Jungle Gal vs. Ghost Anaconda
Kapow! Quick Hit
Last night wasn’t scheduled to be a Kapow! session, but since there was some confusion due to skipping last week’s session to finish Russell’s Gradulfiad arc, Dan didn’t bring his game, so Kapow! it was. Since both Redline’s and Public Defender’s players were absent, I sidelined their plot threads; also, because the players were starting to use Out-of-character reasoning about a mysterious conspiracy tying all the threads together, I took the trouble to disabuse the players of that notion. While it would have been amusing watching them chase their tails for a little while, I know from bitter experience–bitter I tell you!–that if you let this group of players start to get paranoid it’s a death-spiral for the campaign. Telling them flat out that it was just separate plot threads that coincidentally all started at once because it was the beginning of the campaign will save heart-ache down the road. That left tracking down whoever had killed and cut the heart out of the young woman in the park according to the forms of an ancient Inca ceremony.
In the interests of GTTFM (mildly nsfw), while the group was discussing a road trip to Connecticut to consult with the only other expert in the US who could have accurately reproduced the ceremony, a news flash came on the TV: a scantily-clad woman with a 20′ albino ghost anaconda had taken a bunch of children hostage at the Public Gardens and was issuing a challenge to Akela, the Jungle Gal. No, really I had that part planned all along…the villain came to the US to confront Akela, so there was no reason for her to skulk around waiting for them to find her.
The group raced to the park to confront the villain, who revealed herself to be a rival of Akela’s from the jungle village that had (partially) raised her… Nusta, the daughter of the witch doctor who taught Akela her secret jungle recipes. She had come to America to hunt down and punish Akela for her cultural misappropriation, abandonment of the People to side with the Outsiders, misuse of the secrets entrusted to her by the traditions of the witch doctors, and generally being a pain in the ass all those years growing up and overshadowing Nusta. This, of course, pushed all of Akela’s buttons, and she was ready to offer a truce and to show Nusta that the Outsiders really weren’t all that bad and that she was just helping people as the witch doctor would have wanted… until the others reminded her that this young woman had cut the heart out a girl in the park just the other night in order to summon the demonic snake that was menacing the toddlers. And so the fight was on!
The fight went reasonably well from the point of view of play-testing some of the system. We tried out the new way of handling actions in turns (basically having to declare all of your attacks at once if you’re making multiple attacks, instead of making one, waiting to see if it worked, making another, etc.) and it did indeed speed up people’s turns so play went around the table quicker. The rules for disabling powers got a workout when it turned out that Nusta was quick enough (and people were rolling rather poorly) that they were having difficulty tagging her straight-out. First the Wraith disrupted the ghost snake, then Harbinger managed to take away Nusta’s spear, and the Wraith drained her Super Speed. Akela finished the fight magnificently by combining her powers with her jaguar’s to KO her rival. It really did feel like it was straight out of the comics, at least to me.
As she was being hauled away by the police, Nusta vowed that this wasn’t the end of it, and the pharmaceutical companies that were going to tear up the jungle around the village searching for medicinal ingredients would be stopped. Of course, this left Akela further conflicted. Ah, complications.
One thing thing that, unexpectedly, some people found confusing was how the increasing die-sizes work. The problem is there’s no such thing as a d14, d16, and so on, so unless I force everyone to use an electronic die-roller I have to fudge the progression. The progression d8, d10, d12, d8+5, d10+5 was deeply counter-intuitive to the less rules-crunchy types, so much so that I’m considering whether to replace it with d8, d10, d12, d10+d4, d10+d6… All in all, the shakedown continues to go pretty well, I think. I hope the others chime in with their impressions.
Kapow! Playtest by Guest GM
My friend Russell agreed to use Kapow! to run a short adventure for Elyssa and me, so that we could get some kind of sense of how well it would go with somebody else running it, and I’m pleased to say that from the point of view of the players it went very well indeed. Russell didn’t seem too traumatized by it, either.
The strength of the game continues to be in the ease and flexibility of the character generation: I was able to (re)create a character that I’ve been trying to play for years in other superhero RPGs, never to my complete satisfaction. He’s a kind of cross between Batman and Sandman, called The Nightmare, and in systems like Champions he always seems to end up being spread too thin as a beginning character. Clever abuse of the point-buy system can alleviate some of that, but he’s always lackluster compared to the more straightforward beat-em-up martial artist or gadget types, and almost gimped compared to the same tricks applied to a more specialized character. In Kapow! that pretty much goes away; he has different strengths and weaknesses compared to the more specialized characters, but I really didn’t get the sense playing him that it would require a bunch of XP before I could afford to have the kind of character I wanted him to be or that he was and also-ran compared to the much more Brick-like Namaste, super-yogini.
The system mostly got out of the way for the rest of the game. It was primarily an investigative scenario, with only two real combats, and neither one really required any of the rules for special situations. But they were quick, and they were satisfying, and that pleased me a lot. I think one thing that was missing, not system related, was at the end we didn’t get an explanation of the villain’s plot from his point of view. I’m hoping that Russell will leave a comment that fills in the details of why those particular victims and the odd calling card….
Akela, the Jungle Gal
This is a render I did of Wendy’s character, which will be one of the illustrations in Kapow!
Kapow! Preludes and Knockouts
We had another good playtest session on Sunday (2/21/10). I distributed some combat cheat-sheets, which the players found helpful, and Doug, as usual, spotted a cheap exploit that needs to be plugged.
During the session proper, the group decided to hire a PR firm to announce their formation as the Beacon City Watch, and Harbinger’s alter-ego got in touch with his former agent to arrange that.
Namaste was menaced by steroid using thugs outside her Yoga studio, and got in a fight with the monstrous dealer and leader of the gang, Beef. She polished off the minions with one leg-sweep, but actually got Knocked Out by Beef throwing her through the plate glass window and into the back wall of the studio. Fortunately she’d called for backup before throwing down with him, and Akela the Jungle Gal, Harbinger, and Public Defender swooped in. After some amusing banter with Harbinger, whose intangibility frustrated Beef no end, Akela KO’ed him with her trusty spear, and the police hauled him off.
Later that week, on her way back from a society party, Akela’s Heightened Senses detected a blood-curdling scream from far off in the distance; racing to the location she found a semi-secluded park in one of the ritzier sections of Beacon City, mysteriously shrouded in unseasonal fog. In the park, to her horror, she discovered a young woman, who had been staked out and had her heart cut out and burned on a makeshift stone altar. The air was filled (at least to her senses) with the cloying scent of flowers from her native jungle. As she was contemplating this grisly scene, a ghostly Anaconda, at least twenty feet long, slithered out of the fog and attacked. It proved to be intangible as far as her attacks were concerned, though it didn’t seem to have any problems affecting the physical world, and her Animal Empathy revealed it to be a demon in snake form…so no hope there. Fortunately her holy jungle potions caused it to unravel into ghastly worms of light that faded away leaving only the scent of rotted flesh and jungle flowers. When the other heroes showed up they found no trace or trail of whatever had killed the girl, but Akela was able to determine that the wounds had been caused by an obsidian knife just like her own. At this point, she decided that it would be best if she didn’t hang out until the police showed up…
The next day she went to consult an acquaintance of hers, Professor Potter of the Sherman Museum of Anthropology at the New Towne College (Potter had been on the expedition that brought Jungle Gal back to Beacon City, through the magic of instant back-story). Before she could subtly pump him for info, Potter showed her the exciting story from that morning’s paper about a genuine Incan sacrifice; as near as he could tell from the pictures and reports the ritual had been performed precisely correctly in every detail, even down to the correct orientation of the sacrificial altar for the latitude Beacon City occupies. He was amazed that anybody on the continent could have come up with such an accurate hoax, other than himself and “that hack Carruthers of Whitney University in Connecticut.” Akela made a mental note to investigate Carruthers, and to get Public Defender to suggest to the BCPD that they consult with Professor Potter if it hadn’t already occurred to them.
Meanwhile, that morning as he was shaving Public Defender was startled to find the word REVENGE VENGEANCE written in blood on his shaving mirror, as well as a shaving cut on his cheek and blood on the fingers of his right hand, but no memory of cutting himself.
And there we broke for the evening.
Superheroes, not Superbowl
Lat night we ran another session of Kapow!, my superheroes rpg that we’re playtesting, and I take it as a good sign that despite the fact that before we started a couple of our players expressed interest in watching the Superbowl half-time show, once we got going they forgot all about it. We had our first big set-piece battle, and it went really well I think. Everybody was engaged and involved, and despite the fact that it went for most of the session it felt fairly fast-paced and like they got a good amount done. They were facing off against the big boss and her 64 minions, so the fact we managed to wrap it up at all is good.
The group had tracked Alexandra LeGrande to a warehouse where she was training her army of Glammazons, and scouted it out to find a secret lab underneath. They decided to split their forces, with Harbinger (intangible scout) and Public Defender (Force Fields) sneaking in through the storm drains to confront and delay LeGrande, while Namaste (super-yogini), Akela (jungle girl), the Wraith (power-draining mystery man), and Redline (powered-armor/motorcycle multi-form) burst into the warehouse above to round up the Glammazons and prevent them from just running off.
The fight between LeGrande and Harbinger and Public Defender went particularly well, from my point of view. Once she revealed her supervillain persona, Olympia, and began chucking her pentathalon-themed weaponry (exploding discus, “switch-blade” javelins, and big old hammer) it became evident that one or two on one they were just no match for her. She KO’ed Public Defender in the first round, which really bummed him out until I reminded him that by the rules he’d be out for a maximum of three rounds or until one of his teammates revived him, whichever came first. Harbinger then spent his turn reviving him, which meant that he couldn’t stay phased, but managed to avoid her attack anyway and they were both back in action.
Upstairs the fight went pretty much as expected, with the heroes easily clobbering multiple Glammazons per round, though the Glammazons did manage to at least hinder them, and in one case managed to pile on enough to score as a knock-out on Akela…but her jaguar Nushka was able to revive her easily enough. The Wraith’s exotic power-drain power proved to be the most effective at dispatching large numbers of agents quickly, though Namaste was no slouch in that department either, just using her strength and acrobatics. Akela’s heightened senses allowed her to detect that the group below were having trouble, so she, Redline and Namaste headed down to the lab, leaving the Wraith to deal with the remaining Glammazons.
Once the full group (more or less) was assembled, they managed to combine their powers and take Olympia down, though she did get a good shot in, disabling Redline’s Super Strength with a javelin through his suit’s shoulders. Basically it worked exactly as designed: a boss significantly tougher than any individual was defeated by the heroes using team-work in a straight slug-fest, and once they had cleared the decks and gotten together it went only two rounds…no slow war of attrition in Kapow! It could also have easily gone the other way, I think; if she had been able to take one or two out and press the attack so the group couldn’t afford the time to revive them they wouldn’t have had the numbers needed to overcome her higher defense and she might have been able to defeat them all and capture them or escape.
It was also very gratifying that Wendy at least thought the villain was really cool, and seems to be looking forward to her escaping custody and facing them again some time in the future. Don’t worry, Wendy, you haven’t seen the last of Olympia!
Clobberin’ Time: Kapow! Playtest
We had our first real (in the sense of using the rules and rolling dice) session playtesting my Kapow! Superhero RPG, and I’d say it went pretty well. We had one short combat, where the gang–who have decided to call themselves The Beacon City Brawlers–took out a dozen thugs armed with pistols and shotguns who were robbing a diamond exchange with startling ease. Startling to them, that is…one thing I was hoping to get out of the combat was to teach them how much more powerful they were than normals. We generally play in much, much lower power settings, so I think they found it gratifying when they realized that bullets really couldn’t hurt them.
The combat out of the way, we moved to the meat of the session, with them investigating a bank robbery by a group of masked, super-strong and fast women the press had dubbed “Barbie-zons”. The players got to invoke various of their shticks, with Jungle Gal scouting the bank with her heightened senses, The Wraith using his contacts to acquire the surveillance tapes, Redline using the Crime Lab in the base to analyze the tapes with facial analysis software, and even Namaste getting into using her knowledge of yoga and anatomy to analyze the way that they moved.
One thing that I realized in GMing is that even though I made up all the rules, and even wrote them down, I don’t have them all at the tip of my fingers, and the rules aren’t quite light enough for there to be only one thing to remember (e.g. roll vs. target). I’ll need to review them a bit before I run again. They did seem to work pretty much as I had hoped, to direct and resolve actions without getting in the way. There’s definitely a tendency for the players to ask for permission to try things that’s a legacy of other games we’ve played over the years, such as questions about whether they can move and attack, or does the move take their entire action, but I can definitely see them warming to the possibilities of simply being able to say “I phase through the top of the van that’s speeding away and into the seat next to the driver” without needing to make a skill check or negotiate it with the GM. Which reminds me, I did want to nail down the rule for over-awing somebody (along the lines of a Champions “Presence Attack”) before next session.
The session was it it was over before we knew it, and in fact we were fifteen minutes past our usual stopping time when somebody noticed and we had to wrap things up. People seemed pretty absorbed, and into their characters, and you can see the personalities starting to emerge. I’m really looking forward to the next session.
Kapow! Introductions
We had our first real session of Kapow! on Sunday. Mostly the group just role-played through getting together. Mike D’s character Redline is putting up a warehouse to serve as the group’s base, and started the ball rolling by getting in touch with the sole remaining member of the Beacon City Police Squad, Public Defender (Mike B’s character). He figured that, even though the Police Squad had been stood down by the city after cost overruns and a disastrous mistaken battle with the world’s premier super-team, the Astralnauts, they might have some idea of where to find some supers who would be willing to form the core of a new, private team. Public Defender ran it by Captain Carlson, who didn’t want to hear anything about it or anything that would lead to the Department being seen even remotely to be involved in forming a new team, however unofficial. That said, he conveniently went for a cup of coffee leaving the file containing the information PD was looking for open on his desk. From this PD gleaned the name The Wraith (Doug’s character) and set out to contact him.
Oddly, before he could do so, the Wraith (a former undercover officer with the Police Squad) showed up…the Wraith has good sources of information. Using his myriad contacts throughout the city, the Wraith tracked down some potential recruits and persuaded them to go to the warehouse where the group’s not-so-mysterious backer would meet them. There was a certain amount of hilarity as Doug strove to find exactly the mysterious voice he wanted to use for his character…particularly because it strayed perilously close to Montgomery Burns at times (“From time immemorial mankind has dreamt of … blotting out the sun! Er, forming a group of do-gooders, I mean. … Eeexcellent.”) But they all showed up anyway:
- Redline, Mike D. Founder of the group, paraplegic ex-motorcycle racer and inventor of the powered armor that transforms into a motorcycle; or is it a motorcycle that transforms into powered armor.
- Akela, or Jungle Gal as she’s called by the press, and her jaguar Nushka. Wendy was busy with Google, as you can see.
- Namaste, the yogini, Elyssa. Super strength, flexibility, breath control, and mental tricks, plus the power of Karmic Retribution.
- Public Defender, Mike B, a force-field projector. Police officer, last member of the disbanded official police superteam Police Squad. The rest turned in their equipment, but it was built into Public Defender, so…
- The Wraith, Doug, mystery figure in a trench-coat, with gloves that can drain super powers and stun.
- Andrew Jackson, Dan, no super name yet. Has-been extreme sport star with the power to phase through solid objects.
Together they form…. um, actually, the group hasn’t settled on a name yet. I’m sure they’d be grateful for suggestions.
After their introductions, they did a little light sparring so the players could get used to the system and the characters “wouldn’t seem like a bunch of big doofuses in their first battle”, to quote Mike D. That went pretty well, though I realized that I hadn’t fully defined how control powers work if they don’t achieve a “knock out.” (I have since rectified this: a partial victory lets the controller command the target to perform one action, then the control lapses.) It went pretty quickly, anyway, and I expect it will be quicker still once people get the hang of it.
Kapow! Playtest Starting
Last night we started hashing out the parameters for a supers campaign playtesting my new Kapow! Superhero RPG System. We didn’t actually generate characters because people wanted time to mull it over, but we discussed how it worked, and settled on some things about power level and tone. To summarize:
- Tone: serious, but not grim. Superheroes don’t kill, and supervillains mostly don’t either (because it’s not their MO or they’re stopped by the superheroes). No “Joker Syndrome”–if they catch a killer, the authorities can put him away for good. Realistic consequences of property damage such as throwing a car or getting smashed into a building aren’t generally considered, but violence isn’t sanitized to the point where fighter planes blowing up are followed by a cut-away to all the pilots floating down on their parachutes, Saturday-morning cartoon style.
- Scope: City-wide. The adventures will mostly take place in a single city, but range all over the city rather than be focused on a particular neighborhood. The PCs will be major players for their home city, but there are well-known groups and supers much more powerful than they.
- Prevalence of supers: Supers are common, and have been so for a long time. Every city probably has at least one hero, big cities will have a hero group, huge cities might have several. A super group can expect to fight a wide variety of villains, not the same ones over and over. There’s a wide spread of power-levels, and many who have powers have minor ones and don’t use them to fight or commit crime.
- Fictional Cities: the world will use fictional analogue of cities (a la the DC Universe) instead of real ones. The players agreed they would rather not get hung up on their knowledge (or lack) of actual geography, distances, and characteristics of neighborhoods. Play will take place in Beacon City, a fictional analogue of Boston.
- Not SF. The setting will be treated according to genre conventions rather than SF ones. We just won’t explore logical implications of certain kinds of technology or proof that magic works and literal gods walk the Earth. No explanation will be given or asked for as to why the world hasn’t changed in this or that way because of the existence of supernatural creatures, aliens from another world, artificial intelligences and so on.
Character concepts that people are leaning towards are:
- Doug: John McClane from Die Hard as a super; he gets hurt but just keeps on going, and going. Also has a prototype power-suppression device (used to restrain supervillains).
- Elyssa: Namaste, a yogini who has yoga abilities exaggerated to the point of super-powers (much as various kung fu and karate-based superheroes).
- Wendy: a Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, type complete with a big cat (lion or leopard) pet. Possibly an ordinary woman who can transform herself and her housecat via a magic amulet.
- Mike: a paraplegic with a transforming motorcycle/powered armor suit, or maybe a Sonic Blaster, he hasn’t decided yet.
- Dan: a superspeedster who “moves through time at twice or more the rate of anybody else”, so he need to eat, breath, sleep, etc twice as often as everybody else, but can actually phase through solid objects (by going through the space before the Earth’s motion actually moves the object there? I’m not sure I understood the comic-book physics of it.)
Tales of the Rambling Bumblers 