Thoughts on Day of the Octopus

Marvel Super Heroes

Another in my series of looks at classic (or at least fondly-remembered) superhero adventures. This time, I look at "Day of the Octopus", the introductory adventure that was in the Marvel Super Heroes basic set.

Marvel Super Heroes, or FASERIP, was published by TSR in 1984. The adventure was written by Bruce Nesmith. It came as part of the basic set, and you can get it online for free, apparently free of charge. (I am not giving the URL because I am not convinced of this, given how litigious Disney is, but it’s easy enough to find if you search.

I remember the game coming out, but I didn't play it at the time: I was more of a DC guy and the random character creation (if you weren't playing one of the Marvel characters) turned me right off. Nowadays I can see virtues in random character creation but then? Nah...

Because this is an introductory adventure (as most of these are), you should probably know what I expect from an intro adventure. This is my current thinking on what an introductory adventure should have, for your standard superhero game:

• Task resolution
• Basic combat, usually initiative, hit, defend, apply damage, effects of damage, recover
• Skill use
• Distinguishing features, such as subsystems for core activities
• The core activity of the game, whatever that is. (This phrasing comes from Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.) Your introductory D&D adventure is not about solving a murder mystery, it's about exploring a dungeon and killing stuff. Your introductory Gumshoe adventure is about solving a mystery, not righting the injustices of the world through wish-fulfilment powers. I have come to realize that you want the story to be, if not cliché, cliché-adjacent. (I think on KARTAS they pointed out that nothing is cliché when it’s happening to your character.) So if your game is Golden Age vigilantes, there better be some crazed scientists and spies to beat up; if your game is emo Bronze Age mutants, then there better be some anti-mutant hysteria. And so on.

For some games this is easy because tasks, combat, and skill use are quite similar, and for other games they're wildly different. This adventure had to include FEATs, the use of talents, some combat, karma, and some campaign stuff.

Spoilers ahead.

The adventure “Day of the Octopus” is an introductory adventure involving a motley group of adventurers (Spider-Man, Captains America and Marvel, and Thing). It is grounded in the Marvel universe of its time, so some of the characterization seems a bit wrong now; for example, Ned Leeds gets name-checked as a friend of Peter Parker. I think the Hobgoblin had been introduced by this time, but maybe not, and there's certainly no indication that Ned Leeds was the Hobgoblin (or maybe not; he was the Hobgoblin for years until Roger Stern got a chance to change that).

Looking at my list up there, the adventure does fine at those introductory things. Because it's in the basic set, it does not explain what a FEAT is or how to calculate it; that’s assumed to be something you can learn from the other books in the box.

In terms of plot, it’s pretty bog-standard, and doesn’t hold up to close examination. (Why these guys as assistants? How does destroying the city make Doc Ock president (clearly Doc failed Civics class)? Why did someone put a presumably valuable and useful Selectropack on display?) One of the things I liked is that it separates the adventure into Campaign items, which involve subplots and character interaction, and battle stuff. (These reflect the Campaign and Battle books, of course.) After we set the adventure and have minor encounters to show off task resolution, bad guys attack because they’re going to steal something that’s conveniently near the heroes, so big fight. Then you have to search for the bad guys, find them, big fight. There is an optional scene in case bad guys got away or heroes got captured, and finally a scene in which the heroes fight the unstoppable menace — a giant unbeatable robot in this case — and we mention the weakness of the menace that allows the heroes to do that.

That’s not a bad structure. However, this adventure has two predetermined events that absolutely must happen. I’m not sure how I feel about this: in general I’m against this sort of absolutism but I see why it’s there. Here are the two items:

1. In the second scene, after everyone has found their oats and felt them in a significant fight, an item gets stolen from near the characters. I don’t mind the claim that it must be stolen — it’s not really a MacGuffin because it means nothing to the rest of the plot — but it’s (and apologies to the author Bruce Nesmith because I have the privilege of looking at it thirty-five years later) a stupid device. There isn't actually any reason for the item to be in a public place where anyone can steal it (and in fact, they hang a lampshade on that: crooks come after it in scene 1) and it has no obvious effect on the rest of the adventure.

   And the reason it feels stupid is because the stolen item, the Selectropack, could have been made important later on to create a payoff, but it wasn’t. 

   (Okay, in some ways that’s true to comics of the era, but part of my thing is that I'm looking at this from today’s vantage point. So bear that in mind, too.)

2. No matter what, the unstoppable menace goes on a rampage. (Once it does, we introduce the way to stop it, but until then, until the last fight scene, it is essentially unstoppable.)

Now, to keep the players on track, you need a kind of deus ex game master, and in this case it’s Thor. This feels very different from the current version of Thor, and his function is to say things like, “There is a radiation signature. Methinks you are best suited to investigate, for the Avengers are on the far side of the world.”

I presume they presented a list of characters who were popular or that they wanted to push to author Bruce Nesmith, and he picked from the list. Spider-Man and Thing were certainly popular (both had popular team-up books at the time), and Captain Marvel is the Monica Rambeau Captain Marvel. You can use other heroes but of course the game disavows all knowledge of what will happen.

Unlike the other adventures I’ve looked at, this one stands out by having an important female character and an important character of color. They both happen to be the same character, but at least there is some kind of representation. Times being what they were, I didn’t expect to see a character with a non-default sexuality. So it’s pretty much a sausage fest, but that is sort of to be expected.

I don’t know if it’s true for anyone else, but for me an adventure has a sort of momentum, and it is difficult to rein in any mistakes and get back to the adventure text. So in my play through, I messed up the insertion of the villains into scene 2. Yes, they still appeared but I missed the part where they entered the building from behind, and had them attack from the front, through our heroes. That was good, though, because there isn’t actually any reason for the theft to come to the attention of the heroes if the villains don’t decide to get all aggro with the heroes.

(I must confess that because I’m doing this solo, I skim the adventure to look for big gotchas, and then read it in more detail when I’m actually playing. This is against their advice, but it helps keep me from doing the right thing because I’ve read that it’s the right thing. Generally if I end up doing the right thing, it’s because I’ve earned it or because the dice have gone my way.)

This wouldn’t be a good adventure if they spend time in the park and then the next day, a giant robot attacks the city. It might be a realistic adventure, but what does realism mean anyway when you have a guy who looks like a pile of orange rocks?

On the other hand, things have to make sense. Apparently Doc Ock is doing this because he wants to be President of the USA. No idea why the other villains are doing this.

Aside: In part, Marvel has succeeded because it has much less of the moustache-twirling EEEEEvil that can occur at a certain other publisher; yes, you get the occasional “Brotherhood of Evil” but for the most part characters have a history, and that fuels a lot of the conflict. The reasons in this situation seem random. Doc Ock wants to be President; the other villains are…being paid?

Without actual reasons, as grown-ups, we wonder why people are doing these things. As GMs, we wonder how to fill in the spaces when our players zig instead of zag.

Bear with me while I discuss the different scenes (or “chapters”) of this adventure. I’ve given the scenes irreverent titles in the hope of keeping your attention.

A Walk In The Park

We open with all the heroes in the park. If you’re doing the campaign version, everyone has social obligations, and then minor encounters to demonstrate some basic task resolution and combat: Spider-Man deals with a purse-snatcher, Ben Grimm deals with a group trying to extort money from a pretzel vendor, and Captains America and Marvel deal with petty crooks.

These are light, and provide both a bit of roleplaying and some dice-rolling practice. Thumbs up.

And There Shall Come Combat!

We do a small fake-out and then combat. It is a plot point that these are not actually the heroes the villains prepped for; yes, the Beetle is set for Captain America, and the Fixer has stuff prepared to deal with Captain Marvel. (I have no idea why the Scorpion is there: I can imagine that Doc Ock said, “I need clever mechanical guys,” in building is mechanical marvel, but Scorpion? Really?) Scorpion is there because he hates Spider-Man, so good enough; I figure everyone was at the Supervillain Jobber Hiring Square and he heard that Spider-Man might be involved and joined; everyone else said, “Enh, sure, you can join.” Since Doctor Octopus is planning on betraying everyone anyway, he has no reason to say no.

This is the part where I feel very old and fixated on the wrong stuff: Radioactive Man blasts a hole that is three storeys deep. In the middle of Manhattan. In front of a building. And I'm thinking, under the streets of New York? Like, shouldn’t there be water pipes? Sewage? Rain sewers? Electrical, Con-Ed, telephone, maybe subways? But no, the real effect is we need a deep hole so the Thing is out of action for a turn or two. (Which sucks for Thing’s player, honestly. The real fight starts and Thing doesn’t get to start until a turn or two in. He doesn't even get to see whether he can leap up three storeys, which someone that strong might well be able to do.)

The whole thing has the kind of fridge logic that you find in many comic books. It doesn’t really bear any scrutiny. Play it fast and don’t let them think about it.

Anyway, they fight. Maybe they win, maybe they lose, but anyway, the fight ends.

The Hunt For Skill Tests

We now have a segment where two important things happen:

1. The player characters search for Dock Ock.
2. The player characters fulfil their social obligations: Peter visits Aunt May, Cap goes to the Veteran's dinner, the Thing makes a public appearance, and Captain Marvel…looks at a boat? If the Thing didn't also have a lame obligation, I'd think this was sexism, but he gets something awful for the Campaign side of things too.

I'm not totally sure how the search for Doc Ock, who has threatened to destroy the city in a lazy fashion (the deadline is tomorrow; maybe that’s just 1980s speed) and the social obligations fit together. Certainly in my play test I had to think about how urgent the search is… Do you search all night? Do you go home and change clothes? Or does someone make an INT test (sorry, Reason FEAT) and realize they can find Radioactive Man at any time, so get a good night’s sleep and we'll see you tomorrow?

Melee Garden

Whether the characters figure it out, the players make their Reason FEATS, or Thor just flat-out tells them, the characters arrive at Doc Ock’s secret hideout. The possibilities that they might arrive in the middle of the night or early in the morning, whether the villains have set up shifts or not, or where the villains actually sleep are not considered.

The heroes show up, the villains expect them because the place is wired out the proverbial wazoo. They fight.

This fight ends in one of two ways:

• Some or all heroes lose (boo!) and we go on to the optional next chapter, after which they’ll have to fight the giant robot.
• The heroes totally win and have to fight the giant robot.

No matter what, the PCs are going to fight the giant robot, but not the villains, because no matter what, Doc Ock is going to betray them. (The follow-up adventure, where the PCs have to find and save Doc Ock so he can stand judgement for the violation of the Non-Government Giant Robot Act of 1973 while the other villains are hunting him is not written, but it seems fairly straightforward to me.)

What If They Lost?

What if some or all heroes lost?

There are four different deathtraps, one for each character. They are, well, deathtraps of the old school: Giant squid, Slingshot O’ Death, electrified grating, suffocation. None of them make me say, “No one could have survived that!” in my best Adam West, but they're not bad. (I kind of wonder where the giant squid came from, but the others are fine, if a bit bland for my tastes.) However, the adventure assures us that if the heroes don't manage to make their tests, Thor will rescue them and then leave.

So there’s that.

There’s Your Problem! Switch Was Flipped To “Evil”

The giant robot is loose and destroying things! How will the heroes stop it?

They have a certain amount of time before Thor helps them. (If they got knocked out, then Thor will rescue them, give them the hint about how to defeat the robot, and then leave for business elsewhere.)

If they need the help, Thor shows up and knocks the robot flat, points out the weak spot, and leaves to attend to something happening in Asgard (new mischief that Loki has cooked up or he has been asked to judge an Asgardian flower show — something, anyway).

With that hint, the heroes should be able resolve the problem on their own.

A couple of things that I didn't find explicitly spelled out but are inferred; perhaps I didn't read closely enough:

• When knocked down, the robot can get up again. Perhaps not as fast as Chumbawumba would like but it can do so.
• The vibranium-steel alloy constructing the robot is naturally reflective to radiation. This means that Captain Marvel can’t just turn into a radiowave and teleport inside; she has to use the same access method that the others find. This also means that the robot cannot be controlled from the outside, by radio or anything else. I had in mind at one point that it must have some kind of program where it says, “Have I destroyed the city? If no, keep going; if yes, stop!” — which means that clever players could create a VR headset, essentially, to convince the robot that it has already destroyed the city. I didn’t see anything that would prevent that strategy, but of course that’s 21st century technology against a 1984 problem.

TL;DR

It is not the best adventure, even out of the ones I have read for this. However, it does teach the system and provide opportunities for role-play and that comic book staple, out-thinking the problem you can’t beat up.

Time has not been kind to it, but not in the usual way of the Suck Fairy: my standards are higher now than they were in 1984. I find it a bit too railroad-y, a bit too light on making sense even in its own world.

If you had a wonderful GM or if you were the right age in 1984, it was probably fun. Heck, running it now was fun, even though I didn't use the Marvel characters. However, I have no urge to re-visit it.