Gotham: From the Shadow of the Bat

[BeardedDork]

Continued from Campaign settings.

Issue #3

Last night was the first issue in which all the players had a copy of the rules in front of them, thanks to Printme1.com. The characters attempted an interrogation of the Mad Hatter only to discover that he was absolutely petrified with terror. From what they could decipher of his babbling he was deathly afraid of absolutely everything. Which was in and of itself a clue but not what they where hoping for.

Battered and abused they dropped Hatter off at Arkham and went back to Wayne Manor to try and make contact with Alfred. He was no longer there, it was just fire fighters who had come to put out the fire, set way back in Issue #1. After returning to their respective homes, to recover. While resting and licking their wounds, the each received a package. It was a small radio earpiece from Oracle.

Oracle draws connections between the Minions that gave them so many problems last issue and the League of Assassins, she also confirmed that The Mad Hatter’s condition is most likely the result of the Scarecrow’s Fear Toxin and that he is currently safely incarcerated in Arkham Asylum. Leaving the heroes to wonder who gained access to his fear toxin, how, and why. Crane is a dangerous enough patient that if they wish to speak to him, they must either figure out how to get in or how to get him out. Releasing the Scarecrow was immediately shot down as an option, as well it should have been.

About this time Oracle informed them that there had been a breakout at Arkham, and the heroes rushed off to do something about it. When they arrived Freefall (the Jetpack Jock) noted that the roads seemed to be selectively blocked off with a path leading to Gotham City General Hospital. Oracle could by this time determine the missing patient to be Victor Fries, armed with that information Freefall located a refrigerator truck apparently abandoned in an alleyway off of the clear path to Gotham General. With guidance through traffic from Oracle the heroes converged on the truck. Animalia (the Animal Genius) tracked the missing contents of the truck into one of the nearby buildings.

Inside they discovered that a hole had been cut into the city maintenance tunnels beneath the building. they where greeted by a single Henchman who was quickly dispatched, a trail led off through the tunnel system After dealing with another large group of Henchmen guarding a door, one of whom surrendered they discovered that they had entered a research facility at the University (interestingly enough I can’t find any canonical references to a university in Gotham City, despite it’s large population of Professors).

It was at this point getting late and knowing that we still have to deal with the escaped Mr. Freeze, the first big time villain they will have had to deal with, we called the issue here. To be continued next week without the over-whelming might of Animalia.

[BeardedDork]

Last Issue our Heroes tracked an escaped Mr. Freeze to a University Office building where he was attempting to make off with, of all things, some of his own research on cryogenics.

This issue they fought Mr. Freeze.

Tune in next week for the continuing adventures of....Oh wait, you want more than that? That's the plot synopsis of this issue in a nutshell but, ok, I can do more detail than that.

I didn't draw the basement room we left the heroes in knee-deep in henchmen last issue, we started at the elevator. Come to think of it I didn't explain how they knew which floor to get off at either. Anyway the door opened into a hallway with a linoleum floor, with a maroon rug running the length of the hallway, there where cork-boards on the wall with various notes and notices pinned to them, the doors on either side of the hall each had a smallish frosted window and a small box for paperwork attached to them, some of the small windows over the doors to allow airflow were closed others were open. Oh yeah and there where henchmen in standard henchman formation, bunched up and advancing.

That nonsense was quickly put out of the way and Freefall discovered bowling for minions. Leaving them facing the only door with the lights on and noise coming from inside. Once inside they made short work of most of the minions, it did take them a few pages longer than I expected to take away his cold gun, leaving him with only the awesome might of his Armor.

Disarmed the fight spilled into the street below, where it turned into a wrestling match that favored Mr. Freeze. The turning point came when Mr. Freeze was forced to Go For Broke to stop a reversal from the Renaissance Man. The fight was still largely going his way but now he was down to less than 20 hits remaining and started to get desperate. Freefall who was redesigned from the Jet-Pack Jock used his Gravitic Ray to take the research that Mr. Freeze had broken out of Arkham to get away from him. Shortly thereafter the Renaissance Man managed to hit upon the right combination of lucky die rolls on his part and unlucky ones on Mr. Freeze's part to finally put an end to this epic Issue long fight scene.

On the fly I figured out a place or two to shave a few points off of Mr.Freeze's overly bulky build and still have a character capable of performing as expected. It would have been a very different fight if the groups heavy hitter the Animal Genius, Animalia had been present. It was refreshing to have a fight with an opponent without Martial Arts Mastery for once, though his high Brawn and Armor made him still a very frustrating opponent. We had our first opportunity to really see Knockback in action and once we wrapped our heads around it, we found it to be a very elegant system and we really liked how it ended up working.

Next issue more clues as to the who and why behind Batman's Death.