Basic Action Super Heroes!

Well, not a BASH! game, but rather a Supers! game I've found myself mixed up in the past three weeks. Rather than give a play-by-play, I figured I'd just hit the highlights and give my impressions of the Supers! system.

Act 1: Wild Card (probability manipulator), Magnetic Jynx (magnetic controller and illusionist?), and Malakai (undead holy man?).

We started off by beating the holy heck out of Slugger (pic in drawing thread), Slider, and Curveball who were burglaring a jewelry store. It turns out Malakia and Wild Card (my character) seem to have similar powers, being able to turn opponent's attacks on themselves, so really the three villains beat the heck out of themselves for the most part.

A few days later the characters met up at the docks for some ceremony and had to spring into action to when an offshore eruption sent a tidal wave roaring to shore. MJ lifted most of the boats out of the harbor and put them down safely further out to sea, resulting in her collapsing from the over exertion. Wild Card helped get people away from the docks and Malakai...stood there. He does that a lot!

Wild Card darted to MJ's rescue, getting her to higher ground while Malakie stoically faced down the tsunami, resulting in him riding the wave with minimal effort safely to shore. A well timed picture resulted in Malakai being dubbed "The Surfing Monk" in the local papers. Really it's the only cool thing I can think he's done in three sessions

(cont.)

Act 1, cont.

So a new island chain appears off the coast of Supersville and the heroes commandeer a boat and set off to investigate (oddly, the teams lacks any movement powers). Along the way they come across a guy floating next to his capsized sailboat. Doing the smurfy thing, they pick him up, turn around and deposit him safely in Supersville before returning to sea once again.

They come to the island chain and find a delapidated harbor area in a sheltered cove. As far as they can tell, it looks like the island wasn't hit by the tsunami, so more than likely it caused it. Still not sure!

They land, look around, and are attacked by swarming alien insects. Oh and our characters' minds get switched around, so we had to play another player's characters for the battle. Kinda fun, something I'll have to remember for the future. We squished many bugs, I discovered that MJ can't use the sword she carries around for some dumb reason, and victory was had.

We got back into our bodies safely and we returned to investigating the island. Then The Surfing Monk died. Yep, just keeled over and was dead. You see, he has some "cosmic awareness" power that lets him piece together wacky events like we were involved in, but it takes its toll. So one minute the monk is staring at the area a portal had opened up in, and the next he's dead.

Oh and the island seemed to vibrate, leading to a great many jokes about, well, you get the idea. Ok, maybe I'm the only one that found it funny, I'm juvenile like that!

So, not knowing what the heck happened to the monk, we load Malakai's corpse up and return yet again to Supersville. MJ goes out glory hounding, getting her pic in the paper and identifying Wild Card as her sidekick. So everyone's a famous hero in Supersville but poor old Wild Card

Meanwhile, being the respectable dude I am, I work out that Malakai needs to be returned to his monastary because he tends to "die" here and there. Oh and since Wild Card is the only character with a car, he is the unofficial super taxi/ambulatory service for Supersville. And does he get paid mileage? Nope.

End of Act 1

Act 2:

A few weeks pass and the heroes are meeting at a local bar that has become their unofficial base of operations. A drunk Irish guy comes to the table and babbles about him being a fan, how great it is to meet us, etc. MJ, being the glory hound of the group, shakes the fella's hand and ::poof:: disappears with him. Ooops.

So Slugger and Slider show up and begin to trash the bar with some hi-tech gadgets this time. Malakai and Wild Card manage to take the fight outside, once again embarrassing Slugger into submission (he kept hitting everything but us, including himself!). Slider ran away but we had Slugger. We made him a deal, tell us what the attack was all about and where MJ had gone off to, and we'd let him leave Supersville for good.

We figure out some plot pieces as well as where MJ was taken to. We set Slugger on the side of the highway, let him know that if he showed back up, it'd be the last time he did, then drove off to find MJ.

Meanwhile...

MJ got ported to some forested area outside of town. The Irish fella ported away, his job done, leaving her to fight Curveball who was armed with some hi-tech gadgets as well. Despite the upgrade, MJ took him down (again).

Then our very own Dr Octopus lookalike came storming in. He had the same tech as the three goons, but also long tentacles that he used to pound poor MJ and a healing factor that made her attacks ineffective. She never had a chance.

We pull up at the sceen of the battle a while later and find MJ unconscious, her sword missing. When we finally get her up and going again, she's forgotten who she is and how to use her powers!

[Keep in mind, this was 100% the player's idea. I think he enjoys playing half-useless characters just for the heck of it. Funny to witness, but * on the other players! More on that later...]

We take her annoying butt to the hospital and try to figure out our next move...

(cont.)

Act 2, cont.

While Wild Card and Malakai go do some sleuthing, someone drops off MJ's broken sword at the hospital. It seems like the sword was some kind of focus because now she can still use her powers, but they don't always work how she wanted.

One thing leads to another, the characters get in bed with the Men in Black (bunch of pricks), and off they go to a part of town that had been destroyed during the super power holocaust years ago. It's a dangerous place where space and time distort, terrible critters are running around, etc.

The heros begin to hallucinate (sort of) but they make their way to the center of the destroyed quarter. There they are attacked by soul-sucking spirits that are guarding a ghostly carousel that contains a device we're looking for (to win cred with the MIB).

Well the soul-suckers weren't too much of a problem, but MJ was. At some point she decided to activate her magnetic control (which she became convinced was gravity control and started referring to herself as Gravitron ::groan::). Well, she blew her roll and ended up tossing Malakai and Wild Card into the air which accomplished two things:

1) Wild Card noticed that the device they were looking for was in the center of the carousel.

2) It nearly killed both of us because, once again, neither of us had movement powers and had already defended against a number of attacks, greatly reducing our ability to defend against our knuckle head teammate's power (one of the odd things about the Supers! rules set, more on that later).

Well, we lived (barely), managed to stop the freaky carousel from *, and retrieved the device. Go team!

Oh and we spotted more of the alien critters hunting along the borders of the blasted region. We ignored them really, since the MIB claimed to have the island where we'd last seen then cordoned off and were supposed to be taking care of the problem.

Did I mention the MIB are generally a bunch of a-holes? Well, we decided to let them deal with the issue since they didn't seem to appreciate us too terribly much and it was fun rubbing their noses in their failure.

So, about this device. We were supposed to return with it to the Victory Tower, the old base of operations for the original, now deceased, supers, and give it to the MIB so they could figure out how to operate the systems therein.

Having been * around by them repeatedly, we decided to take matters into our own hands and wasted an hour or two of our lives trying to figure out how to circumvent the MIB and find our own answers as to how the device worked.

In the end, we were simply too paranoid to deal with the existing "super mind" groups in the city and reluctantly returned to the MIB with our tails between our legs and handed over the item. Oh but Wild Card did pick up a snazy white suit to wear around the MIB, just to be a bit more childish than necessary

Well, the MIB were (mildly) greatful and it looked like we were on our way to becoming a proper super hero team, complete with MIB minions (who still didn't particularly like us) and a base of operations, hoo-rah!

Act 3

This turned into a very short, very dramatic scene for Wild Card (me).

So while thumbing our noses at the MIB stiffs, an alert goes out that an R&D facility is being robbed across town. The MIB decide that we still need to prove ourselves to them (despite the fact that no one has shown any interest in hooking up with the guys) and order us to go take care of business. Being the bored supers that we are, we head on over.

Well, the gm expected us to head through the front doors and work our way through the multistory building. Instead, MJ/Graviton/The Face of Evil takes us straight to the top of the building making use of her magnetic control somehow. As soon as we land, a helicopter comes in and begins to land....then explodes!

MJ is taken out by a salvo of sleep gas grenades tossed by a pair of rocketpack villains who just emerged from the building onto the roof. I'm still not sure why they blew up the helicopter (the plot thickens).

So the two rocketmen leap off the building and make good their escape! Except....

Wild Card, being the daredevil probability manipulator that he is, leaps off the building and grabs one of the rocketmen (who turns out to be a lady). Now, I didn't think the situation all the way through you see. Villains, leap into action, doh!

So we're flying through the city, losing altitude quickly and pretty sure one or both of us are going to end up splattered on the ground. Not really having any other choice, Wild Card manages to free rocketgirl from her rocket pack, thus causing an increased loss in altitude for the two of them!

I had hoped to use prob. manipulation to have the pack come soaring back to me but the odds were simply too great, the rocket pack went sailing off into the nearby harbor. Double doh!

Then came a roll, evens I land in the water, odds, not so much. Well I plunged into the frigid waters, alive but barely, hoo-rah super dude!

But...

Rocketgirl hit a sidewalk a few hundred yards away. Oops.

So we return to the MIB, Wild Card feeling terrible about killing someone and the suits didn't make things any better. At least we all lived, but we still had no idea why any of the events had just happened.

Clsoing out Act 3, a shady cop approaches us about breaking into a rival R&D's headquarters. She's suspicious that they were responsible for the burglary (despite their lab having been broken into that night too). Oh and nothing seems to have been stolen, at least the lab isn't willing to admit that anything was stolen. Deeper goes the plot hole!

Hey! What about the whole Docks incident? Remember? Jinx saved the say with her Illusion, while WC almost died yet again by being in the wrong boat? Pshaw, good sir. Pshaw! Not to mention the Quidditch match and the groaning trees Firefly napalmed before gracefully falling to earth. And what about the 100' tall toddler?


(P.S. This is the GM in question, and I SWEAR everything will eventually make sense. It isn't MY fault one of the characters has no aptitudes and the other is an amnesiac Glory Hound!)

Well, I WAS trying to not be too specific in case you do get around to publishing this lunatic game of yours! And I don't know if I want to admit that my paragon hero Mr America was this close to punching out a baby.

And it's my telling, I'm omitting the parts where WC didn't look so good

Hehehehehehe... It's kinda funny, actually. I really never know what y'all are gonna do.