more powerful than any normal person. At 1st level, sure, they are not vastly superior to a normal man, but they get there fairly quickly. The biggest change is that starting characters don;t die as easily as they did back then, and that's not a change I'm terribly upset about.

One other angle here is that Basic and 1E characters of a given class tended to look an awful lot alike. They tended to use similar armor and weapons or similar spells as some were just better than others. Fighters tended towards plate, shield, and longsword as longswords were the most common magical weapon type in the treasure tables. Clerics were usually plate & shield and wielded a mace as it was the highest damage blunt weapon and the most common magical blunt weapon.. They also took a lot of Cure Light Wounds, Bless, and Hold Person at the lower levels. Magic-Users looked like circus knife-throwers, usually carrying several daggers (unless they found a staff of striking at low levels) and throwing out magic missile or sleep most of the time as their main spell.  So one of the ways to distinguish your character from the others was with a low score in one area, often comically low. The fighter with the 4 Int, the M-U with the 6 Strength, those were good for some humor in the game and really didn't penalize you in those editions as much as they might in newer versions as they had limited mechanical impacts, and it did make them more distinctive than the character with 16-18's in everything.

To me there are a lot of rose-colored glasses views in OSR discussions and most of the time I chalk it up to different experiences and the wide variety of customizations made to the system back in those days. When it gets into some of the specific mechanical details though it's nice to have reference material handy to establish a baseline of what was at least in the books.  Just as an example, there's a pretty wide variance in memories of how fast characters advanced in AD&D. As it turns out a very common house rule was to not award experience points for gold pieces recovered which was how it was written in the game - some DM's said "that's stupid" and just dropped it. The outcome of that decision is that PC's advance at half or a quarter of the rate they would advance otherwise and over a year or two of play that has a big impct on the game. It also leads to the view 20-30 years later that 3E or 4E has characters advancing too quickly.

Some of this is probably bias on my part as I was never one of those "Let's start at 0 level" guys. It's not like 1st level characters were THAT powerful, and yet there were people trying to start out even weaker than level 1 and extend out that whole "you can die in 1 hit" period of the game - not me. I was a lot more interested in getting to 2nd and 3rd so I didn't have to sweat the damage roll every time an orc hit me. It's what led to things like the "maximum hit points at level 1" house rule.

Anyway, while there are certainly games where you are basically a "Normal Man" as a character, IMO D&D has never been one of them. Call of Cthulu, GURPS, Warhammer FRP - sure, but not D&D.

The Apprentice Campaign - So Now What?

The D&D 4th Edition apprentice campaign has now crashed and burned, so while the main game goes chugging right along I now have to figure out how to restart things with the boys.  They went ahead and made up new characters the next day and we talked about options a little bit. We also ran a session of d6 Star Wars and that made them feel a little better though they got a little shot up there too. They do still want to play 4E so I have the interesting problem of where to start them out this time. My thoughts:

• Stick with Loudwater in the Gray Vale of the Realms - it's a little familiar to them and it is a good location (that's why I went with it in the first place) but I like to start fresh after a TPK and they feel the same way, so no Loudwater for now. 
• Start them out in Phlan which is the location of the primary 4E campaign - this saves me a lot of background work and allows for the possibility of a crossover between the two groups. The problem is they are 4 levels behind and might feel overshadowed by the other group. They apparently felt the same way so we're not going to Phlan.
• Icewind Dale - one of them has been reading the Drizzt books and asked about this and my kneejerk reflex was "No", but then I started thinking and I really like it - tough environment, small towns rather than big cities, barbarian tribes, an emphasis on cold environment monsters - that could be really cool and it isn't a super-detailed part of the world. Naturally, since one of them suggested it, the other one vetoed it almost immediately.  Sigh.
• The Bloodstone Lands of Vasa, Damara, and Impiltur- I almost started them here anyway as it's another northern environment (not as harsh as Icewind Dale though) that isn't heavily detailed and has old antagonists (Orcus was the regional threat in the 1E days) and new ones (4E has added the Warlock Knights of Vaasa which have a rather dark jedi feel to them).  The feel is different too - lots of knights, ruined castles, noble families in small holdings - I could do some very old school Greyhawk type stiff in this region. 
• Forget the Realms and go with my Ancient Greyhawk idea using the default D&D 4E world background. The problem here is that I'm kind of enjoying using the new Realms (more than I thought I would) and there is a benefit to only having one set of Gods, one set of races,  and one set of maps to worry about across multiple campaigns. Plus the boys seem to like the Realms and this would be a fairly radical change.
• Forget the Realms and go with my Classical Greek campaign. I do want to run this but I am probably not ready yet. It's the most prep work of any of them though the work I did a few years ago on a similar idea for Arcana Evolved would carry over in some places. It has all of the disadvantages of Ancient 'hawk and is even less like "normal" D&D as I would customize (read "limit") the races, classes, weapons, monsters, and magic items to be included in such a campaign. It's not a minor undertaking.. I brought it up once before with the kids and I know they are very interested - thank you Percy Jackson, Clash of the Titans, and Mythology Classes.  

Working through this again now I am heavily leaning towards doing the Bloodstone campaign now and starting up the prep work for the Greek idea as the "next" campaign, whether it be the main one, a future side game, or maybe a 3rd game run once a month or so for the family and whoever else can show.

Anyway, that's the thinking so far. I'll post how it goes when things are nailed down and play actually starts.

Special Monday Bulletin - One Campaign Comes to an Ugly End

Well I suppose it had to happen eventually. The Guardians of the Vale are no more. They were exploring the Barrow of the Ogre King not far from Loudwater in the Gray Vale when it happened.

Entering the Barrow had begun with a really tough fight against some goblins in an excellent defended position. They eventually won through and took time to recover before proceeding. Moving into a long hallway they were attacked by zombies and a pair of goblins and those were dispatched in short order. They proceeded down a long stairway, kicked in the double doors at the end, and seeing only 2 goblins before them (one clearly a shaman of some type) they charged in. They then realized that there were two hobgoblin soldiers flanking the doors behind them so two of the party peeled off to fight them while the other two charged ahead. Things got ugly from there. The hobgoblins gathered in the center of the room, reinforcing each other with 2 forming a front line while 1 stayed in the back firing arrows from his longbow and preventing access to the shaman. That shaman fired off an obscuring cloud that interfered with the party's vision then began systematically blinding the members of the party, greatly hampering their fighting capability. In the confusion the heroes each began attacking separate targets and didn't bother to try and shake off the various magical effects that swirled around them. Heroes fell and were revived several times but they gradually wore down. until finally only the Druid and the Goblin Shaman were left standing and unfortunately the Shaman was in far better shape. Darkness closed in and the heroes never returned from the Barrow of the Ogre King.

DM Notes: I haven't presided over a TPK in several years and I don;t like them any better in 4E. The apprentices blew right through the first encounter with moderate damage to 1 or 2 characters. After a short rest they were in excellent shape. That next encounter though...

What can I say? It was 5 Level 3 monsters against 4 Level 2 characters, and the adventure is supposed to be for level 1 characters so it should have been fairly easy, right? Well it might have been, except that they utterly failed to concentrate their fire on one target and the most dangerous target -the shaman- was not attacked until everything else was dead! They also bickered over tactics, and worst of all, they kept forgetting to roll their saving throws! I eventually got tired of reminding them and simply asked "Are you done with everything" at the end of their turns and moved on. We ended up at one point with  out of 4 badguys bloodied and 3 out of 4 characters bloodied, then it went downhill. Just as an example, the Elf Ranger fired off his daily at one of the hobgoblin soldiers while he was blinded and rolled a nat 20 - Epic! It was something like 38 points of damage in one shot and it took the soldier from unbloodied to 4 hit points, and he would stay there for about the next 10 rounds as no other attacks were made against him! One round later the Dwarf Warlord activates his daily and gives the Elf Ranger a shot (still blinded) and he rolls ANOTHER nat 20 - for another 30-odd points of damage! Against the other hobgoblin soldier! Sigh. Also while he's high fiving and enjoying these moments he's forgetting to roll his save against the blindness from the shaman, and that soldier ends up sticking around for another 8 or 9 rounds with 6 hit points too. It was touch and go for a while but in the end the Shaman was nearly undamaged when all of his goblin buddies finally fell and the heroes were all bloodied and mostly in the single digits so he simply picked them off one by one and never even reached bloodied status.

I will say that the opposition here is tough - hobgoblin soldiers start with a 20 AC which goes up to a 22 if they are next to another hobgoblin, and then the shaman (a Goblin Hexer) can throw out a cloud that nearly fills the room and gives his allies cover, effectively making them a 24 and that cloud is a sustain minor! So he fired it off in round 1 and simply maintained it for the rest of the battle!. Even at 2nd level AC24 is a a tall order. He can also hit individual targets for 2d6+1 damage and blinding as an at-will which is also nasty as it's a -5 to everything. Of course, forgetting to roll your saves against these things makes it that much worse. At one point the poor Dragonborn Paladin was Blinded, Slowed, Marked, Hexed, and Bloodied - we use pipe cleaner rings to mark status effects and we couldn't see the mini as he was buried in little colored rings!

So some lessons learned:

For the players:

• ROLL YOUR SAVES!
• If there's a guy in the back shooting you every turn and really messing you up then SHOOT HIM! They had a Druid and a Bow Ranger...
• Running away is OK - you don't have to stay and die together
• Healing Potions are worth it

For the DM:

• Look a little harder at synergies between monsters even when the encounter is supposed to be level appropriate in published adventures. I didn't really see that escalating armor class thing with the hobgobs and the hexer. Of course the hexer was only AC 17 so the best answer there is to shoot him full of holes, but still, it can get nasty in a hurry.
• Stick to my guns - I reminded them for the first few rounds and even gave them an "are you done" prompt after that but bad things happen when you don't pay attention and use bad tactics and sometimes that bad thing is a total party wipeout.

So there it is, my first TPK of 4th Edition. See, it's more like old school D&D than some of you probably thought. Now of course my dilemma is where to go next. The apprentices have already made up ne characters and they have some ideas about what they want to do. I'll talk about that later this week.

Motivational Monday

Random Saturday Notes - Session 2 of 4E as a Player

 

Well last night was the second session of our one-shot 4E side campaign and it was one long fight. The party:

• Dragonborn Paladin of Torm "Divine Sanction!"
• Human Avenger of Oghma "I'm Bookman"
• Half-Orc brawny rogue "Hit with my dagger...24 points"
• Dragonborn Dragon Sorcerer "I'm bloodied - Heal Me!"
• Human Battle Cleric of Tempus (Me)
• Tiefling Enchantment Mage - new this session played by Uthal's player

Since there were six of us this time we assumed things would get easier. We were so very, very wrong.

Last time we were deep in a swamp on a mission to retrieve a local merchant's daughter. Having fought through a bunch of crocodiles and a bunch of giant frogs we were now in the middle of a ruined keep watching a ceremony where a girl was chained to an altar in the middle of a bunch of frenzied dancing cultists.

As we observed the scene, there was a loud crumbling noise to our left and as the mist dissipated we saw a tiefling sprawled in the muck near a still-crumbling section of wall. Great. Dance stops, cultists look around, evil high priestess shouts "kill them", battle ensues.

It didn't look so bad at first. We were in a nice tight battle formation - Avenger-Paladin-Cleric-Rogue forming a front line with the sorcerer right behind. the tiefling was probably screwed but hey, we didn't know him. Two of the cultists peeled of to deal with him while the majority of the horde charged us.Predictably, most of them were untrained and posed no challenge to us but they dd manage to surround the Paladin and hurt him a bit. They also managed to injure the Rogue, though when we struck back half of them fell to various weapons and dragon breath attacks. The Cleric healed up the Rogue and the fight went on.

Round 2 saw the injured Tiefling running for his life although his impressive ability to make the cultists hit each other was good for some comic relief. Fortunately he was smart enough to run towards us where there was some chance of aid. The rest of the cultists went down although again they managed to injure the rogue and again Brutalus healed her up

Round 3 opened up and saw only the evil priestess, the half-ogre drummer, and some other human cult member still standing. Thinking that victory might be near the party spread out to finish off these threat and was rewarded with a generous helping of pain as the priestess fired off some kind of magical area effect attack and half the party went bloodied. Brutalus fired off his Channel Divinity heal, weakening himself but helping most of the party.  About this time though a crazy dwarf rushes out of a nearby pile of masonry firing a crossbow and leading a pack of crocodiles, including a big momma croc that led the charge.

Compared to the high of last round, things looked pretty iffy on Round 4 and got worse from there on. The Avenger dropped from a crossbow bolt, I dropped from a croc bite before I could heal myself or the Avenger, The Rogue dropped (she was bloodied every round!), the Wizard ran off briefly but returned so that he and the wandering Sorcerer were able to eventually finish off the half-ogre drummer who had been pursuing them all around the battlefield, although both were bloodied by this as well. We did manage to drop the other human cultists during this time but the evil priestess was still up and throwing out damage and the dwarf and the crocs were chewing us up even though the Paladin was trying to keep Momma Croc busy. It wasn't looking good.

The Paladin managed to maneuver over and perform a Lay On Hands on me, getting the Cleric back in the fight. I fired off Beacon of Hope,  healing everyone up and letting them get back up. The Paladin and the Rogue managed to finally take out Momma Croc, but the EHP dropped the Avenger again. Seeing that we needed to finish her off fast I asked the Rogue to delay her action so I could set her up with combat advantage on the EHP. I whipped out the sword and charged and having saved my last big encounter power for a worthy target I unleashed shining fullblade death upon  her with a mighty cry  of TEEEEEEEEEMMMMMMMMMMMMMMPUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSS and promptly rolled a 1.

Clearly abandoned by his god the Cleric rolled up in a ball and just laid there in the mud.

The incredible half-orc rogue ignored this massive failure and used a power of her own to make a deft strike and slashed the priestess open for 24 points of damage with her (clearly Vorpal) dagger, slaying her in one hit - and she wasn't even bloodied!

Out of healing now I realized that the Avenger was down and dying and had already failed his first death save. Resolving to do what I could the Cleric ran to the Avenger's side and tried to stop the bleeding. I failed.

The rest of the party finished off the crocs and closed in on the dwarf.

The Avenger failed his second death save (on his second roll) and I made another Heal check. I failed. Again.

The Paladin, Sorcerer, Wizard, and Rogue brought the dwarf to bay and battled him.

The Avenger failed his 3rd death save (on his 3rd roll) prompting an instant house rule of "You don't actually die until your  next turn - but that's it I'm not giving out freebies here". The Paladin pulled back and healed him just in time. Brutalus hung his head in shame.

We then released the sacrificial girl, told her to stay put as she told us about a madman working some kind of evil magic deeper in the ruins. We found a scaffolding leading up to a tunnel in the upper level of the ruins and moved in.


Mechanical Notes: Dice do weird things sometimes. A normal save has a 55% chance of succeeding. My Cleric's Heal skill had a 60% chance of stopping the death spiral. Yet we failed 3 saves and 2 Heal checks in a row which has a ridiculously small chance of happening. This of course was right after rolling a 1 on a big attack and after having rolled a couple of single digits on attack rolls earlier in the battle. Fate was just not with me.

This was my first session as a real healer and even with 4 healing powers (2 healing words, the channel divinity, and the Beacon) I still ran out! Guess my level 2 power will be Cure Light Wounds. I think part of it is running in a party that has 3 melee strikers which means low defenses and not enough hit points, especially at level 1. That seems to mean that they rush in and kill half the enemy in one round but they end that round bloodied. Thank goodness the Paladin has some backup healing capability.

The other issue was tactics. This matters a lot more in 4E than in older editions as the classes are made in such a way as to feed off of one another. It can be a s simple as "concentrate fire on one target at a time" which we did NOT do very well, but neither does my usual group, and "don't run off by yourself in the middle of the battle" which was also a problem in this fight. We had 2 characters fighting the half-ogre by themselves and out of range of my healing powers while the Paladin tied up one target and 3 of us attacked another target - great, 3 enemies bloodied, none of them dropping - it's a recipe for disaster and it nearly was.

Ah well, we will learn. Even with bad rolls and flawed strategies it's still fun to see it from the other side of the screen. Next week should see the finale of this little expedition and then we'll be back to the ongoing campaign.

Atomic City Stories - a 12-Issue Limited Series

Work continues on the campaign and I thought I would share a few ideas.

Structure - I'm thinking about writing up this first round as a "12 Issue Limited Series", deciding what the main plotline or big events will be for each one and planning to keep each issue to one session. I haven't seriously tried this before but since our sessions tend to be on an irregular schedule I think it's worth considering.

Villains: I want to keep it to a small number of regular bad guys for this first round along with a small number of opposing organizations. So far I have:


Supervillains:

• Baron Zero - a medieval lord who was frozen in the Arctic for 1000 years after a disastrous expedition. He will thaw out in Atomic City with powers of ice and cold and become a recurring threat. He has a more complicated back story than this and he is one of those villains with a specific agenda that happens to break some laws or threaten innocents as a side effect rather than just being generally evil. A new villain, the PC's will be called in for his first appearance so he will grow along with them. He will have some magical overtones.
  
  
• Doctor Jurassic - a genetic researcher attempting to study the DNA of creatures from millions ago. A disastrous accident will lead to a swarm of Velociraptors running amok and seeing his accidental creations harmed will drive him over the edge leading him to become a recurring villain who always seems to have some dinosaur-themed scheme in play. He will also be making his first appearance during the campaign so the players will have some influence over his development. He will represent the "science gone amok" type villain.
  
  
• Mechanon - a killer robot originally created by superheroes as a guardian and butler for their base. Something happened and he went insane and began trying to wipe out human life instead of serving drinks to capes. His origin will happen before the campaign and he will be a somewhat famous menace already so that when he shows up the police commissioner can say things like "It could be  the work of the villainous robot Mechanon!". Unlike the first two Mechanon is an old published Champions villain who has evolved quite a bit over the years. I'm going to start with his old look from the 80's version so that when he is eventually destroyed he can come back in the more spectacular 90's version and so on. He will represent the "technology gone wrong/man's creation turned against him" type of villain. Plus he's a good source for Giant Killer Robots.

Organizations:

• The Black Hand Ninjas - these will be a recently-arrived threat that is determined to carve out a place for themselves. Ninjas are pretty much required in a supers game sooner or later (especially when your players have seen all of the Ninja Turtle movies and cartoons) so I'm getting them in early.  They will mostly be concerned with attacking the other organizations but if the superheroes get in their way they will take them on.
  
• The Sorvino Crime Family - this is the other staple of superhero stories, the traditional mafia-style organization. The Sorvinos have been running things in Atomic City since the 50's (when the city sprung up) and they are not interested in sharing. They will have their ups and downs over the decades but their big challenge as the game begins is the new import from Japan mentioned above.
  
• Viper - yes the traditional bad guy organization of Champions will be lurking in Atomic City too. Considering I have over 500 pages of material on them I just can't ignore the boys in green. Plus it's pretty easy to bolt-on any wild idea that pops into my head, moreso than the Ninjas or the Mafia groups. They can cover the AIM/Hydra/Cobra role in the campaign world.

 On the friendly side the main allies will be the Atomic City Police Department. There will be no local superteams (creating an obvious void) only some local lone-wolf types. I'm thinking of making the main one The Catman. I know there's one in the DC Universe but he's a fairly minor player and this would be my Batman ripoff/homage who's the longtime hero of the city who has seen everything and fought everyone. Plus personality wise I see him as a lot more like the 60's Batman than the brooding avenger of the last 25 years. It gives the PC's a potential rival, source of information, limited ally, and makes the city seem a little more alive if there's another hero out there working too.

My thinking is something like this:

Issue 1 - Doctor Jurassic! The heroes gather to stop a disturbance in a local park and are attacked by Velociraptors! Through some detective work or police contacts or the power of Science! they track the creatures back to a corporation and to one scientist in particular. He claims no knowledge but by watching him/mindreading they track him to a secret warehouse laboratory where he is breeding dinosaurs from recreated DNA. A big fight ensues and in the end the dinos go to a special zoo, the scientist has a mental breakdown, and the lab burns to the ground.

Issue 2 - Baron Zero! A disturbance at the Atomic City Museum of History leads the heroes to a melting block of ice and some frozen researchers. Looking around they are attacked by a cold-blasting armored figure who rants at them with archaic language until he is subdued and they learn his backstory. They can then decide whether to turn him over to police or let him go or exactly how they want to handle him. It's possible another villain (or villain group that likes to wear green) shows up and recruits him by promising to aid in his revenge.

Issue 3 - Ninja Attack! The heroes intervene in a simple mugging and fall into an ambush as one of the leaders of the newly-arrived Black Hands decides that the heroes are too much of a threat and attempt to eliminate them directly. Running fights and ambushes fall throughout this issue until the true leader of the clan arrives and puts a stop to it.

Issue 4 - Sky Pirates! The well known villain group attacks the Atomic City Airshow where a new type of engine is being demonstrated. They swoop in from the air and make off with the device, returning to their cloaked heli-carrier mothership unless the heroes stop them. Lots of air battles, a "dashing rogues" type enemy group, and a potential raid on a massive flying fortress.  

Issue 5 - Rampage! Dr. Jurassic escapes and injects himself with genetic material that turns him into a T-Rex - but he keeps growing. Soon he is rampaging through the city and must be stopped. Once restrained he will be subjected to an experimental treatment to try and control his growth.

Issue 6 - Strike Force! The Family, battered by ninja attacks on their business hire a group of low-rent supervillains to come in and take out  the Black Hands. As reports come in, sooner or later they cross paths with the heroes and violence ensues. The Sorvinos put the heroes on their "enemies list". This is a chance to use a lot of low-level villains from Champions and M&M lore - Black Claw, Blowtorch, Lazer, Utility, etc. It also could set up some rivalries or enmities for future sessions.

Issue 7 - The Return of Baron Zero! The new solar power satellite has been commandeered by Baron Zero! He has taken control from a secret command bunker and plans to redirect the satellite to the arctic, using it to melt the ice cap and take his revenge on Lord Winter, the being who froze him in  ice for 1000 years. The players must locate the bunker, break in, and stop the Baron before his fiendish plan can succeed. Note: this is a direct rip-off of an old Captain America storyline from Tales of Suspense back when he shared a book with Iron Man. It's an old one (it's older than I am) but I like it and think it's pretty cool and relevant today.

Issue 8 -Show me the Money!  Every bank in the city is robbed simultaneously by small heavily armed groups of men. When the heroes respond they discover that the robbers are actually robots and that there are many more of them than first realized. Even the Sorvinos and the Black Hands begin attacking the robots but there is much confusion as they look human, until the heroes create a "robot detector" to help them identify the imposters. it turns out it's a plot by Mechanon - this is a first run, and he plans to rob every bank in the country next, causing an economic collapse and turning the humans against one another, doing his work for him.

Issue 9 - Maximum Security! In response to the mass robberies, the Mayor announces that the city's police duties will be turned over to a private security organization. Suspicious, the PC's determine that the mayor is mind-controlled and once that control is broken the new security firm (and the power behind the mind control) is revealed to be Viper! A fight breaks out and Viper retreats.

Issue 10 -  Body Double! A famous media star disappears while in Atomic City, baffling handlers. The heroes are brought in to help and eventually discover that the Brain in a Jar (still working on a good name for him) is behind the kidnapping because it wants a new body - the star's! Negotiations may be lengthy or short but some kind of conflict will likely break out and a nice little fight in a warehouse or office building takes place. In the end the Brain swears revenge in a Dalek-like voice that it "just wanted to be pretty".

Issue 11 - Family Business! The head of the Sorvino family disappears and  one of his children asks the heroes for help, both to find her father and to avoid a civil war within the family. Obvious suspects include the ninjas and Viper but they are not behind the disappearance - instead, a new villain may be on the rise.

Issue 12 - Destructor! A giant robot attacks the city! The heroes, the police, other heroes, maybe even the ninjas join in to try and help stop the thing before it gets to the Atomic City Nuclear Plant which appears to be its main target. It's a big running fight with a chance for some rapid research, rescues, and unexpected team-ups. This is a good opportunity to let other people join in for a one-shot appearance. In the end, a message from Mechanon lets everyone one know who was behind it, but there is something different about him - he doesn;t look like the one the heroes just fought. So the season ends with a massive fight that leaves a bit of a mystery hanging for next volume.

That's the outline anyway. The main goal was to mix up a lot of superhero standards and try to work them all in  rather than having one long-running plot-line for a bunch of sessions. I think it's a pretty god mix and it should be fun to play and run.

Also, If anyone has a good name for a "brain in a jar" type supervillain I am open to suggestions.



 

Epic Level Campaiging - Idea #3: Godlike

The last of my Epic Campaign Trilogy ideas is the New Gods campaign.

• What if the reason that the gods have no stats is because they have faded away?
   
• Why do we assume that the gods are more powerful than the Level 32 or 33 demon prince, or a level 34 elemental lord?
• What if upon assuming an Epic Destiny the character is actually filling an empty slot in the pantheon? Or what if they are all empty?

One of the posts in the thread that inspired this series of posts mentioned the Norse myths that feature Thor and Loki going out on adventures - drinking with giants, etc. Some of them read very much like what D&D characters might do. So what if the "Gods" are really just level 30 characters? Norse, Greek, and even Egyptian gods exhibit very human behavior, interact with mortals in some very direct ways including getting caught up in their politics. They also wander the land and the planes at times, fighting mortals and monsters and getting wounded and occasionally killed. That doesn't sound much like the modern concept of a "God" as an immortal all-powerful entity - that sounds like a high-powered mortal.  Star Trek and numerous comic books and probably many other sources have postulated the idea that ancient gods may have been advanced alien beings worshiped as gods by primitive peoples - why not use all of that?

My proposal for using this in Epic pretty much requires that you be OK with using the planes as an adventuring option. If that's OK then let's roll forth. Some  assumptions:

1.  As long as there are intelligent beings inhabiting the world then there are divine forces driven by their thoughts and passions and beliefs - this is a "gods are powered by belief" point of view, not a "gods are powerful in and of themselves" point of view. Each of these things combines to create an energy in the universe - Divine Power (think white light). Each of them also empowers its own specific power source - War, Music, Sky, Sea, Motherhood, Love, Wisdom - pretty much anything you could be a god of, has a separate stream or "color" of the divine spectrum.
    
2. The energy created by each of these individual forces looks for a focal point, and that focal point is a always a particularly powerful mortal that is attuned to that particular energy. A Barbarian who chooses Demigod as his epic destiny at level 21 becomes the focal point for War. A Paladin who chooses Glorious Spirit becomes the focal point of Honor. A Wizard who chooses Lorekeepeer becomes the focal point of Knowledge. They don;t have to be divine characters, that's just how it works. To put it in more D&Dish terms, the epic level character becomes an Avatar or that force, kind of like how gods in older editions could send an avatar off around the planes to take action. In this world, one of these forces is what allows a mortal to proceed beyond level 20. Without choosing an epic destiny, mortals top out at 20, so by definition (again - for this world) an Epic level character is a god, the personification or anthropomorphizing of a belief. It is this extra power that pushes him beyond what mere mortals can achieve.For whatever reason, this tops out at 30 - you can go no farther in your current form. Beyond level 30 the character becomes one with their force and no longer has a physical form - all they can do is manifest as a spirit and give warnings or advice - think "force ghost" like Kenobi in Empire Strikes Back and you have the right idea. Another angle: "Strength" is eternal, the God of Strength is not.
3. There are physical beings in the universe more powerful than level 30. Some of these are Elemental Lords and they powerful because they were born with the universe and have been in it since day 1. Some of them are demon or devil lords, and they are powered by the souls they claim from foolish mortals when they die - mortals who worship a particular force (in the guise of whatever god they believe in) join with that force, but those who fall to evil outsiders go to power them instead. Long ago (say, in 1st edition ) they were weaker but over the centuries they have grown immensely in power and now may be strong enough to overcome the gods themselves. In any case, 30 is a mortal limit, and these beings are not and never have been mortals.
4. People worship the gods who long ago ascended to become one with their force because they don't know any better - mortals are not  educated in the technical details of life beyond level 20. These old gods can still appear to their worshipers and they can still see what's going on in the universe but they can no longer affect it directly, which is why mortal followers and champions are so important. The gods tend to rise in groups (aka pantheons aka adventuring parties), remain in power for a time, then grow more distant from or less active in the world (as they hit level 30 and begin to fade out). This explains the different representations of gods over time but since it is tied to a particular force much of the religion remains consistent over time, with only the physical representation really changing.
5. This means that the power of a religion, or a group of religions, or even Divine Power in general, tends to be cyclical - Heroes ascend to Epic, take a very active role in the universe damaging things, repairing other things, and just making waves in general. Then they hit level 30 and though they may hang around for a time they will eventually merge with their force and then things quiet down for awhile. Until a new set of gods arise. Often, the spirit of the previous god of that force will take a very active role in selecting a new one through prophecy, dreams, and direct communications with priests and champions of the faith. Maybe the reason those new gods come about is in response to some Demonic or Chaotic stirring in the universe - Orcus starts to upset the balance of things and heroes begin to ascend in response (which is why there's a plot waiting for them at level 21). In short gods arise to solve a problem, but once that problem is solved they tend to get bored and eventually merge with their force out of boredom if nothing else.

Just to state it clearly, my goal with these ramblings is to come up with a system of divinity that fits the game mechanics rather than trying to reconcile two existing, set things. If the gods are "Level Infinity" or off the scale, then a demon prince at level 34 can never really be a threat to them in any way within the game system. That means the reasons for the whole "we have to stop Orcus or the universe dies" start to look a little contrived and it relegates the players to sidekick status at best, even at Epic levels, which is exactly when they should NOT be sidekicks. Instead, if it's "Nope, you're the God of War now, good luck" then they have a whole new level of responsibility and might even feel something of a burden and fear of dropping the ball. That's how Epic should feel  - there is no higher authority.You can't radio Starfleet and ask for help. You can't wait for Superman to show up.You can't assume Elminster is going to clean up your mess.  Using this approach, if the universe dies it truly is your fault.

One fun thing to do - and I would be tempted to wait until the players ask about it - would be introducing them to their Astral Domains. Every god has one, right? So one day they wake up and they just know how to get there. When they do they are greeted by their angels or archons or elementals or whatever type of servants they have, led around the realm by their majordomo, taken to their citadel and shown their throne, and generally made to understand that this is real - they are now the god of X and this is their place. They can learn to reshape it in the form they see fit (maybe as a skill challenge the first time they try) and they can decide who to allow to enter and leave.


There are some problems with this idea. For one, it pretty much means you can't use any of the published campaign worlds as written. I'm thinking if you want to go whole hog with the idea that the Spellplague REALLY messed up the Forgotten Realms you could try it there - the gods faded with it and no new ones have arisen but it's time now. Purists in your game will probably scream, but they probably already screamed when the 4E Realms came out anyway so why not? The default D&D world could work too - maybe one of the reasons  the Empire of Nerath fell was because Erathis faded out and no one replaced her. It might also work in Dark Sun too, but you're talking major changes if you run a campaign set after the ascension of these new gods. Secondly you want to keep it secret from your players, or at least I would. The look on their faces when they hit 21 and pick a destiny and you tell the wizard "OK, you're now the god of magic" should be priceless.  However it means the gods can never physically manifest in the campaign prior to the big moment and for some campaigns that might not work. Thirdly it is quite a different take on things than most Divine hierarchies in D&D so it may not work for your group - that's OK I'm not sure it would work for some of mine. The idea that Thor is someone's 28th level barbarian and Loki is a 26th level rogue might blow too many synapses. But I'm going to do it, sooner or later.

As always comments and criticism are welcome.