Ripping off something current

DC Heroes

A couple of thoughts converged with some events today: A friend found his copy of DC Heroes 3rd edition; I have often thought that being in a super team in the DC universe is like being in a garage band; and I have been watching Stargirl.

With a suggestion from that same friend, here's the rip-off idea:

• Kids find a hidden supervillain lair with foci, and decide to become superheroes, but they are pretty obviously using supervillain gimmickry. So the villains get mad at them for stealing their tech and the heroes come to beat on them because they are obviously Villainy The Next Generation.

The first thought is that this should have a Millennium vs Boomer kind of vibe. I don't know how much that will come across because, uh, my friends are boomers. But we'll try.

Now, the Stargirl influence provides a couple of things: there aren't a lot of heroes in the area (it's the Ontario, Canada equivalent of Blue Valley), the age of the protagonists, and the legacy vs originals kind of conflict

The setting is easy; I ran a DC Heroes adventure in which the player characters where former teen heroes who had been given hero-ing jobs in a JobsOntario grant; fast forward that by forty years or so and make at least some of the kids children of the original heroes.

All of the heroes seem to be gimmick based, but it doesn't have to be so. I think you can get by with only some of the heroes being gimmick based. Try it this way:

For various reasons, Amber wishes she was a superhero, especially when she discovers that her dad put on a costume and fought crime for a couple of years. But (a) dad refuses to let her and (b) she has no powers. She's friends with Evelyn, who has the power to come back to life. (“Immortality like this isn't really a crime-fighting kind of power. It just means I keep returning, and that my folks are a lot more careless about their safety precautions.”) Evelyn probably has additional super powers, but she's not passionate about the crime-fighting thing like Amber is; she might go along, though.

And then they meet Christopher. Christopher is an alien (it's an exchange program with Saturn; we needn't go into the details) but he can phase through items. To impress Amber, whom he has a bit of a crush on, he points them to a lair filled with supervillain gadgets. In fact, someone stole all of these from the warehouse where they keep the belongings of incarcerated supervillains, and is planning to ransom them back to the supervillains when they get out, but the kids don't know that.

What Amber knows is that here's her chance to be a superhero.

Then we get into conflicts. The guy who stole the gimmicks is after them. The supervillains are after them. Heroes think they're obviously villains.

Now, that's a nice setup for a story or a comic series. What it has is an awful lot of arm-twisting in order for the players to create characters, so it's not a general setting.

I'll keep thinking about it.

The Fenwick Story

Champions

This is a Champions story from long ago, but I figured I'd set down what I remember of it, so I could point to it. I've referred to this several times over the years, and I want to again.

Preface: I regard combat as integral to superhero roleplaying games. At the point where this story happened, I tried for combat in every session, even if it was "You see a mugger, so you deal with him." In Champions, however, combat can take a long time to play out. (That's why I eventually dumped Champions though I find that combat with my gang often takes a long time to play out, regardless of the system.) The other thing you need to know is that the players are much brighter than I am, so by necessity I evolved to a gamemastering system where I set up a premise and let them go. Though I tried to be railroad-y and present the story, I had to let it go because I couldn't out-think them. This was an important step in that process.

As I recall the setting for the adventure, one or more people were held captive in a RAVEN headquarters. At that time, the concept was that RAVEN funded any number of take-over-the-world schemes, and each one became a RAVEN operation. The intent was, I think, to model spy and superhero stories where there's no consistency between schemes.

Knowing this, the players decided to infiltrate the base as auditors. They made up fake IDs, got clipboards, put on suits, and showed up at the front door of the base. (I believe James Nicoll's character was drafted to play the head auditor, and I'm pretty sure he came up with the name Fenwick.)

“This is Fenwick. From Accounting.”

This tickled me.

“Right. Just a sec while we get the locks and you can come in.”

Sound of muffled, worried consultation. The doors eventually open, and the supreme base leader is there, nervously.

“We'll start at the top and work down. Head office is concerned about how you're spending their money. I'd like a tour of the entire facility.”

At this point, the players have asked them to reveal that everything is on the up-and-up, so the obvious response is that it isn't. I improvise various details, like the laundry room being full because all the sheets are being washed (to hide that they're silk) or that someone had faultily changed the menu in the cafeteria from "TODAY'S SPECIAL: LOBSTER BISQUE" to "TODAY'S SPECIAL: CAMPBELL'S SOUP." The warning “It's Fenwick! From Accounting!” being passed down the corridors.

Frankly, I was having too much fun improvising ways in which this group of bad guys had been ripping off the RAVEN Supreme Command to find a way to shoe-horn combat in there.

Eventually, they found the hostages, and there might maybe have been a bit of combat in getting the hostages out, but I don't think so; I think the players came up with a plan and executed it and the hostages were freed.

Aftermath: Well, someone (I don't remember if it was me or James or maybe someone else) played Fenwick in an adventure later. In Hero games, that means you put all your points into Presence. The line, “It's Fenwick! From Accounting!” happened in our group for a while.

Anyway, that was a session without combat, and it was a ton of fun.

Even though it was a superhero game.

Random Tables You Didn't Know You Needed (superheroes)

Superheroes

I have lately been suffering from a creative slump, so I of course decided that what the world needs is more random tables...so that people in a creative slump can randomly roll for an idea that they can then refuse in favour of something else they just thought up. (Well, that's how it works for me.)

My goal is eventually to provide 36 options on each of these tables (2d6 worth) but in no way will I be providing that many now. (See above re: "creative slump".) But I'll try to provide at least six for each one.

Where an h is specified, it means the number of heroes, so if the gang is 2h and there are three heroes, it's a gang of six.

Look, you can come up with "Mugging" yourself. Here are some others.

Random street crimes

1D6	The Crime, Of Course
1	Guys damaging a building (extortion or hate crime against occupants) with h+3 crooks
2	Gang fight (because group B is infringing on group A's territory) with 2h each side.
3	Getaway vehicle from crime, with h+1 guys in vehicle
4	Robbery, man, with h+1 bad guys and h victims
5	Train robbery: 4 folks moving through a commuter train or subway robbing people and with someone waiting to get them away before next stop.
6	A person threatening to take own life, either as a distressed person or as a suicide bomber.

Sometimes a hero has to make a choice between hero-ing and personal obligations like these; this assumes, of course, that the hero has a secret identity.

Personal Obligations

1D6	Obligation
1	My beloved fill-in-the-blank is sick and I must be by the bedside!
2	Birthday or anniversary party. Big deal for them, so don't miss it.
3	Interview (job? journalistic subject?) or sitting for an exam, and it's been postponed once already.
4	My beloved has a doctor's appointment and I promised to be there in case it's bad news.
5	First date. Gonna blow them off because Dr. Demolition is blowing up the neighbourhood?
6	Pet needs to go to vet, stat.

And remember, at any time the player can decide that the personal obligation takes precedence: prepare for that.

Of course, you might want a random table of random things, as Dan Swanson has suggested:

Random Random Stuff

D6, D6	Random Stuff
1, 1	A cow.
1, 2	An old computer
1, 3	True love, available in a bottle.
1, 4	A portable trailer full of paper tapes recording the weather patterns of the 1960s.
1, 5	A paper bag containing a dog turd, suitable for putting on a porch and setting on fire.
1, 6	Magical amulet that looks like a snazzy brooch.
2, 1	A disabled gun.
2, 2	An old catalog.
2, 3	Leftover gear from a supervillain.
2, 4	An old digital recording medium (cassette tape, wire reel, record, wax cylinder, etc.) that might be useless or it might have valuable secrets on it.
2, 5	Designer clothes that are out of fashion.
2, 6	How-To book.
3, 1	Alien weapon.
3, 2	Crossword puzzle.
3, 3	Protest placard.
3, 4	$100,000 in large bills in a woman's clutch purse but no identification.
3, 5	Lyrics to a sea shanty but altered to contain a clue.
3, 6	Roller blades.
4-5, 1	Uniform of a decorated armed forces officer.
4-5, 2	Black book containing a stunning number of celebrity and politician numbers.
4-5, 3	A shard from a glass knife that killed a witch.
4-5, 4	Hair clippings from a famous super, during the time they had lost their powers.
4-5, 5	Lost flip phone.
4-5, 6	Musical instrument once played by a celebrity (i.e., glockenspiel once played by Buddy Holly; sawblade used as a cymbal by Gene Krupa)
6, 1	Ring from a candy box that grants the wearer great strength but also great rage.
6, 2	Page from an old bible with family records, written in some kind of red-brown ink (or possibly blod).
6, 3	Stack of Post-It™ notes.
6, 4	Box of chocolates.
6, 5	Replica of a particular medieval weapon.
6, 6	Pencil once owned by a celebrity.

And ICONS needs benchmarks for area and probably volume.

Level	Distance	Area	Volume
1	A couple of yards	A quilt for a king-size bed.	An elevator.
2	Across a street.	A city block.	A two-storey suburban home or hot air balloon.
3	A city block.	Several city blocks.	A small office building or a blimp.
4	Several city blocks.	Square mile.	A stadium.
5	Ten to twenty city blocks.	Area of a small city.	City block of skyscrapers.
6	A few miles.	A county or a small state or province.	Lake Erie.
7	Tens of miles.	A North American state or province (but not one of the really small ones).	Lake Superior.
8	Hundreds of miles.	A country.	Atlantic Ocean.
9	Thousands of miles.	A continent.	Volume of the moon.
10	Virtually anywhere.	Surface of the earth.	Volume of the earth.

Or maybe the personal life; roll 1D3 for the number of pets:

Pets

2D6	Pet
2	Rare and normally illegal (panther, orangutan, genetically engineered lynx, etc.)
3	Farm animal (pig, chicken, goat, sheep)
4	Rare tropical fish
5	Rabbit
6	Dog(s)
7	Cat
8	Rodent (mouse, rat, gerbil, guinea pig, capybara, etc.)
9	Bird (budgie, parakeet, canary, parrot, mynah, etc.)
10	Reptile (chameleon, bearded dragon, boa constrictor, turtle, etc.)
11	Spider or insect
12	Person who pretends to be a pet because owner is allergic.

Day Off — A Mynah Story

This writing forum has prompts, so I wrote this.

Day Off

I hid the leash (the dog’s not allowed), fed the dog and refilled the water dish, shut him in the office with his bed, and then flopped onto my bed — a futon I hadn’t re-set as a couch. I was supposed to be a supervillain, dammit, or at least I was trying to be, but in the last week I’d dealt with an alien invasion, a misplaced attempt to resurrect the dead, and a graduation test for superheroes.

Whatever happened to just stealing things?

There was a knock at the door.

Nope, I thought. Not gonna get it. Gonna lie here in my sweaty running clothes and ignore it.

I knew it wasn’t someone important. Betsy and Shelley had keys and would walk in. The rent wasn’t due for a week, and the landlord communicated with notes under the door. Business used email. So it was someone going through the building selling something or offering salvation, and I wasn’t interested.

I lay there, sweating. My heart rate came back to normal. The dog was silent. (I have trained him not to make sounds when someone comes to the door.) So the apartment appeared empty.

The door creaked open. (There’s a way to open it silently, which my friends and I use. But why not know someone has opened your door?)

I rolled off the bed and landed silently because this had just gotten real. Quick layout of my hideously expensive apartment: Enter through the kitchen/dining room; the bedroom-turned-office is straight ahead and is where the dog eats; the washroom is behind the kitchen (shower, no bath), and the living room which I have as a bedroom fills out the square. There’s a lock on the office door but I hadn’t used it; I was home, right?

In violation of fire codes, there is no fire escape. It’s only the second floor; better than even odds I survive the jump.

For those of you saying, “Use your super powers” I remind you that (a) I don’t use them out of costume and (b) they’re actually Crappy Sonic Powers™. Strictly by powers, I’m not much of a supervillain.

I mean, seriously. Back when I was trying to find a nemesis, the guy I approached thought it was actually a date and then a former co-worker in an android body tried to attack. I’ve had a few successes but a lot of stuff has been side quests just to stay alive.

But hey, at least I don’t work at Faceless Corporation any more. You work with what you got.

There was a sound of disgust that sounded male. At a guess, he’d seen the dishes in the sink. (I’d been busy, okay?)

If he went into the office, he was going to have to deal with the dog. Slobberkin is an eight-month-old St. Bernard puppy and he’s getting kind of large.

With luck, Slobberkin would lick the burglar to death. Of course, then I’d have to figure out a way to dispose of the body.

Best move was to attack him from behind as he went into the office and hope that the two attacks (one licking, one hitting) would give me the edge.

The fight, quote-unquote, was over in three seconds. While Slobberkin was sitting on him, licking, I got the leather leash and tied his hands and feet.

He was a young guy in a polo shirt with a proselytizing look and a briefcase. No gun, no knife, not even a utility tool in his pocket. He had a burner phone and a screwdriver for bumping locks (so he was never going to get into my office if it was locked). I popped the briefcase open and found Shelley’s grandmother’s silver (Shelley lives down the hall) and a couple of other items that looked fence-able and probably came from this building.

He had come to steal from me.

I mean, he didn’t know who I was — that is the whole point behind the secret identity thing — but I found it terribly funny.

And I couldn’t even explain to him why, which made it funnier.

Shelley was working, Betsy was working, so I had to deal with this on my own.

The straight citizen thing to do would have been to call the cops, but I didn’t want them poking around my place. The less they knew about me, the better.

Also, I didn’t want them mentioning Slobberkin.

This guy knew where I lived, so showing up as the Mynah wasn’t going to work — see earlier re: secret identities.

So I lied. It’s getting to be second nature to me now.

“Anyone take vig off you?” I asked him. This was old movie mob talk; goodness knows what real mobsters say. I did know the names of three criminal groups in the city, because that’s the kind of info you have to know if you’re planning to be a thief-slash-supervillain.

“What?”

“Independent?”

“What?”

“Just trying to save you some trouble.” I tried to be nonchalant.

“What?” he asked for the third time. This whole situation seemed to be beyond him. I don’t think he’d ever make it as a supervillain.

While his mouth was open, Slobberkin licked inside it. He’s an affectionate dog. I pulled him back a bit.

“I’m an accountant,” I told the man. Which was true; that was my pre-supervillainy occupation.

“Whoopee,” he said.

“For an organization that feels that robbing from their employees is…disrespectful.” I had his attention, if not his comprehension. I took my phone out of its running sleeve. “Is there any reason I shouldn’t call them and and have someone encourage respect in a direct and forceful way?” Please let there be a reason. I actually had no one to call.

Well, I suppose I could call Faceless Corporation, my former employer, but they didn’t know they’d given me powers, and probably wouldn’t care that this guy had stolen from me.

“You’ve got my loot.”

Well, at least “loot” was current slang. “I mean, are you giving vig to someone for protection? Because calling uses up a certain amount of my capital.”

He looked at me sullenly. It was like he was too stupid to scare.

“Okay.” I hauled him into the kitchen, locked the office door with Slobberkin inside, and checked the knots so he could escape, and I carried his “loot” with me into the bathroom to make my “phone call.” The bathroom, you see, had a door that I could shut and lock.

I made up a long conversation, about fifteen minutes’ worth. Given his smarts, I figured he wouldn’t be able to get into the office and it’s not like I had any weapons in there. Maybe he could try to brain me with the paperweight, but he knew the dog was in there.

There were three possibilities:

1. He escaped and left; that was the outcome I was counting on.
2. Or, he escaped but was lurking by the bathroom door when I exited. (My plan was to leave the bathroom as if that were true, because some men get so angry when beaten by a woman.)
3. He was too stupid to escape. But nobody was so dumb that they’d pick that.

When I left the bathroom, he was still lying there on the kitchen floor.

Aw, hell.

#

I carefully approached him and checked the knots. No, he hadn’t even tried to get out. I re-fastened them securely.

“I was thinking,” he said. “Paying—what did you call it? Vig?—to somebody for protection would help me. I mean, I don’t make a lot—” I stared at him in disbelief.

He took it as doubt. “I mean, I do okay ‘cause more people than you’d think forget to lock their doors, and sometimes I really score, but a neighbourhood like this, I mean, who knew?”

“I plan on moving,” I lied to him. I might have to move if he knew where I lived. “I need a bit more seniority.”

“Lotta crooks in this area,” he said, apparently without irony. “So I’m thinking, I could ask your boss for protection.”

“Now?” I said. “Now that I’ve called him you want to change the terms?”

“Is now not a good time? I mean, it’s a better time than when the guy comes to break my knees.”

I swore internally. I didn’t have anybody coming to break his knees, but it looked like a good option.

I wished Slobberkin had licked him to death. At least I could figure out how to dispose of a dead body.

“I gotta call him,” I said. Already I was talking like I was in Wise Guys or something.

In the bathroom, I was furiously trying to think of big men I could call to come over. It had to be someone in the supers life, because how was I going to explain this to anyone else?

#

“I dunno if he’ll say yes,” I told the burglar. “Here’s the address.” I gave him the address, then made him repeat it, because I had no faith in this guy’s memory. “Tell them Jane sent you.”

I was prepared to tell him it was a sublet if he asked about the different name on the mailbox, but he never asked; he had the curiosity of a park bench. I kept Shelley’s silver out of the briefcase but gave the rest back to him. “You’ll need to be able to prove you have income.”

I was ready for him to attack me when I untied him, but he didn’t. He shook my hand and headed off, sure that he had made the best deal of his life.

#

You remember the guy who thought I was dating him? Not the one with the android body, the other one. We had deleted each other’s address, but—

I knew he had set up a SendMeCash account to become a superhero, because he was worried about said android body co-worker. (Why, I don’t know. It was me the co-worker had come for.)

He goes by Tangent now, and he was a beginner, so an easy target was good. At the least, the guy would get beat up, and possibly he’d be arrested. I mean, he did have stolen property on him.

It was possible Tangent would get my address from him, so I’d have to move anyway.

Maybe I’ll find a place that allows dogs.