Thoughts about Viper’s Nest

Champions

Thinking about the 1982 adventure Viper's Nest for 1st edition Champions.

I've been looking at old adventures, trying to figure out what makes a good superhero adventure. Part of the answer seems to be that you play it at the right age. However, in looking at these old adventures I can't help but think about the difference in games between then and now.

For this adventure, "then" is 1982, the first edition of Champions. I had a certain amount of trepidation looking at this, because I played it, wayyyy back in 1983. It was one of the first (if not the first) superhero games I played and so I was worried that looking at the adventure would spoil old memories.

But, frankly, they can still be good memories, even if we'd do things differently now. And I'll try to judge this without the rose-coloured glasses, but please be understanding if I end up being kinder to the adventure than it deserves; I'm trying not to, but I also don't want to be needlessly cruel.

Some historical context. Champions wasn't the first RPG with superhero elements (that was probably Superhero 2044) or the first full superhero RPG (that was probably Villains and Vigilantes). But it was the first to use an effect-based system, and the first to use point-buy rather than random roll. (That was a big thing for me back then: I wanted to play the character I designed, rather than designing the character based on what the dice threw up.) Some of those innovations are still with us.

The adventure "Crisis at Crusader Citadel" was intended as a tutorial; "Viper's Nest" is intended as a campaign introduction. The conceit of "Crisis" is thin, but the whole thing is intended to get you into two big fights.

"Viper's Nest" has loftier ambitions. It's a higher target and it's not quite as successful. It achieves its goal, but a higher target has higher standards.

(Brief digression already: Like "Crisis," this adventure contains at least one casual death meant to show you how eeeevil the villains are. I honestly don't remember comics in the late 1970s well enough to know if this was a thing. The character giving you information in the introduction gets offed by, it's implied, VIPER.)

There are three interlinked engagements that introduce you to the dastardly villainous society VIPER. Later editions expanded on VIPER, but in first edition, this is what there was. Possibly in a callback to the wargaming roots of RPGs, all three parts are called "engagements" here. They are connected only in that VIPER commits all three. You can either be disappointed that the various parts don't connect, or you can look at them as opportunities that a GM can grasp.

I'm trying to do both, here.

In my brain, engagement one would give the pretext for engagement two, which would provide the information for engagement three. It doesn't.

On the other hand, it gives us three supervillains, a hero agent group (UNTIL), and a villain agent group (VIPER), and a tremendously detailed map, plus an exhortation to make the adventure your own, which is nice.

While "Crisis" gave us notes on the tactical approach of each supervillain in the adventure, "Viper's Nest" talks about the tactics for the group VIPER. This...is more complicated than I cared about; in running it, even though I was running it for myself, I found it necessary to pre-figure how many VIPER agents and who they were in each group (a quarter skirmishers, a quarter overwatch, and half attackers). Very war-game-y.

The VIPER agents are designed so that a powerhouse or paragon character can take them out in one blow. A single punch from a normal human cannot penetrate their force fields. Really, the whole setup says "Minion" to me, so I'd use the minion rule after the first encounter. (In the first, I wouldn't use the minion rule because you want to build up VIPER.)

Incidentally, the adventure provides three villains to use (though there's an option to use some of the villains from the main rulebook). The villains are Brick, a, uh, brick, Bluejay, a flying energy projector, and Cheshire Cat, a teleporting martial artist. What's interesting to me is that although I played the game with Brick in the first engagement (and that's how I ran it for myself...the strong guy can get into the cornerstone if necessary), the villain Bluejay would probably not be used in the second encounter and wouldn't have room to maneuver in the third...so really, Bluejay is the villain to use in the first encounter. The rules never say that, though. If I were thinking about the different engagements instead of rolling villain forces on tables, I'd go Bluejay in the first adventure, Cheshire Cat in the second, and Brick in the third.

The Macguffin for engagement one is a room-temperature superconductor developed before World War II. (As is typical for comic books, no scientists keep notes.) The samples and notes are in the cornerstone of a building which is being torn down. This leads to a big fight with VIPER and possibly one supervillain.

Your trained heroes can also do well here; there's a bulldozer and a crane with a wrecking ball by the partially-demolished building. Even if the bad guy is someone they can't themselves hurt, the wrecking ball will probably hurt them.

Engagement two is an encounter in a park: VIPER is there to capture or kill a defector. (It's the "kill" part that makes Bluejay a bad choice here.) The engagement really lives according to the bystanders that the GM puts in. In this engagement, your obvious heroes, the ones who can't be disguised as normal people, are at a significant disadvantage.

Engagement three is a dungeon crawl. If you loved the detailed maps in "Crisis" you'll love the detailed maps here. I presume that with D&D being the reference point, every adventure had to have a dungeon crawl. That was, essentially, the model. (Also no bathrooms. That was also the model.)

I know you're surprised, but I haven't run out of thoughts yet. I want to talk about sexism and racism.

In one sense, this adventure avoids some of the casual sexism of "Crisis," but that's because it mentions sex almost not at all. All but one of the characters are men, even when it's implied that there are women around (the VIPER base has women's change rooms). There is one woman villain. Her motivation is rather...vague (she wants to fly the suit they've built, and having stolen it, she has no way of turning back). On the other hand, Brick's motivation is "I have amnesia and VIPER was nice to me," which is also kind of vague. Cheshire Cat might have a bit more: "A VIPER accident gave me superpowers and I have a wife to feed. VIPER pays me."

And I don't expect it from something written in 1981, nobody's sexuality is touched on. That's easy to change if you're running it, because there's just this void of assumption. Put something concrete in and it changes. For example, make Brick trans: before the accident, he was AFAB but the accident brought forth his brick persona a manifestation of his inner toughness. The adventure doesn't support that reading, but it doesn't not support it; that sort of thing doesn't enter into the adventure at all.

Race is even worse: there are no known characters of color. They could be: In a modern setting, there's no reason not to have Brick or Bluejay or Cheshire Cat or any of the VIPER or UNTIL agents as people of color. It's very cis-het, very white, very male. All of that can be changed, but you have to decide to put that in.

I lied: one possible NPC is named Vasquez, so some microdiversity there. But (my opinion here) when you have only one character of a gender or type, that character becomes an avatar for everyone of that type. All Latinx characters are by-the-book law enforcement sorts who hate supers. (To be honest, that was a trope in comics.)

Two of a type at least means you can have a good gay and a bad gay, a neat black woman and a messy black woman, a deferential trans Asian man and an outspoken cis Asian woman. It seems to me that’s closer to what we think of as diversity today.

It is a product of its time, but it can be reshaped to fit 2022. And it does a fine job at putting toys in the sandbox, as comics writers have said: it gives you VIPER and UNTIL and supervillains, and a reason for them to be there; it gives you a superconductor of unknown provenance.

It has its flaws, but that's pretty good.

An experiment with a TiddlyWiki

Icons, M&M

As an experiment, I have started putting the Strange City background in a TiddlyWiki, at: http://jhmcmullen.tiddlyspot.com/. Feel free to look at it there, although you can't get it in a neat package.

I want to use the setting for something on-going (The Flea Family), and the PDF article just got outdated too quickly as I added things. So I'm trying this.

If that's not the correct address, it might be http://jhmcmullen.tiddlyspot.com/index.html.

TiddlySpot is not up-to-date with the latest version of TiddlyWiki, nor is it secure, but it should be adequate for a small personal wiki.

If you can't see it, or if there's a problem, let me know so that I can try to fix it or go looking for a different answer.

EDIT: Alas, the tiddlyspot.com site suffered a catastrophic failure. At this point, one cannot update any information there, so that has paused. It might disappear; these things depend of the vagaries of the software gods.

Episodes 7 and 8 of the Drop-In: Interlude, and The Panopticon of Hell

SYSTEM: ICONS

Episode 7: Interlude and Episode 8: The Panopticon of Hell

I'm combining these two because, unfortunately, I wasn't running at my best and session 7 of the Drop-In was a largely improvised interlude getting the heroes from outside the security door to the hall.

So I apologize to the fellow who showed up for episode 7 and chose to play Longbow, because he didn't get much to do.

Interlude

Gold Tiger, George and Professor Jelinek were joined outside the security door by Diriel (a demon of justice, because Hell is all about justice and rules and maybe a bit of entrapment, if I think about it) and Longbow, who have seen the message that Gold Tiger left on various superhero boards and came to join them.

They got in and discovered (a) the moss is omnipresent and (b) they were at the level where the tau generators were, the repair bays were (and one unmentioned nuclear generator). The femmebot Liza was there, strapped to a repair dock and deactivated. Security robots came down, and there was a fight, during which the repair robot followed its protocol, which was to halt repairs and clean up, so pieces can't be used as weapons. Eventually, the heroes won and crept up the stairs.

The center of the building was circular, and by tapping into the security system, Gold Tiger could see that Dr. Warp was in the center part (which also had the elevator to the basement). He had three femmebots, a closeted mysterious platinum android, and improvised living quarters there. He looked rumpled, like he hadn't shaved for a week.

The moss had clumped itself up into a sort-of humanoid form as big as the ceilings and was walking a slow circle around the section where Dr. Warp was imprisoned. Professor Jelinek's tau-sucking gun was full.

As they were discussing plans, Professor Jelinek revealed that the big problem with tau radiation was that it's not properly radiation at all: it's energy moved from other dimensions. The liberal use of it weakens the extra spatial dimensions of ours (predicted by superstring theory) and essentially opens the doorway to Lovecraftian monsters.

(If we want to be nice to Professor Jelinek, he figured this out very recently. It involves the kind of maths they didn't have at the start of his career, and he has acquaintances in Moscow and Geneva who do the new math for him. It is totally in keeping with comic books for him to have known this for twenty years and be the roadblock that has kept people from implementing tau radiation generators.)

We were having technical difficulties, so we called it there.

The Panopticon of Hell

Alas, the extra player did not return, so we had Gold Tiger and Diriel and everyone else was a GM character.

The switch to turn off the tau generators was in another room and was largely non-functional. Diriel's teleportation only worked to places he could see (except Hell; he can always go to Hell, and my assumption is that there are a limited number of "landing zones" there that he has memorized). Using his control of the security system, Gold Tiger jury-rigged a projection of the image of the proper room, and Diriel opened a portal. The two of them left George, Professor Jelinek, and Dr. Warp behind while they went into The Room.

The Room was covered in moss, and the on/off switch was partially melted or corroded by the moss. Gold Tiger started to repair it, but the moss started to gather together and attack, so Diriel was holding it off as Gold Tiger was working. Fortunately, we had established that the moss was sensitive to flame and Diriel is aflame with the Fires of Justice, so... (I formalized this as having all attacks be one degree better against the moss: narrow misses were actually marginal successes, marginal successes were moderate successes, and so on.)

They defeated the moss, turned off the generators, and then portal'ed back to Dr. Warp, where they discovered the two new problems.

1. Using the miniaturization possible in the modern era, Dr. Warp had built a miniature tau generator inside the new platinum robot, which was tougher than the femmebots.
2. Dr. Warp wasn't actually forthcoming about helping, having sold the tau weapons to Russia and the CIA and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Diriel opened a portal to a cell in Hell, and Gold Tiger knocked him through. Diriel closed the portal.

But Diriel's "Injustice Sense" said that someone was still thinking evil thoughts. Yes, George was one of them, but there was someone else...

Yup, other-dimensional invaders had got access to the platinum robot, and it was in the process of becoming spidery-er, with the back at an improbable angle and extra joints having appeared in the arms and legs. (I called it a Cybershoggoth.)

Professor Jelinek discharged his tau weapon to power up a femmebot. Moss was trying to get to the tau generator. Longbow fired to no effect.

Gold Tiger asked Longbow if he had a magic nullification arrow somewhere in that quiver; Longbow replied that he did, because of a recent experience with a demon ("No offence," to Diriel). The Cybershoggoth half-melted the femmebot; Professor Jelinek missed the shot that would have sucked tau radiation out of the robot. George was knocked unconscious.

Eventually, the magic nuffication arrow was fired (and Longbow doesn't miss). A portal to another cell in Hell was opened up, and Gold Tiger pushed the robotic beast through.

Then Diriel and Gold Tiger went through a new portal to just outside the cell, in the panopticon of Hell.

A winged demon approached and said that (in Hell-speech) it was fine unless the auditors gave them guff, which would be when they'd have to release them. (The Cybershoggoth because it was extradimensional and they might not have jurisdiction, and Dr. Warp because he wasn't technically dead.

Through difficulties they discovered that the Cybershoggoth was the first invader of a force ("this world..." it hissed. "It needs conjugation." The PC characters assumed that was bad.)

With Diriel's help, Gold Tiger managed to turn off the robot, and they reached an agreement about under what conditions they would retrieve the robot.

Lights down.

Episode 6: The Saga of the Swamp Things

SYSTEM: ICONS

Only one player, but it had been so long since I ran that, well, we went ahead. I didn't want to do the whole session I had planned so the exterior portion, which would have been half of the original session plan, took up the whole thing. We got more experience in stunting powers, which is good... The session is sort of serialized because of this, though, which I regret.

This account is long, because it's kinda a brain vomit. There's a chance I'll come back to it later and do a shorter, more readable version.

When last we left off, our heroes had captured the thief from the strip club robberies and discovered that it was a repaired robot, robot that was giving off tau radiation. While Nathan, the owner of the robot, was easily dealt with by hiring him and paying back the money he had stolen ($586.00 in mostly singles), the teenagers who then attacked were slightly more difficult. They were George Turner (age 13), Lily Gloom (age 15), and Landslide (no identity yet, but turned into a 16 year-old boy when they put the power neutralizers on him). Still, those three were arrested and we open in the police station, where Gold Tiger is interrogating Gerorge Turner.

(Credit where it's due: George, Lily, and Landslide are part of the Young Anarchists, created by Ade Smith in the Fainting Goat adventure, Lair of the Wrathmaster. Most of the Improbable Tales adventures are excellent, and the ones I don't regard as excellent just are not to my taste. Anyway, aside from names and powers, I've invented some backstory for them that isn't too different from the one in the module but is, shall we say, congruent to the backstory in the module.)

TL;DR summary of events:

• Gold Tiger offers George a job
• Dr. Warp is from the 1960s
• His hideout is an abandoned laboratory in a swamp
• The liberal and casual use of tau radiation has caused the muck to become human-like swamp things
• PCs fought them before getting in to the secret base
• They now have Professor Jelinek and a device that sucks up tau radiation with them
• They might have shut down all the robots, or they might have shut down just one—they don't know yet

The Long Version

George apparently knew where the robot came from and needed the robot, nicknamed "Liza," to get into the base's security. The robot was implicated in a number of thefts (though legally the robot has no culpability: it's a tool). Gold Tiger used Spectre and his crazy-high Willpower score to intimidate George and get information. He did this not-on-the-record: Gold Tiger got the police to shut off the recording equipment (well, they turned off the audio, and George hides his mouth from the cameras).

George was not willing to reveal the location, but he would show it to them. Gold Tiger counter-offered: he'll hire George, George will get to work with cool stuff, and George stops this life of crime.

Basically, the police weren't going to charge George, Landslide, and Lily with anything related to the fight at Nathan's place unless Nathan pressed charges (and Nathan was waiting for a hint from Gold Tiger on whether he should). Landslide was being held until they figured out what his identity was, and Lily was wanted because she went all Carrie on a school dance back in June. All three are minors but they probably wouldn't be tried as adults; Lily didn't kill anyone in her school dance thing, but some people were hurt. So Gold Tiger could take George, because there won't be any charges. The others had to stay.

George agreed to the terms, got Gold Tiger's number because he had to text it to his mom, who works nights.

Gold Tiger, Spectre, George, and Liza flew out to the location of the secret base, which was in the swamp on one side of town. (So far, Strange City has nearby deer hunting and a swamp; the uranium mine is at the edge of the swamp.) There was an abandoned lab there, which was researching ways to improve crop yields, in our nod to Alec Holland. (Spectre created a hard light platform for himself and George, and Liza or Gold Tiger was flying it. Although George had a bag of parts, he had no overt assembled equipment: that had been taken from him.)

On a scan of the area, Gold Tiger found the security perimeter—all recent off-the-shelf equipment, which communicated wirelessly with the security center. It took Gold Tiger about thirty seconds to exploit a known flaw and he had access and control of the security sensors. Because the swamp has alligators in the swamp that have managed to survive the winters (invasive species are a problem here, too), the sensors ignored anything smaller than about 40 kilograms. George, Lily, and Landslide wouldn't even be noticed.

Gold Tiger also found a secret entrance in a dead tree about half a mile (about 800 meters) from the abandoned lab. He prepped Liza (stunting ESP) so that he can see through her eyes. In conversation with her while he's doing this, it became aware that Liza sort-of recognized the area. She was having some cognitive dissonance because she had associated Nathan's house as the place where the Master lived, but being in the swamp activated subsystems George hadn't known about.

Liza went in the secret entrance. The shaft went straight down: it was clearly meant for fliers, because there was no elevator. There was a ladder, which George got on. The inside of the dead tree was metal, and covered with moss and fungi. They began descending the tunnel after Liza, but they were going much slower, hampered by George and Spectre on the ladder.

Spectre asked if anyone else could hear the sound—a kind of rhythmic thrumming that crackled. Gold Tiger scanned the airwaves and didn't find anything.

Liza entered the base via a big metallic door. Gold Tiger saw her be scanned by some device; the word "Anomaly" appeared on an old-fashioned CRT screen, and two other Lizas (femmebots?) showed up and escorted her to a mechanical bay, strapping her to the robot equivalent of a car hoist.

Gold Tiger issued a shutdown command, hoping to shut down all femmebots in the area. He did not know if it worked, because it shut down Liza, and his remote sensing experiment ended.

This was about the point when they noticed that Spectre was not himself, as tendrils of moss and fungus started growing out of his nose and mouth. The Affliction attack quickly knocked him unconscious. Gold Tiger noticed that the moss on the walls was following them.

There were two skeletons at the bottom of the shaft. The moss flowed onto them, creating a pair of moss men, or if you prefer, Swamp Things. (This was the week before Halloween, so maybe things had an eldritch bent.)

George was willing to help, but he blew the Intellect roll for Gadgeteering (both gadgeteers had this problem, that night). Gold Tiger alternated between attacking one, which was fighting him, and attacking the other one, which was wrapping itself around Spectre and sucking the life out of him.

Eventually Gold Tiger jury-rigged some of his missiles into a light-based attack that we modelled as an Affliction, and it worked reasonably well. It destroyed them.

That was the point when Gold Tiger got a faint scratchy phone call from Professor Jelinek, who was outside. "I knew that uncontrolled Tau radiation would have this effect! There's a ruined car here and the tau-powered moss is using the skeletons near it for a endostructure!"

Gold Tiger flew out and located the flare that Professor Jelinek had sent up. He didn't see Professor Jelinek, but he did see a 12-foot-high pile of writhing and undulating moss; it turned out that the Professor was at the bottom of it. (The moss was treated as a muck monster with Growth 2.)

Professor Jelinek failed his gadgeteering roll, what with being under a huge pile of sapient moss, but Gold Tiger managed to distract it. It budded some small duplicates, but Gold Tiger was whittling it down. Then Professor Jelinek finally made his Intellect test and his gun sucked up residual tau radiation in the pile.

Yes, because tau radiation was involved, Professor Jelinek had been contacted by the police. He saw pictures of Liza and recognized her as being modelled after his late wife, Maria. Given that, he knew who had to be behind the spate of tau-powered weapons: Hieronymous Warkstein, known as Dr. Warp, who disappeared in the 1960s, shortly after Professor Jelinek won the hand of grad student Maria Slavicek. Professor Jelinek put together what he could from the apartment and followed the trail of tau radiation out to the swamp.

And as we left the session, Gold Tiger, George, Spectre, and Professor Jelinek were standing in that underground access corridor in front of a giant metal door, the same one that Liza went through.

Your muck monster:

Muck Monster
PRO	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	Determ.
4	2	7	2	3	5	12	–
Specialties Stealth Master (+3)
Powers
Plant Control (Plant Control)							6
Extra: Fast Growth
Plant Body: Alternate Form (Fluid: Brings Damage Resistance 5, Stretching 5)							5
Extra: Detect through plants (ESP; medium of plants)							5
Qualities
Striving for eternal rest by eliminating tau radiation
He's a Plant (includes extra degree of damage from herbicides, fungicides, light, etc)

ICONS Drop-In (Session 5): The Bikini Machine

SYSTEM: ICONS

Spectre and Gold Tiger face off against the Young Anarchists!

More technical troubles. I'm going to write an audio troubleshooting checklist (because the Roll20 troubleshooting page is a little shy on checklists). If that doesn't help, I might switch to Skype or Discord or something similar. (Right now, my tendency is to Discord: I have the client app already.)

At about one in the morning, Gold Tiger and Spectre are out searching for tau radiation, using the portable detector (about the size of a full duffle bag). Gold Tiger spots a source in Through The Keyhole, a strip club on the outskirts of town. The strip club is a two-storey building, with the club area being two stories tall, and the outside walls having a closed-in mezzanine for the manager's office and so forth. Gold Tiger gets there first. He hears a shout in anger, a gunshot, a science-fiction-weapon sound. He flies in a window on the second floor, flies down the stairwell, and sees a bouncer-looking individual unconscious on the stage, armed guards near a gentleman (whom he recognized as "Socks" Maroney, the last major Irish gangster in town), and a gold woman in a trench coat whose fedora has been knocked off. She is floating to the fire exit (but in an upright pose, so she looks like she's walking). Gold Tiger checks in the dressing room, and yes, the gold woman just stole all the money from the strippers.

Gold Tiger exits, following the woman. Gold Tiger decides to follow her home, because she said, "I must get the specie to the master." (This is an incorrect use of the word "specie" which refers to the tangible asset instead of the cash value of the asset, or sometimes coins instead of bills. My mistake.)

Gold Tiger convinces her that he was sent by the Master. She interfaces with his computer systems, decides he must be from the Master, and he grabs her ankle while she flies home. (This is good, because she has a top speed of around 600 mph and he has a slightly lower top speed: Flight 6 versus Flight 5.)

They land between some trees in the backyard of a small postwar house, one that backs onto a park. (Park not named.) Golden Tiger sends the location to Spectre and waits while the Femmebot goes in. A young guy, maybe 20s, in chinos and a polo shirt, greets her and takes the money. He says he doesn't require pleasure and she should continue cleaning. Spectre will be there in a couple of minutes.

Gold Tiger goes in to talk to the guy. This is Nathan. Nathan inherited the house from his parents. He's an unemployed welder, and he was applying for work at SIT when he "found" the two halves of the Femmebot. (Gold Tiger's other knowledge leads him to think that Nathan was on campus at the same time that the Centurions fought off a set of golden women who stole computer parts. One was torn in two, according to reports, but the pieces were never found.) The top half called him "Master," so Nathan took the two halves home. Then he called this kid who sometimes fixes cell phones and computers (George Turner...a chubby fourteen year old). Normal welding wouldn't put the two halves together, but the kid was able to get some electric welding gadget that would do it. (No, not normal electric welding. Something special.)

Anyway, Nathan's been using the femmebot, which he calls "Liza," to commit petty thefts of strip clubs. (Why strip clubs? Because not a lot of places carry cash these days, but strippers do: they get their tips in cash.) George has been coming over to fix the Femmebot on a regular basis. Because there are multiple people, Liza comes in and calls Nathan "Dr. Warp" and says they'll need more coffee if there are guests. Nathan hates her coffee but can't seem to reprogram her to make coffee that isn't European espresso.

Gold Tiger offers Nathan a job, needs the money back but he'll just give Nathan the equivalent amount of cash. The whole haul amounts to $568.00, so Gold Tiger gives him $600.00. Spectre has been listening but comes in visibly to talk to Nathan while Gold Tiger flies the money back to the strip club. On his way out this time, Gold Tiger gives a cheerful, "Hi, Socks!" (I'm sure this will have no consequences at all.)

When he comes back, a hole opens up in the back yard and it contains:

• George Turner, in a green and yellow costume, with some gadgetry
• A disaffected Goth girl in the de rigeur corset, fishnets and Uggs
• A humanoid about six feet tall and made of dirt

Both Gold Tiger and Spectre remember the goth girl from the news: she essentially pulled a Carrie last spring, locking people in the gym during prom and having her bats attack people (she can shape and control darkness; presumably she can leech light out of Spectre's constructs). Anyway, she's been missing and on the run from the cops since then.

Spectre makes a bunch of Liza illusions, but George summons out the real Eliza. Gold Tiger figures out how George is controlling Liza (he's added programming so she obeys anyone who talks while sending a certain radio signal), so he jams the radio signal. Lily the Goth girl climbs out of the hole...

...and a rocket from Gold Tiger knocks her right out.

A comment from George indicates that he (a) knows where Liza came from and (b) needs her to get past the security on that base.

Spectre imprisons the dirt guy...so George works on getting Liza to their side. He succeeds so Gold Tiger is occupied with Liza. Neither of them can hurt one another (she might be made of the same alloy as his suit), so Gold Tiger consoles himself that he's keeping her busy. Meanwhile, Spectre gets George in the cage...but the cage is kind of large, so the dirt guy escapes and George tries to shoot a blob of expanding foam to imprison Spectre. A marginal success doesn't do nearly enough, and while his next shot gets Spectre solidly, he's forgotten that if he can shoot out of the cage, Gold Tiger can shoot in, so George goes down.

Dirt guy (Landslide) has gotten out of the cage (fluid form has some uses) and tries to attack Spectre; Spectre whacks him with the cage. So Landslide, not the brightest light in the yard, turns around to attack the cage.

The heroes have won!

The tunnel that the Young Anarchists used goes straight to George's house. His parents didn't know he was gone nor that he was experimenting with super-villainy. ("We thought the girl was a sign that he was getting, whatcha call it, socialized!")

World setting details just tossed off:

• Strip clubs close at 1:00 am in Strange City
• "Socks" Maroney is the last remaining significant Irish mobster, and he travels with bodyguards
• George Turner of the Young Anarchists goes to Jack Parsons High School
• There is a connection between Dr. Warp and Dr. Jelinek.

Big-ass giant robots

SYSTEM: ICONS

Can I just say that I always found the notion of Sentinel robots stupid? I mean, it's visually cool to have these giant humanoid forms flying around threatening mutants, but in a world of superheroes, it's kind of dumb.

Suppose for a moment that the giant robots are from a government organization, convinced that mutants, a subset of superhumans, are a threat. The information about where they are housed is part of a bureaucracy. Even if it's secret, someone has to know. Someone makes the parts, someone buys the parts, someone ships the parts, someone assembles the parts. Someone knows about it. Someone will leak it. Can it be hidden? Yes, but you need something on the scale of, oh, North Korea to hide it.

Because these are big frickin' robots. You can see them flying around, and I haven't seen any indication that they're supersonic.

Okay, suppose the organization isn't funded by the government, but is instead a secret organization?

Then it's worse. Why doesn't some other superhuman track them to the airbase or headquarters? The superhuman doesn't even have to engage...he/she/it just has to identify the location and others can lead the raid. I mean, this are some seriously big robots we're talking about...they hold a dozen mutants in their bodies and still fly.

In our world, it's hard to hide an airbase. In a superhero world, that much harder. If the base hasn't been found, then that means that no superhero has put her/his/its mind to the task.

In the Strange City world, I suddenly realized that one of the ways that the next series of VIGILANT robots stay hidden is that they aren't big-ass giant robots at all. They're human-sized (or slightly bigger than human) subduing robots; the big-ass form is when they combine to carry targets. There are sniper robots, fighter robots, whatever, and they combine together if the target is to be brought to an airfield. From the airfield, the captured target is then transported in some other way...by rail, or in one of seven identical black Escalades, or something.

The point is, the big mega-robot exists only when needed. It's too noticeable, too easy to see, for other purposes.

You lose some of the visual oomph of the giant robot, yes, but you gain a little in plausibility (even if robots that can combine is just as implausible, it's slightly more resistant to the normal player counterattacks).

ICONS Drop-In (Strange City) Session 4: "What Rough Beast"

SYSTEM: ICONS

I started by making this a complete write up and ran out of time toward the end, so it gets sketchy. If you weren't actually there, this is probably a good thing.

This is still long, but is not essential for playing in the setting, unless you want to know about (a) relations between APRIL, PICA, and the heroes; (b) the PURITY88 anti-mutant organization; or (c) mutant porn.

In terms of gameplay, it's sort of odd, because it was my attempt to convert a Champions adventure ("What Rough Beast") to ICONS. I did okay, but certain powers, like the extra limbs (Fast Attack) I never used. I'll put the conversion-specific material up next.

The Set-up

The UN organization that deals with superhumans, APRIL, is not allowed to operate within US borders, and their relationship with the American organization, PICA, is rocky at best. So in the USA, they work informally, through local superheroes.

Lt. Commander Fawkes arrived from New York and contacted a group of you, because the local hero team is missing (though this isn't generally known yet). APRIL has information about a base for PURITY88, the anti-mutant organization which created the VIGILANT robots, which hunt and capture or kill mutants. Fawkes is normally someone who works in the UN building, but Lieutenant who was watching the PURITY88 base has not reported in for three days.

APRIL knew where the base is. They had it under surveillance for the last two months. They knew that nothing has gone in or come out for a month. Three days ago, the ranking APRIL officer in the area, Lt. Aruja, decided to go in with a totally illegal task force of 6 people. (APRIL had 11 people in the country; the other five, including Lt. Commander Fawkes, are in New York and Washington.)

Lt. Commander Fawkes doesn't know how the team got in. She doesn't know what's in there...but if it's a biological agent, they don't want to risk it getting free. And per PICA doctrine, PICA's first act will be a "can-opener" bomb. If it is a biological agent (and she doesn't know if it is), that will contaminate the countryside.

She wanted the heroes—Spectre and Gold Tiger—to go in, find out what was happening, and stop it.

She had personnel records for the APRIL agents. She knew that they had taken in a device that checked the air for contaminants and toxins (the only one that APRIL had in the country, though the CDC undoubtedly has more). Without official status in the country, APRIL has very little extra equipment. APRIL has associates at the CDC and they can pass the word that something might happen, but they can't do anything else officially.

APRIL knows that the area has a slightly higher radiation level, and they know that radio signals are seriously attenuated from inside the base. Before everything went silent, they got a message from inside. Lt. Aruja saying, "It's hideous—gigantic—glowing poison—it's..."

The Adventure

Gold Tiger has some communications equipment that uses frequency modulation of ultrasonics, which works well enough through interior construction and avoids the whole radios-not-working problem.

Fawkes puts them in the rental car and the hired driver takes them to the site of the base. It's on a hill in a forested area; the nearest people were at a service station a few miles down the road. The shack is large, as shacks go, about twenty feet by fifteen. It looks like a hunting shack.

Spectre went inside to search. There was a woodburning stove in the corner, and castoff chairs and mismatched chairs shoved against one wall. Spectre tried the obvious things (is inside the proper dimensions according to outside; are there obvious buttons, and so forth). Eventually he noticed that two of the boards on the wall were identical, with knotholes in them. He stuck his fingers in the knotholes, and found regularly spaced bumps that could be pressed down. They experimented. Gold Tiger gave him the ASCII code for 88, and that summoned the elevator.

The elevator had two buttons: up and down. They entered. It opened to show a blast door, which was held open just a bit by a piece of APRIL armor. The armor wasn't good any more, but in being splintered and deformed it held the door open enough that a person could squeeze under it. Spectre could get in, but Gold Tiger couldn't. Spectre got in and opened the blast door.

The entire place was dark and lit only by red emergency lights. There was a whiff of some kind of decay but the temperature was a controlled slightly cool room temperature. The floor was littered with ashes and suits of armor—the remainder of the suit of APRIL armor was there. Ashes spilled out of it.

Except for the tile floor and the lighting, the place looked like a hotel or an office building. On this floor, the pictures were innocuous—pictures of flowers.

To either side of the blast door were clearly niches that normally had guards. There were a few blaster pistols discarded there, empty. The blaster pistols were of a different make than the APRIL carbine, so the assumption is that they were PURITY88 issue.

A little farther down the corridor was the analyzer that APRIL had brought in. It was out of power. Gold Tiger boosted it and downloaded the data. He also checked the radio frequencies: they were staticky and probably unusable. His Geiger counter showed a higher-than-usual level of radiation (not tau radiation, though). The ashes were high in secondary radiation: they had been hit by something radioactive, and that contact had made them radioactive.

From nameplates on the doors, this level had three offices and a boardroom; it ended in another elevator. They searched all three offices, which had nameplates, and the 7 three offices (one was a converted boardroom) were:

Mr. Henry LeDuc, head of security

A rich site: a personnel list;yielded a PURITY88 carbine, fully charged (5D6 Blast, Fast Attack 4); a map of (most of) the installation; a list of security codes for locked doors.

Dr. Rosalinda Ward, Chief Technician

Dr. Ward had technical texts, pass codes and operating systems manuals for the nuclear reactor, an operating system manual for the GaiaTouch thermal power system; and, hidden in a drawer, what appeared to be a personal project: the schematics for a VIGILANT robot; a memo from Dr. MacBeth pointing out a flaw in the reactor system and requesting Dr. Ward have it fixed before it accidentally withdrew all the control rods; a torn page, apparently from a journal: "I have deep reservations about Project Omega. The DNA seems to mutate even more when agitated with high energy fields. This is due to—"

Dr. Morris MacBeth, director of the site

Dr. MacBeth's office was a converted boardroom, so it was larger than the other two. The decorations were photos of the VIGILANT robots, the experimental models and the Mark I, II, and III models. The office had texts and journals with titles like, "An Analysis of Genome Markers to Distinguish Mutations from Epigenetic Transformations." There is a computer terminal here (other executives presumably used tablets). Gold Tiger managed to get a description of Project Mu and then a warning about system cleansing.

Meeting room

A board room; this is clearly where the guest chairs came from.

The elevator at the end of the hall had three smears of ash—something had trampled them. Maybe later people escaping by elevator? Combat armor seemed unaffected, but regular clothes was nowhere to be seen, presumably destroyed by the same mechanics that turned the bodies to ash.

Something sticky had been smeared over the elevator control panel, and then dried, like a giant had licked it.

The next level was the living level. They found a sound system playing in the security lounge. The vaguely decaying smell was from the kitchens. It looked like something caused an alert, they scrambled to action, and then the something killed them all.

Posters in the dorms made fun of certain celebrities who were supposedly mutants of some kind (Angelina Jolie took a.lot of flak). Dr. MacBeth's living quarters gave up a small stash of mutant porn (like regular porn, but at least one of the participants has good-looking mutations, like wings). Dr. Ward liked romance novels and movies. Mr. LeDuc did not read, but had a large collection of gun manuals.

They also noticed the burns and scratches on the walls, which normally stayed about three-quarters of the way up but might occur at any height. They checked the stairwells, which had crash bars so that you could get into the stairwells at the lower levels but only out at the top floor. The burns and scratches were in one of the stairwells; they didn't check the other.

Information in the tech dorms let them know that the plans they had for a VIGILANT robot weren't the standard plans: this version of the robot was not vulnerable to cold and heat, as the usual VIGILANT Mark III robots are, but was vulnerable to radiation. With a sufficient background field, the robot would be essentially comatose until the radiation was lifted. (In game terms, it had switched from taking an extra degree of damage from cold and heat attacks to total shutdown in a certain environmental condition.)

The third level contained fabrication and machine shops, and labs. This is clearly where the fighting was the most extreme—there were blaster bolt char marks everywhere and abandoned blaster carbines. The armoury was also on this level, but it contained nothing but armour and pistols.

Near the elevator, they found the armor of all but one of the remaining April agents. Something got them at this level.

The labs yielded a picture of a mutant bear cub...something with three extra limbs. One set of labs was for preparing and applying mutagens like radiation and the other set was for keeping the test animals alive and examining them.

As reconstructed by the heroes, Project Mu was kept in the lab. A reactor problem caused the area to be flooded by radiation, which set off the Project Mu animal. Probably enraged, it broke free of the lab and killed its handlers. It killed everyone in the other lab, then broke into one of the fabrication shops. There was a fierce battle, which the PURITY88 people lost.

According to LeDuc's map, there was only one other floor, the one where the reactor was. Presumably the "something" was still there.

The antechamber between the reactor control room and the elevator was actually the place with the lowest radiation count in the base, and there the heroes found the last APRIL agent, unconscious and hurt. They made sure he was stable, and went into the control room. This storey was twice as tall as the others, about thirty feet tall.

It seemed fine. The control rods were in fact out, as Dr. MacBeth's memo had presaged, so the reactor had gone bad. Gold Tiger set about getting the system to put them back in. In the meantime, Spectre scouted the room. One side had an access panel to the reactor proper and windows of radiation-proof glass.

There was something big in the reactor room. With the movement of the control rods, it was stirred to action.

It squeezed through the access panel, twenty-four feet of mutant grizzly, making Gold Tiger's Geiger counter shoot through the roof. Gold Tiger fired at it, and that seemed to hurt it a bit, but it went after him. One hit from it disabled part of his armor.

As Project Mu moved, it hit some kind of pressure sensor that caused the far wall to open up. That revealed the VIGILANT Mark III variant that Dr. Ward had been having them build in their spare time....the one what was held comatose by the extra radiation, but once the control rods were fully in, would awake.

Spectre managed to lift the thing up (and noticed it was much heavier than it should be...perhaps a level of Density?) which gave Gold Tiger a chance to move away, but it was still so large that it could move by catching its claws on the floor and ceiling...though it moved slowly.

The extra time that Spectre gave him let Gold Tiger put it down. They called the CDC, got the APRIL agent to a hospital, and shut down the VIGILANT robot through the simple expedient of plopping the radioactive animal right at its feet to keep it unconscious.

Spectre kept the blaster carbine.

Okay, the organization is SKULL

SYSTEM: ICONS

Steve Kenson has pointed out that ICONS Adversaries already contains two organizations for your gaming pleasure: Legion (your terrorist organization bent on world domination), and the Shadow Guide (your criminal organization that's behind so many things). So my organization will be the one with the costumes and the one that subtly pokes fun at certain excesses of the business world.

Henceforth, it will really be called SKULL, which doesn't stand for anything, it just has a good marketing vibe (as suggested by Henry de Veuve). So SKULL will be the guys in the bright costumes.

Thanks to Henry and Steve for pointing things out to me.

Presenting an evil organization

SYSTEM: ANY

So I was thinking of the organization I want to replace VIPER or any actual snake-themed organization in Strange City, and I want it to have the following:

• Identifiable costumes
• A focus on some aspect of comic-book-themed villainy
• A commander with a notable name

From an adventure point of view, I want a recurring group that does things and there's some in-world explanation why they keep doing it, because really, Cobra Commander should have hung up his snake tattoo long ago.

...and this came to me.


It's an organization. For now, we'll call it SKULL, but I don't know what that stands for, so it might change. The organization's founders have a clearly-defined market:

Wannabe supervillains.

Specifically, the kind who attempt to set up organizations to overthrow the world. You know, the kind that superheroes defeat on a regular basis, because their ideas are not top-notch. Maybe even half-baked.

They've set up a franchise operation, and they will help you create your evil organization. (There might even be a multi-level marketing aspect to it, where you get to sponsor a new evil organization.) They have many, many features that you can buy for your organization, and they get a cut of your income until you reach a certain threshold.

For buying in, they provide:

• Name recognition. Everybody knows and fears SKULL.
• Standard weapons and tactics.(Uniforms and weapons for twenty are included in the initial franchise fee, and you can always buy more from them.) Tactics are written in the Skin-Bound Book (their manual of policies and procedures), but you can buy training.
• Access to someone who will sell you a base.
• Computers, a link, and encryption.
• A cool name, like Commander Dread, Commander Plague, Commander Panic, Commander Destruction, chosen when your group is founded.
• Stationery and the facilities to break into local broadcasts and interwebs. (Check on YouTube: there are over twenty-five world domination threats stored there, from the last four years. There is a SKULL channel, and part of the Dark Web is devoted to it.)
• Two jobs by an established SKULL supervillain team.

You can also buy a base, and they will build one for you. The exact mechanism depends on your local geography, but they do have an automated borer robot that will dig out one of eighteen floorplans for you and put the exterior in place for an underground base. They actually have construction teams who will come in and do the interior for you, and it only costs a bit more. Plus, you don't have to kill them afterward; they're already bound by oath.

The Skybase is popular and based on reliable blimp technology, though more expensive than it used to be (because of the helium shortage). Only a few Islebases are available, but they're quite swanky.

Escape vehicles are essential, but do cost extra.

There is also an insurance company to insure your minions. Once you're caught, of course, coverage ceases.

Depending on your interests, you might want to buy laboratories to research That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know, or to research giving minions super-powers. (If you have enough money, you can buy a supervillain team for after those first two jobs.)

Basically, they can provide at a ridiculous markup anything you need, customized and with the SKULL logo.

Converting Champions adventures, part II

SYSTEM: ICONS, Champions

I had this as an edit on the previous post, but it got long, so I moved it here. Also: these are my thoughts, and some of them haven't hit the wall of reality yet. So nothing here is necessarily concrete. It's my ideas. We'll see how it works out.

So: checks in Champions versus tests in ICONS.

Difficulties

Now that I've looked at the math, I see that the difficulties on rolls should be done a little differently.

Assuming the average roll is 11-, and in ICONS the average difficulty is 3 (figuring on an average "effect" value of 3), here are some rough equivalencies.

Champions Difficulty	Roll based on 11-	ICONS Difficulty	Probabilities
–8	3-; 0.46%	8	+5; 2.7%
–7	4-; 1.85%	8
–6	5-; 4.6%	7	+4; 7.7%
–5	6-; 9.3%	7
–4	7-; 16.2%	6	+3; 16.7%
–3	8-; 25.9%	5	+2; 27.8%
–2	9-; 37.5%	4	+1; 41.7%
–1	10-; 50.0%	3	0; 58.4%
–	11-; 62.5%	3	0; 58.4%
+1	12-; 62.5%	2	–1; 72.2%
+2	13-; 83.8%	1	–2; 83.3%
+3	14-; 90.7%	0	–3; 92.7%
+4	15-; 95.4%	-1	–4; 97.3%
+5	16-; 98.2%	-2	–5; 100%

Degrees of Success

Frequently in the adventure, there's stuff about "a Perception roll finds" followed by "an INT roll finds" followed by... I shortened them. If there were several things, I made the results of the search based on the number of degrees of the result:

Results of the Intellect search (difficulty 4, Investigation helps)
Failure	Things will be derailed if they don't find this out, so they get this information anyway; or, they find nothing if it won't hurt not to discover anything.
Marginal success	If they have an appropriate specialty, I'll probably reveal the basic stuff here. I might even if they don't have the specialty.
Moderate success	Basic stuff for succeeding, usually the first information presented in the original adventure.
Major success	Next information. But in the original spirit, a second test with only a moderate success will probably get this, unless the original adventure claims it is much harder information to find.
Massive success	All of this type of information.

Champions checks were very binary, but by juggling the difficulty, they had degrees of success. This is just extending the idea. (The difficulty adjustments I remember were -1, -2, -3 (as 8 or less), and -4. Sometimes there were adventures where things were easier, but why not just give it to the players?)

And frankly, if someone gets, say, a moderate success and wants to try again, I will probably let them, and what's in the table there as information from a major success will be available if they get a moderate success this second time. I rationalize this by claiming that they're spending more time...but really it's because that's how I played Champions.

Pyramid Tests

Pyramid tests are better for multiple tests of the same type to accomplish one end. So, for instance, at one point there's a series roll to bypass security on a computer terminal and then another roll to get the information. A third roll has a result that essentially says, "You know you've triggered the security protocols and if you keep going, the damage will be irreparable." That sounds like a pyramid test. Make it, and you've bypassed the security and got the information, stopping just short. Have a certain number of failures (maybe it's opposed; each failure counts as a "success" for the other side, amount of failure gives the degree of "anti-success"), and you go straight to knowing that further tampering could cause damage.

But that's very much a case-by-case thing. I have to read the adventure and say, "Well, there's really a series of rolls there. What's the effect of multiple rolls here, versus one really good roll giving the same information?"

There is also a place where an obstacle is randomly there (on a 1-3 on a D6, it's there). My version is a little different. "If the characters have a way of getting around the obstacle from the outside, it's there. If not, it happens after they enter, probably as a result of some other action they take."

A Convention If You're Reading My Notes

I've adopted this convention when writing down ICONS tests: the name of the ability, and the difficulty in square brackets, followed by a specialty that will help (if there is one). So a difficulty 3 Awareness test that could use Investigation is "Awareness test [3; Investigation]". If there's no particular specialty, I don't write one down: "Intellect test [3]". And if the specialty is what makes it all possible, then it's not an Intellect test (or whatever), it's a Technology test.

If I were writing the adventure for publication, I wouldn't do this, I'd write it out, but since these are my notes, and saving time is important...

Quick-and-dirty Champions conversions to ICONS

SYSTEM: ICONS, Champions

As should be evident from other posts I have made, I'm running the old Champions adventure from Adventurers Club 2, "What Rough Beast," but I'm converting it for ICONS. I'm converting it, of course. My first cut at conversion guidelines is below, and might be useful to anyone converting old Hero Games material. These values will probably change—they're my first attempt, and I'll be testing them with a couple of solo encounters to make sure the numbers have the effect I want.

Champions	ICONS
Perception check	Awareness test, base difficulty 3
INT check	Intellect test, base difficulty 3
Presence attack	Willpower test, base difficulty the other character's Willpower
Computer Programming	Intellect test, aided by Technology specialty, represented in my notes as Tech (Computers) in case there's ambiguity about what the Technology specialty does for that character. Because the test is about a particular kind of tech, the base difficulty is 4, not 3.
Security Systems	Intellect test, represented in my notes as Tech (Security System) in case there's ambiguity about what the Technology specialty does for that character. Because the test is about a particular kind of tech, the base difficulty is 4, not 3.
Modifications to a check, such as -1, -2, -4	Half the modification, round down, and subtract from base difficulty (usually 3)
-1	Conversion: -1/2; rounds to 0; 3-0 = Difficulty 3
-2 or -3	Conversion: -2/2 or -3/2, rounds to -1; 3-(-1) = Difficulty 4
-4 or -5	Conversion: -4/2 or -5/2; rounds to -2; 3-(-2) = Difficulty 5
Questionite	Unobtainium, Material 10 (though I do miss the Jonny Quest reference)
Plas-Steel	Faraday Aerolithium, Material 7 (yes, equally made up)
Hard wood doors, etc.	Wood, Material 4
Standard interior construction	Drywall and stick construction, Material 2

The adventure is essentially a dungeon crawl, exploring an abandoned Genocide base because something has killed everyone there and then the good guy agents who were sent in to investigate. Though I could use UNTIL, Viper, Genocide, and so forth (it's for personal use; I don't think the legal entities involved have a leg to stand on if they sue me, and it's not like they can get anything from me but debt even if they won), I choose not to, because they have baggage associated with them. So I'll be changing the names of the organizations as well.

Champions	Strange City/ICONS
UNTIL	APRIL (yes, this continues my ongoing streak of terrible names that everyone in-universe acknowledges as a terrible name)
Genocide	PURITY88 (referencing the claim I just made up that there are 88 gene sites that distinguish humans from mutants; in reality, because 88 has an association with white supremacy and I don't mind making my metaphors extra obvious)
MINUTEMAN robots	Undecided; I want some kind of enforcement mechanism, but I don't think I want a big-ass robot. This and the source material play off the sentry or vigilance wordplay, so whatever the device is, it will be called VIGILANT Mark I, II, III, and so on.
PRIMUS & SAT	PICA (and I'll just use an intra-agency rivalry, if I need to)
VIPER	Undefined at this point. I'll have something that is the Evil Organization with Costumed Cannon Fodder, but I haven't decided exactly what it is, yet. It's probably a franchise.

I'll post the revised conversion notes on Thursday.

ICONS Drop-In (Strange City): Episode 3

SYSTEM: ICONS

A third session of the Drop-In. Only one player, but we had fun. Still working on the same day...

Block Party

Only minutes ago, according to the 911 calls, a city block was lifted forty feet (a dozen meters) into the air, held there for about five minutes, and then dropped down. This of course ruptured gas lines, tore electrical cables, and opened the water mains. Some emergency vehicles were already there as Spectre arrived.

Spectre had three main abilities: the ability to create images, the ability to make those images of hard light, and the ability reflect back attacks. (In order to cover the flexibility of the images power, I required the hard light aspect to be the Servant power, which he uses to animate the images. We've designed a standard Servant who covers most of the powers that he generates with the Images.)

Upon arriving at the scene, Spectre left the rescuing to Blur and took a quick trip around the block...which put him in a place to see the woman floating ten feet off the ground, talking to members of the X Gang. Below her was a man in white wearing a sort of hooded duster, and a gang member kneeling before him, sobbing.

The woman was surrounded by a pink force field, and she had lifted and dropped the block to demonstrate her strength to X Gang and have them follow her. (She also mentioned that she was the Queen of Sorrow, Empress of the Thousand Realms, and the gang would be the start to her regaining her dimensions.

(At later points both the aide who was there and the one who showed up later indicated that they had no choice in following the Queen; they were bound and compelled to do it. Her Bronx accent came out later, leading Spectre to think that perhaps she had been changed by something and the combined entity was acting as Queen of Sorrow.)

One of the gang members shot at her, and the bullet bounced off. She said, "He is the bellwether. Lead him, and the rest will follow. The man in white, Looking Glass, wrapped him in his cape-coat, and when he drew back, the man fell to his knees sobbing.

(At two intervals during the session, Spectre had to stop to fight fires, but all he had do was TK enough water up and drop it on the fire...and both times he managed a massive success immediately, so it was a one roll pyramid test. Very flat pyramid.)

Though the flying woman—Diadem—threw bolts of force at Spectre, he was able to reflect them. The aide, Looking Glass, seemed to have the ability to see Spectre whether he was invisible or not (at one point Looking Glass said, "Only one of the images produces heat") Looking Glass gathered surrounding light and threw it as darts or crescents at Spectre. These were nearly always reflected.

Diadem asked Spectre if he would be her consort. He refused.

She then enclosed him in a tube of force that started closing; he failed to stop it from closing, so he was trapped...but she couldn't come out of her force bubble. He responded by piling heavy rubble on her force globe. It didn't harm her, but it got too heavy to keep flying, so it settled down on the ground. He managed to get out of the force tube by creating a kind of jack that eventually got him out.

Diadem managed to push off the heavy rubble, and Spectre heard Looking Glass (now invisible and somewhere nearby) say, "Pity you turned her down. We could have ruled together as the power behind the throne. I have no choice but to obey the Queen of Sorrow, but you could steer her."

By this point, Blur was unconscious. Spectre's hard-light copies beat up the gang, and later Looking Glass. Spectre enclosed Diadem in a box that couldn't be seen through. She eventually floated up and away, but not before summoning her soldier, Strongarm.

Strongarm was able to absorb slashing attacks, so when Spectre reflected back his sword attacks, Strongarm got stronger sword attacks. The hard light images pummelled him for a couple of turns, but he eventually defeated them, and used his (tiring, ranged) Affliction attack on Spectre. Spectre's attacks felled him, but the Affliction got Spectre a panel or two later....

End result: Strongarm and various gang members in custody; Diadem and Looking Glass (referred to by Strongarm as "the Vizier") free; Spectre determined to get something to see other invisible people. (It's a new power, so it will probably take the biggest kind of advancement, and he's racked up three minor advancements so far. When the costume was removed from Strongarm, they found a ring that looked it was inset with a ruby. It can't be removed; medical imaging shows that it has grown tendrils into the finger.)

Characters introduced: Diadem (at large), Looking Glass (at large), Strongarm (in custody).

ICONS Drop-In (Strange City): Episode 2

SYSTEM: ICONS

Hardware War

We had our second Drop-In session last night, and it was okay as far as gameplay was concerned but a failure in presenting a complete adventure. Technical difficulties with Roll20 and some incredible rolling by the GM and poor rolling by the PCs meant that the first fight—meant to be an expository piece where people practice combat—took over two hours, so the last forty-five minutes was rapid tap-dancing and improvising, and I didn't manage to bring it to a conclusion. It turned out okay—everyone who got their connection to work had fun—but it wasn't an adventure. (If anything, this made the session sandbox-y.)

The major reason this was a problem was the drop-in nature of the game. If the same people show up next week, hey, it's golden. But it wasn't an adventure; it was more a teaser scene, with the caption box "Already, in Strange City..."

So as a gamemaster, there are a couple of things that I took away from that:

• If you're on a time budget, have plans to cut any particular section short, so you can wrap it up and get on with the adventure. I didn't do that.
• If it's something online, be there half an hour early to handle connection problems or character and rules issues. Again, the drop-in nature of the game means that doing so doesn't eliminate connection problems, but it might lesson some of them.
• For online sessions, have the troubleshooting list for the platform handy.
• For online sessions, have the premise or introductory text for the session in print, so you can do minimal backtracking and explaining.

On to the session.

The breaking story in Strange City tonight was the hostage situation at Prime Tools. Prime Tools has been a Strange City fixture for over sixty years; the current owner is Thomas Park. Those in the know recognize the name Prime Tools, because there have been numerous gang-related incidents there at or near the hardware store in the last fifteen years; Prime Tools is on the current border between two gangs, the Milkbar gang (commonly called the Milks) and the Abandoned gang.

Prime Tools

Location	Beside (to the west of) the train track that marks the boundary between Milk and Abandoned territories.
Appearance	A big one-storey box in the middle of an asphalt parking lot. Inside the front is retail and the back is employees only (washroom, break room, manager's office, access to roof). Fire exits on east and west. Loading door and service entrance at back Glass doors at the front
NPCs	Mr. Thomas Park, current owner; a Korean-American in his late fifties, he has worked in this store since he was a teenager and bought it twenty years ago from its previous owner. He keeps a shotgun under the service counter, and a pistol in his office. The pistol is loaded; the shotgun is not. Mr. Park and some trusted employees carry shotgun shells. Annette duChamps, cashier in her late teens. She's trying to make money for school. Her cousin has gotten involved with one of the two gangs. Cameron Hicks, sales associate. Cameron just finished a term with the Army and was lucky enough to find work, mostly because Cameron was a technician.
Qualities	Big hardware store On contested ground The owner is fed up

Inside, the space is maybe fifteen to eighteen feet high (about five meters); the top meter is hanging fluorescent lights, exposed ductwork, and structural girders. The public part of the store has two cashier desks, a service desk, washroomes, and stuff; the employee section has a break room, back stock, a manager's office, and access to the roof and mechanical.

It was about eight o'clock in the evening; the surge of people who need something just before the store closes hadn't quite started. There are two police cars in front, and more coming; the PRAT team is warming up the ion cannons "just in case" but hasn't come out yet. (They're ready, though supers and long-term residents know that where PRAT goes, property destruction follows, and local law states that the city can't be sued for damage incurred while trying to stop supervillains.)

Three supers overheard the police radio chatter/saw the tweets on Twitter/had their favourite TV or radio shows interrupted and show up, fortuitously at the same time:

• Blastar, a known criminal who has reputedly turned over a new leaf and become a good guy
• Gold Tiger, a billionaire philanthropist and inventor who has built a suit of powered armor
• Spectre, a telekinetic man who can create images from his mind

Despite their misgivings about Blastar, the other two agreed to work with him. They went in through the roof entrance.

There were two Milk gang members there; they had some missteps but take both of them...though not without notifying the others of their presence (I kept rolling sixes for the gang members, and the heroes rolled low.) One of the gang members had a Saturday night special, but the other was wearing odd powered gauntlets.

The stacked shelves of products made it difficult to figure out what the situation was inside. Almost all hostages were locked in the washrooms; only Mr. Park was being held by the service counter. There seemed to be members of both gangs inside, fighting each other...

...until they saw Blastar. Then everybody wanted to shoot Blastar. (A Quality showing up.)

Merry carnage ensued. The gang members had prioritized targets as follows:

1. Blastar
2. Other heroes
3. Members of the other gang.

Over in the corner by the hostages was a fifty-ish guy in a pinstripe suit, and he was with gang members, and he's up-selling them. He's wearing clearly-more-advanced gauntlets, and he's saying things like, "Yeah, it does tremendous damage but you're gonna want something that covers an area if you want to get a spread of the other guys... I happen to have something that might work. Do you want to see it?"

Spectre headed over to deal with him but then realized that Mr. Park was being held hostage, so he headed down there. Once he had freed the hostage and gotten him to safety, Gold Tiger flew to the salesman and rammed him, knocking him out and tossing hi against the wall.

Some gang grudges got exercised, one gang member ran out to escape, and the rest were pummelled into unconsciousness.

They went over to examine the salesman. He had identity papers for three different identities, his fingerprints had been removed, and small scars at his jawline showed that he had had work done. Sparks started shooting and there was an increase in tau radiation, almost as if some device were triggered to teleport him away.

Gold Tiger managed to get the device off him before it disappeared.

There was another source of tau radiation in the area, and they tracked it to a luxury sedan parked a couple of blocks away. The teleport device was on the driver's seat. They found more weapons in the trunk of the car.

They decided to visit Dr. Franz Jelinek near SIT, the world's greatest authority on tau radiation. Dr. Jelinek was at home (it as after 9:00 PM) in an apartment in a six-plex in the student area by the campus.

The apartment was cluttered like an episode of Hoarders with books and journals and open crates everywhere. One crate held sawdust; another held translucent globes of varying colours; a third held electronics components. Dr. Jelinek was a small old man, bald with a long aquiline nose, who had a habit of making asides to his dead wife, Maria. (At one point, a PC suggested he get a domestic intern to help clean up, and he agreed that building one would be a good idea, so he got a notepad from a saucepan in a kitchen cupboard, and wrote it down. That was apparently his domestic "things to do" list.)

Dr. Jelinek gave them a couple of pieces of information:

• He is horrified at the thought of tau radiation being weaponized; he has actually been inserting math errors in his papers to hide such a possibility. He only wants the peaceful uses of tau radiation.
• One of the consequences of weaponized tau radiation is that it can rip a hole in the space-time continuum,"and that would be a bad thing, eh, Maria?"
• Unlike regular radiation, tau radiation can propagate linearly instead of spherically; there was much talk of Riemannian folds.
• He has detectors at his lab, and he can loan one to the heroes. Do they want the sensitive accurate one that's about the size and weight of a bus, or the hand-held one that isn't so accurate?
• People really weaponized it? This could be a terrible thing.

And then the three hours were up, so I called it.

(Players are welcome to correct my mis-remembering. I've cut lots of stuff out.)

Again, we had fun, but now I think I'll do stuff to minimize this week's problems.

Drop-In Continuity

No, this isn't about some concept called "Drop-In Continuity" (though I might invent that by the end of the post). Instead, having done the first drop-in session, I'm thinking about what the second one will be (tentatively next Wednesday, unless I discover I have to get my wife at the airport).

The constraints are mostly the same:

• Self-contained.
• Finish in 3 hours.
• Provide the rules in small bits for those new to the system. In the last session, I did minion combat, then real combat with some tests, then a fight against a bad guy. While I'm discovering who comes to these things, that seems reasonable: Beat up some thugs, discover that they're the clue to the problem of the week, investigate, fight.

But there's one added, too:

• Have something to deal with returning players that's optional, in cased that player doesn't show.

And, not necessary but desired, drop hints about what the big issue is. I have a couple of big issues in mind, but I should pick one, and that will be the backdrop for this mosaic/arc.

I've already decided that we're not going to find out what happened to the Centurions immediately. Instead, we're going to deal with something else. I've got a mystical idea, a street-level idea, and a science-y idea. Though the background is ripe with cults, I think we might lay a clue to them but not deal with them this next session. So that leaves street-level or more four-colour.

Let's do more four-colour, because Psychosis is a pretty high level character (I watched the rolls as he made the character, so it's all legit...it's just that he's a guy with several level 8 powers). So we have to go more Green Lantern 1970 and less Batman 1985 (but without someone named Pieface).

Okay: I'll prepare a pair of villains; the lesser one might be a lieutenant of the other one or not, but timing I'll do on the fly (if Psychosis is there, then they'll fight together; if not, the lesser villain is an obstacle on the way to the Big Bad).

Saying Green Lantern 1970 makes me think of Hector Hammond and Star Sapphire. The powers might be useful even if the characterization aren't. An energy form with a "remote" to inhabit? That might be a bit too much like the robot last week. Maybe I'll steal an idea from a certain SF author, and it's still an energy form, but it has been raising a specific family to be its hosts. It can take any of their bodies--powers stay the same but there's a slight difference in the body (or they're terribly different because it's been breeding the family for different purposes).

Actually, that sounds like a creepy, cool idea. They don't have to find out the gimmick right away (unless they read this, I guess, but I trust players not to let real-world knowledge interfere).

And the energy being needs some techno thing that has just been developed at Schwartzchild Industries. Even though the family (who should also have their own agendas) has money, it's not enough to get SCI to loan them the quantum electrodynamic wave adjuster or something. So it must be stolen. But first you have to steal the truck that will carry this heavy heavy object, because if you bought it, people might wonder why you just got a truck that can carry X number of tonnes....

Yeah. That's enough to build around.

ICONS Drop-In (Strange City), Episode 1

SYSTEM: ICONS

Well, I did it. Only one player showed up, and I haven't yet decided whether I'll run weekly or bi-weekly, but it looks like Wednesday nights on Roll20 is where it is. (So drop in and play, if you have a hankering for some superhero fun.)

(Aside: Roll20 is just hard enough to use that I have to invest in it. Sure, it says it's system-agnostic, and it sort of is...but the default is D&D/Pathfinder.)

Here's a sketchy summary of the first session, devoid of the snark or attitude I'm used to from James Nicoll. If anyone reads this and asks questions, I'll answer them in the comments, but also amend the main text so that others won't have to ask the questions.

Episode 1, Rumble Replacement

PC: Psychosis

Today's the day for tryouts. Tryouts are actually held at Camp Centurion, a decommissioned military base purchased by the Centurions. A special train runs out to it; the normal security precautions are lifted slightly in order to allow the train in and out.

The train car has a number of people on it, maybe two dozen. About half of the people on the train are in costume. Of the remainder, some are obviously there to provide moral support to others.

One guy shows off his power—flame powers—by making a flame dance on his palm during the ride in; when the train arrives, a stern military-looking gentleman escorts that guy away. The rest are greeted by Mr. Geist, who shows the moral supporters to a waiting room and splits the rest of the applicants up into pairs. Psychosis got paired with Blur, some kind of speedster.

The building is tall and curved. Not military at all.

Twenty minutes later, the two of them are meeting Black Aster and the Heartbreak Kid, who will be running the Rumble Room for the test. The Rumble Room is about two and a half storeys tall, and apparently the mechanisms for it go a couple of storeys down and at least one storey up. The control room is visible through a window, but the window's not very big.

There are two doors. They hiss shut and then there's the muffled sound of locks engaging. "We're not going to put the force field up for this run. We want Wisp to be able to get in and get you, if necessary," says Black Aster over the loudspeakers.

"Later we'll use simulated scenes," she continues, "but for now just the bare room, so you can see where things come from."

Things seem to go fine at first—they eliminate some robots. They're ready for more.

They notice a strange steampunk-y man in the control room, who Blur identifies as CyberSerf, a kind of cyber-thief for hire. CyberSerf clearly ups the lethality on the Rumble Room. The room's paralyzing gas doesn't get either of them; Blur gets caught in a pit trap but gets out through the hatch by vibrating her molecules at superspeed; Psychosis avoids his pit trap. Both phase out of the Rumble Room to find CyberSerf at the control panel.

The larger room is clearly a haven for the gadgeteer of the group: large artifacts and trophies and unknown machines are sitting in various stages of construction or demolition.

CyberSerf hits a button on the control panel and one of the statues—a robot—starts to move. It makes quick work of Blur and says something in an alien tongue, then, "All impediments to the mission must be removed. Life must be eradicated. The mission must succeed."

Then the robot hits Psychosis and knocks him clear across the giant chamber. Psychosis fades into the wall.

CyberSerf says cheerily, "That worked out better than I hoped." Then the robot starts attacking him. CyberSerf gets hit once before activating the antigravity repulsors in his boots; the repulsors don't let him fly fast but put him out of range (even stretching range). Then CyberSerf realizes that the morale supporters and the heroes-to-be-tested could provide a welcome distraction, so he begins to guide the robot to them.

Psychosis is working his way along (through) the wall, trying to get ahead of them. He hears a woman saying, "Look, they've been in the Rumble Room for long enough. I'm sure it must be our turn now." Longbow and Ice Princess are soon in combat with the robot. Psychosis concentrates on CyberSerf, who drifts to a window once the robot's attention is engaged.

Though CyberSerf manages to blow a hole in the window, it isn't quite large enough for escape, and Psychosis catches him in a hard light ball-and-chain image. CyberSerf then fires a bullet of expanding adhesive resin at him—but Psychosis reflects it back, trapping the computer criminal in his own adhesive resin.

Meanwhile, Ice Princess has been knocked unconscious and Longbow has been seriously slashed by the robot's blades. Psychosis makes it to the control panel and deactivates the robot.

Psychosis gets all the injured to the infirmary, but by the time he gets back, CyberSerf has escaped.

The Centurions are still missing.

Names mentioned: Black Aster, Blur, CyberSerf, Heartbreak Kid, Ice Princess, Longbow, Psychosis, three different types of Rumble Room robots.

Some future time I'll put the selection of pregens up so you can see them. The conceit is that the pregens are all crafted at 45 points, and if you commit ahead of time, you get to roll your own character or spend 50 points to create your character. 

Addendum: As a module, for you

I might never do this again, but this is what my notes would look like as a sort-of module. I stole heavilyfrom the Mutants & Masterminds Beginner Guide, so kudos to them.

Introduction

Today's the day for Centurion tryouts, at Camp Centurion, a decommissioned military base purchased by the Centurions. A special train runs out there; the normal security precautions are lifted slightly in order to allow the train in and out. The train car has about two dozen people on it, maybe two dozen. Some people are obviously there as moral support to others. Half of the people on the train are in costume. One guy shows off his power by making a flame dance on his palm during the ride in; when the train arrives, that guy is escorted away by stern military-looking folks. The Centurion building is tall and curved. Not military at all. Mr. Geist greets them, shows the moral supporters to a lounge. He splits the applicants into groups (the PCs are one group, or a PC and an NPC), each group to a room.

In point form:

• Forms and tests were done before arriving, on computer or at previous assessment.
• Showing off on train is a sign of bad judgement. You have to show obvious potential or they'll cut you immediately.
• PCs are split into groups (if only one PC, use a pair with an NPC).
• Changerooms provided if necessary; PCs were told to dress in something durable.
• The change in security for the train is how the bad guys got in to do their thing.
• If a character’s powers require some source to work (such as plants), they are not provided.
  
  • Part of the reason Heartbreak Kid is watching is to see how they adapt to lack of the source. (Mentalists are bad against non-thinking robots, for example.)

Starting Easy

Twenty minutes later, the PCs are meeting Black Aster and the Heartbreak Kid, who will be running the Rumble Room today. The Rumble Room is about two and a half storeys tall, and apparently the mechanisms for it go a couple of storeys down and at least one storey up. The control room is visible through a window, but the window's not very big. There are two doors. They hiss shut and then there's the muffled sound of locks engaging. "We're not going to put the force field up for this run. We want Wisp to be able to get in and get you, if necessary," says Black Aster over the loudspeakers. “Means the room is a little more delicate than usual. This is an easy setting, bare room. Starting...now.”

• PCs can see through window to control room. Black Aster and Heartbreak Kid are there.
• Room releases 2 level 1 robots for each PC. These are minions, so any hit will take them out.
• PCs know that Centurions are looking for teamwork, etc.
  After PCs have dealt with robots, Room starts increasing the opposition.
• Begin with traps that are generally appropriate for characters.
  • Good generic ones are flame trap, pit trap, etc.
  • Hand-to-hand fighters like taking on level 2 robots.
  • If characters have some special ability like phasing, don’t introduce a trap with “Affects (Ability)” yet.
  • When a character deals with one threat, there’s a 50% chance of a new one starting immediately; if there is nothing happening in the room, new traps are a certainty.
  • Don’t use the Sonic Screamer trap yet.
• After two more pages of opposition, someone notices that Black Aster and Heartbreak Kid are no longer visible. Now there’s a steampunk sort of fellow at the control panel.
  • Someone with appropriate knowledge or Intellect test (Difficulty 4) identifies him as CyberSerf, a computer hacker for hire.
  • He has a low level of Mental Resistance on (in case he was dealing with Heartbreak Kid).
• The next threats are more lethal. Robots are level 2, and shoot instead of blast, and the traps have “Affects (Ability)” enabled to deal with special abilities that the PCs have shown or are obvious by looking at them.
• As soon as any PC finds a way to leave the room to get to him, he turns on the Sonic Screamer.

Things Get Real

• The control panel is in what is obviously the technology lab. This is a huge room with various things in states of assembly or disassembly.
• Armoured unopenable windows show outside.
• A corridor leads into the rest of the building, including the lounge where the innocents are locked in.
  • CyberSerf can override that lockdown if he needs the distraction.
• There are lots of tools or equipment that the heroes can use (the room has the Quality “Danger! Equipment here!” which can be activated with an Advantage). The equipment might be captured villain technology or just machining equipment. For example:
  • Hydraulic press
  • Exosuit to move heavy items
  • Cutting lasers or welding torches or cutting water-spray
  • Alien space pod
  • Magnetic net
• CyberSerf is busy doing we don’t know what until the PCs get to him.
• To buy time, he presses a button, and Robot X comes to life.
  • If there are lots of PCs, several things might come to life at the button press.
  • If the PCs are outmatched, several other applicants left their room and are coming up the corridor. They’ll help, but they aren’t world-beaters. (We don’t steal focus from the PCs.)
• CyberSerf will escape if he can.
• Heroes can stop this version of Robot X with brute force, or by imprisoning it in a sufficiently strong cage (the Rumble Room itself?), or by using the “All kinds of tech inside” quality, perhaps by claiming that some remnants remain of the safeguards that the Centurions tried to put in. They can make quick work of it if they trigger the Overload limit on its Nemesis.

Aftermath

• There is an infirmary for anyone injured; it has Healing 6 Limit: Degrades.
• Investigation by the PCs reveals:
  • CyberSerf put the base on lockdown so everyone was sealed into their buildings, passes didn’t work, and so forth.
  • CyberSerf then stole files.
  • Someone else killed or kidnapped the Centurions. All of them are gone, even the ones who weren’t at Camp Centurion.

Camp Centurion

• Decommissioned military base purchased by the Centurions.
• Used for testing, constructing devices, examining and dismantling villain technology and gadgets.
• Fairly high but unobtrusive security:
  • Surrounded by force field generators and scanners. Together, they keep out everything but natural wildlife and environment. Force field is between 1 and 8, depending on threat.
  • Camp can be covered top and bottom by force field “domes”
  • Scanners on grounds search for mental threats (possessed animals, for instance).
  • Magical protections have lapsed due to recent events not relevant here.
• At least one room in each building has life support (in case of chemicals, gas, radiation, etc)
• Outside of test building, need a pass.
• Powered by reactor which uses combination of science, magic, and parallel universes.
  • Camp is now a known weak spot in dimensional walls.
• Relatively small staff. If a task can be automated, it is.
• Controlled by camp computer, which can share databases main Centurion computer.
  • There is no AI after the last one revolted.
• Main building is tall and curved, about eight storeys tall, and has three underground levels.
• Floors are reinforced in main building to handle up to Density 8 (though that person might have to take the stairs if the service elevator is broken).
• There is a fantasy “Centurion” camp there for a week in the summer.


Qualities

• Dangerous stuff happens here
• Takes the obvious precautions and some inobvious ones
• Weak spot in dimensional barriers

Rumble Room

• Used for training and testing supers.
• Can handle powers to level 8: it’s tall enough for Growth 8, strong enough to withstand Shooting 8, and so on.
• A force field can be enabled to prevent Phasing out of the room, but is not in this scenario.
• Unless otherwise stated, the Rumble Room attacks as if it were Coordination 5 or Prowess 5. So to avoid a trap such as a pit, tentacles, or a flame cage, it is usually attacking at 5 versus Coordination (usually) or Prowess.
• Applicants generally agree to a fair test, so mental attacks and some line-of-sight attacks can get through the window. (Lasers and light-based attacks cannot, in case a blast hits the window.)



Rumble Robot I

• These simple robots take the place of civilians in simulations.
• They’re slow, blocky, delicate, and cheap to build.
• The quality “Minion” can be removed for a slightly tougher opponent.

(Let's see how a straight conversion of the table works, or if it's too small on this page layout.)

Prowess	2	Specialties
Coordination	2
Strength	4
Intellect	–	Qualities
Awareness	2	Connected to base computer Robot Minion
Willpower	–
Stamina	8
Powers
Life Support 10

Rumble Robot II

• These robots are an actual threat in simulations.
• They’re not minions.
• Normally they blast, but in lethal simulations, they can shoot.
• They can also be equipped with some customizations (such as Affects Phasing).

Prowess	4	Specialties
Coordination	3	Power [Blast/Shoot] Expert (+2)
Strength	5
Intellect	–	Qualities
Awareness	3	Connected to base computer Robot
Willpower	–
Stamina	10
Powers
Blasters (Blast 4 Extra: Shoot) Tough (Damage Resistance 4) Radar (Super-senses 1) Life Support 10

Sample Rumble Room Traps

• I chose from this list to match the heroes.
• It wouldn't be too hard to generate numbers to make it random, because I stole this list from the Mutants & Masterminds Beginners Guide and altered for ICONS; it's random there.

Trap	Description
Pit Trap	A trap door opens under a character, revealing a pit underneath. If a (non-flying) character is caught: Falling in causes a Coordination test (Difficulty 1) to avoid a being hurt (Strike 1). Athletics can be added. The hatch is Material strength 8 to bend or break; but Difficulty 6 to lift. To get up to the hatch is a Difficulty 5 climb. Breaking the hatch is a Pyramid test, but only a short and deep one: It requires only a Major success, and marginal successes add to the test (two marginal successes make a moderate success). Suitable powers to escape easily include Phasing, Corrosion, and Telekinesis.
Fire Cage	A projector in the wall or floor surrounds the target character in a cage of flames, limiting movement and mobility. Character is in partial hold in the cage, at -2 for most actions and unable to move; the cage “bars” are Aura 4 and have the Contagious extra. Escaping: Suitable powers include things like water form or Air Control, Water Control, or even Flame Control, or sufficient Damage Resistance or Force Field. Squeeze through bars with appropriate power or a successful Coordination test (Difficulty 5; the -2 is already figured in). Douse the cage with an appropriate power; treat as an opposed check, power to power (Aura 4). If the character’s power wins, the flames are doused and the character is free.
Freeze Ray	A weapon extends and fires a beam that traps a target in ice (Binding 6).
Homing Missiles	A volley of three small homing missiles launches from a hidden panel in the Rumble Room, locking on to a particular target. “Not-smart” Missiles: Attack 4 Defend 7 Blast 4 (Extra: Homing); Qualities: “Small” & “Not smart”. (Homing is from Great Power: each missile attempts to hit for 3 pages or until it succeeds, whichever is first.) Escaping: Attack the missiles: The missiles have the quality “Small” (-2 figured into target number); any successful attack detonates them. Avoid the missiles: If you outlast them for three pages, they run out of fuel and fall down, probably detonating. If you specifically defend for a page, it can be a maneuver to activate the “Not smart” quality, and they’ll get confused and fly into something, detonating.
Rampaging Robot	The room releases a robot level II.
Sonic Screamer	A device extends from the ceiling, emitting a powerful ultrasonic shriek (Stunning 6 vs Will, Extra: Burst). All characters must deal with it. While the Sonic Screamer is active, players must make a Will save (Difficulty 6) on the Rumble Room’s panel. Characters in enclosed environments (such as armor with Life Support or closed in pit traps) can ignore it.
Steel Cage	A cage of steel bars springs up around a character. If character is trapped in the cage, treat as a partial hold (no movement, -2 to actions). Escaping: Slip through the bars: Suitable powers include Phasing or a water form. Bend or break the bars: The bars are Material strength 8 to bend or break. Another short & deep Pyramid test: It requires only a Major success, and marginal successes add to the test (two marginal successes make a moderate success).
Steel Tentacles	Four flexible steel tentacles spring from a surface of the Rumble Room to grab and hold a character (Binding 8).
Stun Gas	A jet of stun gas engulfs the character (Stunning 6 vs Strength).
Vertigo Beam	A beam shoots out and interferes with the inner ear and balance (Affliction 6).

Villains

CyberSerf

Prowess	3	Specialties
Coordination	5	Technology Expert (+2)
Strength	3
Intellect	5	Qualities
Awareness	4	Working off a debt Expert in his field True love is doxxing heroes.
Willpower	5
Stamina	8
Powers
Cybernetic access glove (Interface 6) Extra: ESP Limit: Medium (computers with cameras) Protective Harness (Force Field 5) Gadgets 5 Limit: Temporary (constant powers)/Degrades (instant powers) Extra: Armory Mastered Gadgets include Mind Shield (Mental Resistance 4) and Adhesive Gun (Binding 5 Extra Burst) Flight 3 Limit: Finicky (Power always works, but GM sets power level for that chapter)

Robot X

Prowess	4	Specialties
Coordination	4
Strength	7
Intellect	3	Qualities
Awareness	4	All life must be destroyed, starting with the PCs Next time I'll be better All kinds of tech: hero, villain, alien
Willpower	6
Stamina	14
Powers
Heavy robot body (Density 5: gives Damage Resistance 5, Strength +1) Limit: Constant Blasters (Blast 6) Nemesis 5 Extra: Instant Limit: Overload Life Support 10 Nanotechnology system (Immortality 1)

• Feel free to add powers or remove the Overload limit on subsequent appearances.
  • If the heroes defeated him this time by triggering the Overload limit, it will not be there next time.
• The Immortality is nanotechnology. Unless very special precautions are taken, the robot reassembles itself, but it takes hours, days, or months.