Dr Why: Setup (Mutants and Masterminds Hero High)

M&M

This was originally one post. I've broken it into two.

0. Setup
1. Orientation
2. Pop Quiz
3. Midterm
4. Term Paper
5. Final

Because our regular DM is busy for a few weeks, started a small set of adventures using Hero High, though it's set at a community college.

Five sessions: “Orientation”, “Pop Quiz”, “Mid-Term”, “Term Paper”, and “Final Exam”. For various reasons, “Orientation” was mostly combat.

There's a story in my head but the important part is keeping it player-focused. Been a while since I ran M&M, so there were some teething pains. (Another reason why "Orientation" was so combat-heavy.)

The Setup

Famous hero Dr. Wye (or Dr. Why or Dr. Y) decided a year or so ago to avoid certain selected property damage in the aim of improving society. The owner of that property was understandably upset and prosecuted the good doctor. The courts wanted to be seen as tough on this sort of behaviour so they actually sentenced him to jail, with the option of doing community service to lessen his actual jail time.

Apparently, after a number of incidents in the communal areas of the prison, they put him in isolation and then probably begged him to do community service and shorten his inflammatory presence in the prison.

He has agreed to teach a course on superheroing. He is teaching it at the community college and he has made certain stipulations so that people with secret identites can attend and not have it traced back to them. That is, you can register in your probable hero ID, you can pay in cash, textbooks are given away free to those who are still enrolled after the course drop date, and so on. While there might be a record that Mighty Mite (for example) attended the course, no one should be able to tie that to shy college student Parker Peters, who was never in the class.

Available to Know

Expertise: Streetwise or police connections

DC	Description
0	Because of an incident in the dining area, Dr. Wye is kept in isolation. He does have occasional access to the library and the recreation room.
5	It doesn't appear to be a trick. If it's some scheme to get in jail to get someone else, that knowledge is way above any of the people talked to.
10	The police are nervous about their abilit to keep Dr. Why if he decides not to co-operate, so they aren't going to release him from bonds. He's going to give the class while trussed like Hannibal Lecter.
15	As a demonstration of his own hubris, Dr. Why has brought along Replay, the original test version of the android whose later versions became Organon, attempted world destroyer. (Organon has a series of factories world-wide and rebuilds itself without the flaw it had last time.) Replay has many more accessible parts and exploitable problems and does not improve itself. Besides, it's deactivated....nothing could go wrong.

Characters

Because time is short and our sessions are short (we play for two hours, three tops), half the folks didn't want to create characters; instead, they took archetypes from the Hero High book. Of the other two, one created a character and one asked me to create a character. The one I made is below.

The archetypes chosen were Alien Exile and Tech-Head. We don't have any details about the Alien Exile yet except that she seems obsessed with the two factors of Not Appearing Different and sex. (I believe her early exposure to mass media have taught her that everyone asks about sex all the time, and that the proper clothes to wear in all environments are a tube top, shorts, and go-go boots.) The Tech-Head is named Clark Wayne, keeps stuff in his mom's garage, and liberated his power suit without permission. We have tied the suit into the Power Corps and Dr. Why somehow.

For the purposes of this description, the tech-head character will be Tech-Head and the alien exile Princess.

First session actually played October 23, 2019.