Earth's Mightiest Heroes Villains: The Grey Gargoyle

SYSTEM: ICONS

Despite (or perhaps) how scanty the information in the show is, I find that I like this guy.

The Grey Gargoyle

I'd love to see him put into a Suicide Squad-like setting, because there are glimpses of a finicky, snarky character there. Throw Chemistro and Living Laser in, call them the Jobbers of Evil, and give them an apartment in New Jersey.  Wackiness ensues.

If it were a commercial for a TV show:

INTERIOR BEDROOM.

 DUVAL and WOMAN in bed; both are obviously nude but DUVAL wears glove on right hand

WOMAN

Let's talk.

DUVAL

This is an American obsession, isn't it?

WOMAN

Talking?

DUVAL

Yes. We just-- Don't you know that men always want to go to sleep now?

WOMAN

(pouts)

For me.

(pause. Duval gets ready to go to sleep)

Why do you always wear that glove?

DUVAL

Reminds me not to get stoned.

WOMAN

Kinky. I love getting stoned.

CUT TO

KITCHEN OR HALL; We see WOMAN as statue in bedroom; DUVAL is in stone form.

DUVAL

(to CARR)

She asked for it.

TITLE CARD: The Jobbers of Evil

CUT TO POKER NIGHT, CARR, DUVAL, and PARKS around a table

VO

Can three supervillains share an apartment...

CARR

I'm tired of planning for Iron Man. Three weeks now. Let's do Hawkeye.

VO

...without driving each other crazy?

PARKS

(laying down cards)

Fizzbin!

 CUT TO HALL

LANDLORD

(at closed door)

Real money this time! That gold stuff changed back!

CUT TO INTERIOR, EVERYONE IN COSTUME

LANDLORD as statue propped in corner

 

CARR

Time to go to work.

VO

This network.

CUT TO LIVING ROOM. ALL THREE WATCHING TV. 

Pizza on table, PIZZA GUY as statue propped in corner

CARR

 Star Trek? Again?

DUVAL
(shrugs)

I can petrify you for the duration of the show.

CARR

Voyager?

(thinks)

 Yeah, hit me.

VO

This fall.

CUT TO LIVING ROOM. DUVAL TO THE OTHER TWO

DUVAL

 Why is the Griffin in our parking garage?

VO

The Jobbers of Evil
 

Earth's Mightiest Heroes Villains: The Enchantress

SYSTEM: ICONS

And  here's an attempt at Amora. Even though Amora gets a relatively lot of screen time (for a villain), I found it quite difficult to boil her down to three qualities. Still, I gave it a shot.

She might be considered under-powered for all that she's the second-best in the Nine Realms, but I stuck to my guns and gave her only an 8 in Magic, and a 7 against Asgardians. Given how powerful magic can be in a magic-rich environment, that scales reasonably well. The Norn Queen would have an 8 or maybe a 9 in magic. Surtur...probably a 10, or GM's dispensation to do whatever the hell he wanted.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11i3_ZWmGWPlJrMHjLOldZci2ZLwBZ6zkgsTNsadKNX4/edit?usp=sharing

Ideas for Initiative, ICONS Style

Just had an idea for layout that might make for a useful character/combat summary sheet for ICONS. Won't be as pretty as some, but it just might work.... (For pretty, you go to Daniel Solis...)

Earth's Mightiest Heroes Villains: The Executioner

SYSTEM: ICONS

Here's a stab at the Executioner (ahem). He's interesting in that, although he's clearly a Strong Fighting Guy, half the stuff he does with the axe is never seen again. So I declared them stunts.

Clearly he's a foe who exists to (a) give the heroes a hard time and (b) generate Determination Points for them.

(Which is okay; there ought to be someone like that.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ygg8ud1jrr96eq3RzmqWNRPqGJK0bNcCEeFrkrphwM/edit?usp=sharing

Show some initiative (M&M Style)

SYSTEM: MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS 3E

And here is a PDF form I put together that is useful for combat.

The big thing it has that I haven't before is that the button at the bottom will sort by initiative (that's bonus+1d20). If you don't put anything in the d20 box, it generates a number between 1 and 20 and adds it automatically.

It was very useful for teaching myself certain parts of JavaScript. :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0KkM_vAe2HXa3RUdDNoWG9NVHc/view?usp=sharing

Ambushed by (the Masters of) Evil!

SYSTEM: ICONS

So I took some of my Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes builds out for a spin. As usual, I might well have gotten something wrong, and I think I had the Coordination on Hulk and Abomination too high...but other than that, it went fairly well.

Page 1

Hawkeye, Wasp, and Hulk are out for pizza to discuss the latest thing Hank has done. They order their usual (personal pizzas for Hawkeye and Wasp, ten pizzas for Hulk) and are deep in conversation when Abomination walks out with the pizzas.  He shoves them in Hulk’s face, along with a side helping of fist. The others appear during this panel.

Abomination hits, because he rolled a 6. Hulk was surprised, so the difficulty is 0, and he might stun the Hulk. That’s Strength versus Strength; Abomination gets 9+6 (15) versus Hulk’s 10+6. No stun. I wish my dice rolled like this during a game…

Living Laser and Whirlwind appear, causing much collateral damage that Tony will have to pay for. Living Laser is in energy form in order to travel fast.

Page 2

Roll initiative. Combat order is going to be Abomination, Wasp, Hulk, Hawkeye, Laser, and then Whirlwind.

Abomination follows by grabbing the table and whacking the Hulk with it. He shreds the table, but his ulterior motive was to clear some space for fighting.

Abomination rolls 2, but his Prowess is 6 and his Martial Arts are on Prowess, to be a 9. Hulk rolls a 2 so this hits, but there’s no slam or stun, just damage 9. Hulk is down by 2 stamina now. The regeneration will kick in.

Wasp shrinks and hits the Abomination with her stings. Even if she gets both shots, it’s not going to affect him, so he ignores her.

Hulk roars (of course) and tries to smash Abomination. 

Hulk rolls a 4, Abomination rolls a 2, so Hulk hits but it’s not a great hit. He deals out 10 damage, but there’s no slam or stun.

Hawkeye whips out his bow. As the one with the most common sense, he sees that the other two can be trouble, and should be eliminated, so he acrobatically leaps to wherever his friends won’t be affected by the blast and fires a burst arrow, hoping that Parks isn’t in light form.

Parks is insubstantial, so we’ll ignore him until he’s solid. Whirlwind is not, so the two burst shots hit him and combine, for damage 7. They hit with a massive success and a major success, so let’s roll stun and slam. Hawkeye gets 11 for the stun; Whirlwind gets 5. Hawkeye gets 9 for the slam, Whirlwind gets 10.  It’s a massive success for the stun, so Whirlwind drops unconscious. One down, two to go.

Living Laser is not a guy with finesse, so he decides to unleash his shooting damage on Hawkeye. Hawkeye’s tough to hit, though.

Living Laser rolls a 6, Hawkeye a 5, so it’s 11 to 11…except Hawkeye’s also being acrobatic. That makes it a 12. The shot just misses him. 

The shot misses, and Hawkeye quips, “I can’t believe Iron Man said you were trouble. You can’t hit the broad side of a—“ And he stops as he faces Crimson Dynamo, who opens fire.

Crimson Dynamo rolls a 2, Hawkeye’s still acrobatic as all get out and rolls a 5, so it’s 6 versus 12. Total miss. Hawkeye gets a Determination Point because I had to bring in Crimson Dynamo.

Page 3

Abomination follows up with another shot to the Hulk, trying to slam him outdoors and fight there.

Abomination rolls a 6 for 13, Hulk rolls a 4 for 10. That’s a major success…will there be a slam? No; it’s 13 to 13.  No effect, but Hulk takes 1 stamina. 

Wasp is going to fire at the Abomination’s eyes to distract the Abomination.

This is a maneuver (Coordination versus Coordination, I think) that the Hulk can use. She uses her Aerial Combat specialty and gets +3 for being shrunk; and rolls a 2, he rolls a 1, so it’s a major success: she creates one advantage, and she activates it. Hulk can use it now.

Hulk takes advantage of the momentary distraction and rushes the Abomination, surging out of his position to charge into the Abomination.  Hulk uses the advantage to get +2 to his effort. He rolls a 6 and Abomination rolls a 2, and +1 damage for the rush…so that’s 3 stamina, and a Prowess vs. Prowess roll for the rush. He rolls a 6, Abomination rolls a 6; he doesn’t do anything successful on the Strength vs. Strength roll that follows it.

Hawkeye grabs an arrow and decides to try to shoot through the faceplate, hoping that he’ll be able to knock out Anton once the plate is gone. It’s a called shot, so +2 to the difficulty. He rolls a 1, Crimson Dynamo rolls a 5, so it’s 10 versus 9…a moderate success. He does half damage with the arrow (3) against resistance to damage 4. The arrow bounces off harmlessly. “Uh, guys? I know you’re busy with the other big green thing…but I’ve got a big red thing here.”

Living Laser has picked a target: Hawkeye. He fires again at the acrobatic archer. The Living Laser rolls a 2, Hawkeye rolls a 4 for 7 vs 11. The Living Laser's shot missed, but gave Hawkeye an idea.

Crimson Dynamo says, “You are practice for the day I destroy Tony Stark!” and opens fire on Hawkeye.

Crimson Dynamo rolls a 2, Hawkeye rolls a 1, so its 7 versus 8. Once again, the Dynamo misses, but the diner looks quite ruined by this point. 

Abomination has one target: the Hulk. And he’s hitting him repeatedly. He’s going to stunt Fast Attack so he can combine the attacks. Both attacks succeed, but only marginally so they do no damage that gets through the Hulk’s resistance.

Wasp knows she can’t hurt anyone here: Parks is insubstantial and the other two are tough. But maybe she can overload the Crimson Dynamo’s senses by shooting directly at the antenna array…

Called shot, and she’s going to try to make it with Fast Attack, combining the attacks so they do extra damage. She’s also going to spend a determination point to activate her own Founding Avenger quality to push the damage. If she hits once, that’s 5 damage, and his resistance provides only 4 against a called shot; if she hits twice, that’s 6 damage. She rolls 2 and a 5, plus her 3 for being shrunk, plus her 1 for Aerial combat…that’s an effort of 11 and 14. Crimson Dynamo rolls a 1 and a 3, for opposing values of 5 and 7. In both cases, a massive success, so he takes 2 stamina and gets the “All Shots Are Called Shots” quality, which is active. No one needs to spend a point to activate it; it just is.

Her stinger blasts land true, and the Crimson Dynamo starts moving more slowly, less able to weave and duck.

Hulk has a hate-on for the Abomination, so he tries a second time to hit.

He rolls a 4, Abomination rolls a 1, and Abomination’s specialties are all on attack, so it’s 10 to 7, or a major success. He does his full damage, but he also spends a determination point to activate his “Hulk is the strongest one there is” quality and increase the effort on his Slam. He rolls a 2, so it’s 14 versus Abomination’s 12.

The Hulk’s mighty blow from above knocks the Abomination prone.

Hawkeye decides he’s going to maneuver so that when Living Laser fires at him, the blast will hit the Crimson Dynamo. 

This sounds like a Coordination+Athletics (7) versus Intellect (5) test. Both parties roll a 4, so it succeeds. The Living Laser’s attack was good enough to hit the Crimson Dynamo but not Hawkeye, so Crimson Dynamo takes the damage, 4 more stamina.

“I’m sorry,” says Hawkeye, “you can hit the broad side of a barn. Crimson Dynamo is Russian for barn, right?”

Crimson Dynamo can’t send a request to Living Laser…his comms are shorted out. So he decides to rip up a section of counter to use as a burst attack against Hawkeye. He rips out the counter and bats at the bowman.

Crimson Dynamo rolls a 4, Hawkeye rolls a 1, for 9 vs. 6, or a Major success. The Slam test is 11 versus 8. Hawkeye goes from full stamina to 2 in one shot.

The chunk of counter hits the tumbling archer and knocks him to the ground…and knocks him almost unconscious.

Page 4

Abomination smiles. “They taught us how to fight from the ground.” He starts by grabbing the Hulk.

He rolls 3 for 7+3 versus the Hulk’s 1, or 10 vs 7. The Hulk is hampered by the move, and is at -2 while held.

Wasp sees the waitress who was hiding under the now-absent counter and flies over to get her to safety. “Run! I’ll cover your exit!” She interposes herself between the waitress and, well, everyone else.

Wasp gets a determination point for that.

Hulk struggles mightily against the Abomination’s grip.

It’s wrestling, Strength versus Strength to try to escape. They each roll a 5, so no effect.

The Living Laser realizes that he can use the waitress instead of hitting the Wasp directly. So he’s going to fly around her very quickly (he’s light, after all), turn solid, and threaten the waitress.

His prowess is only 4, but it’s a surprise to the waitress, so she’s difficulty 0 to catch. He rolls a 4, she’s difficulty 0…massive success.

“All we want is all of you. Come quietly or she gets a laser lobotomy. Hulk can’t get here in time to save her. I am, after all,  as fast as light.”

Wasp says, “Hulk…I think we have to…”

What next?

So not bad. Wasp turns out to be more difficult to hit than I thought. Having to roll again and again for Slam or Stun is a bit of a pain, and I'd like to see a mechanism for deliberately slamming things...but overall, very pleased.

Some ICONS tricks, part 1

SYSTEM: ICONS

These are some tricks I've developed or been told about ICONS Assembled character creation. I have this as part 1 because I'm sure that others will occur.

Do you need that life support? The rules for exposure indicate a Strength check against Difficulty 0. If the character's Strength is over 5, they're never going to fail the exposure check. There are cases where the life support is necessary, but for things like the Hulk wandering in the Arctic, it's not really needed.

Do you need that leaping? When I was putting together a 45 point Spider-Man, I had Leaping 2...but according to the rules, a character with strength 7 or higher can jump to Extended Range (you need to yell). An early info page on Spider-Man claimed he could jump across the street or up a three-storey building. That sounds like Extended Range to me.

Do you want that gadget to be a limitation? By default, devices are just devices. Yes, they can be taken away, but it's assumed that the character has more, or will get them back, and they're not a limit in game terms. Steve Kenson pointed out that the Source Limit works well to represent the kind of unique gadget without which the powers don't work.

Is that really Alternate Form? Doing conversions for characters from Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, I ran across three characters who were said to be made of energy (Wonder Man, Living Laser, and Zzaxx). In the first and third cases, they seem to interact quite well with the world, mostly through punching. Alternate Form: Energy explicitly denies that. Instead, I went with Qualities that said they were made of energy. That meant that players could come up with all those funky energy-related schemes but the characters could still punch and be punched.

Autofire Fast Attack... Something I've come up with. If a character has Fast Attack, let them combine attacks with themselves. This means that, say, Wasp with her stingers of 4 can fire twice at someone, and (assuming they both hit) combine them for a +1 damage, doing 5 damage. I'd probably put the implicit limit that it can't beat Resistance to Damage if the special effect doesn't allow it (armor might have a weak spot the attacks are focusing on, but a force field probably not).

Beware the Rhino! Another possibility I've come up with but not yet tested. Suppose a character has the Specialty: Power (Strength) Expert. He applies one of the specialties to the to-hit roll, increasing the chance of a massive success. If he gets to test for a slam attack, he then applies the other specialty to the roll for the slam attack, increasing the likelihood that the target will be slammed. This is to represent those characters who are very good at hitting people and knocking them out of the way.

Its force is so terrible I can use it only once! If a character has some overpowered weapon that has limited uses, rather than buying it full strength and putting a limitation on it, go the other way: the power is a stunt of some other power, using the +1 damage to push. The character has to have an advantage for this to work, usually gained by taking a trouble like "Other armor systems fail!" Iron Man's UniBeam is, I think, a fine example of this. It works only a limited number of times, and does extra damage.

Introduction...

Just a quick note to say hi.

I'll be putting RPG stuff here, originally focusing on ICONS because that's what I'm breathing right now, but with others possible. (Hey, with the invention of a transparent aluminum, I suddenly want to run a dungeon crawl where the "dungeon" appears to be one huge room with all the contents of rooms visible...but the walls are invisible. And the spell on the walls is such that after a day, anything on the walls (such as paint to mark the way) becomes invisible. You'd never surprise the players with the contents of a room, but imagine them circling and circling around some treasure that they just couldn't get to...)

I'm John McMullen. I read, I write, I play tabletop RPGs. I have a wife and two children, and then two dogs.

Hope to see you around.

The Substitute, Part II (from long ago)

SYSTEM: ICONS

Continuing reposting things from six years ago.

We finished off The Substitute, and much though I didn't want it to be "big fight, everyone goes home," that's pretty much what it was.

James' description is here on Dreamwidth, but the Livejournal cross-posting has more comments; I think for the purposes of my records (the GM's notes) I'm going to point to the LJ version with its more comments, but for the record of the adventures I'm going to point to the Dreamwidth version (eventually the Blogger version), because I like the purity and consistency.

I'm sure I'll have no problem keeping up with a complex system like that. Or I'll make a drive-by on James' account and post the LJ comments I really like to the Dreamwidth versions, just so I can get to them. (Because really, it's all about me.)

James misses the parts where:

• Good Dr. Bailey, in his quest for supplies, thinks about heading to the teacher's room beetween science labs, but first checks for traps (because in the Old Days, he would have put traps there) and finds several;
• Hari sees the chairs of the lab are all booby-trapped with blades and electricity, which the teacher can activate (but non-lethal, probably, because there are Ords who might have survived to take the class).
• Oh, and although there was a coral snake lying across Sari's foot at one point (as a snake who has lost its heat lamp will search out the nearest source of warmth), she was quite effective at beheading it, getting it and a nearby tarantula with a single blow.

The shock troopers are the equivalent of the school patrol, of course. The PCs never ran into the equivalents of themselves.

Presumably the shock troopers who went onto the football field are detained, because the Hope Prep dimension won the fight. That will be something to bring up later: a group of Pryde Academy parents stage a "rescue" mission or the Hope Prep teachers send them home. They didn't discover the connection between the two dimensions, so that didn't get uncovered, and could be fodder for a future adventure.

It is a measure of our, uh, nonchalance about sports that we didn't even ask who won the Homecoming Game, nor did it come up. So that particular set of details skipped by us.

Rumspringa was an NPC for the session because the player couldn't make it, so she got entombed in earth by Serena early on and without life support, she fell unconscious until rescued. She might have done something to break free if she had had PC aura, but she didn't.

The goatees thing started as a joke, a running reference to the goatee that the evil Spock wore in "Mirror, Mirror" on the original Star Trek but somehow by the end of the session, it became established that many of the Twisted Earth residents have goatees, which is part of the reason that Hari was concerned by them when arriving in Peet's. Also, in a fine example of evil sluttishness, the Twisted Earth version of Serena has tattoos and piercings, and according to the players, the shock trooper armor is built to show that the women have secondary sexual characteristics; I don't know why, because in the real world, bumps aren't necessary.

It didn't come out, but the Pryde Academy version of Super-Science concentrates a lot more on poisons and deactivating agents, hence all the animals. The slug gets used to test contact poisons, but for some things, you just have to have a person. "So I want you to tell me, does this cause a burning pain, an excruciating pain, or a bright pain?" The victim had retractable claws, but we didn't learn anything else about him because he booked it.

I notice I still can't design solo villains who are meant to stand up against a group. I feel like I'm still back in 1984 with the Champions villain I designed and only GM intervention kept him going. Same for Professor Pulse. At least in this case, the PCs get Determination Points when I do that. The poison gas was one of those improvs. So was the team of schlock—er, shock—troopers who came through the floor. (I mean, it made sense...Shock troopers are in teams of 4, so there's someone to wake Serevil and her teammate, they rush up to corral the PCs, hoping to get the points...but the team from House Omega is heading there too.)

'Course, it didn't help that the way the adventure ran, the PCs had surprise, and I didn't take that into account. Plus some of the attacks are 8 or 7 damage, and his defenses weren't quite enough: he should have had more, or as GM I should have just bit the bullet and given him more Stamina (or the excuse of all Stamina returning, or given a Determination point for the rolled Stun failing--though I actually hate to do something like that: the PCs fail often enough that I don't want to take a success away from them).

Anyway, group versus group works better, though it is more work for the GM. What doesn't feel like it works is NPC versus NPC. Best (in my opinion) to get them both off the playing field somehow.

Complaints

I had already noticed that Glimm and Sari were underpowered relative to the other characters who were randomly rolled, and sometimes that happens: it's part of random-roll systems. Brian made good use of Determination points to bring Sari up to speed--the targeted shuriken throws that immobilized part of the Professor's armor were some of them, and Glimm's high Strength mean that he deals out damage quite effectively, so Determination points helped make that up.

But Brian pointed out that Sari's writeup refers to powers she doesn't have, and uses the wrong name for the power she does have...and it's not the Mutants & Masterminds name. (At a guess, it might be from BASH, but I only read the original version of BASH once, so I might be wrong.) That kind of conversion error (and that's what it has to be) is just sloppy, and proofreading should have caught it. For the record, I gave both players 5 points to spend and I threw in Shooting 5 for Sari's player, to represent the darts or shurikens it says she has. (In fact, it should probably be Blast (Shooting) 3, Strike (Slashing) 4, both through devices, because a thrown dart or shuriken should be less than a strike, but that was my mistake.)

Also, the artwork gives the impression that Glimm towers over everyone, but the character sheet suggests he's at best nine inches taller than the shortest kid, and six or less over the rest. In the original part of the adventure, I had him as like, eight or nine feet tall, and the facts on the character sheet don't support that. Clearly, he's about to go through a growth spurt if he's going to get to the height on the cover.

The Determination/Starting determination thing is starting to get to me. I actually thought about whether it was really meant to be Determination (as written) given out as a reward. But in that case, characters who have two less than their starting determination get effectively no reward for the session, because it will reset to their starting determination next time.

So I'm disappointed in the Freshman Pack. I haven't had good results with the characters chosen from it, and I'm curious as to whether they will release the same characters updated in a Sophomore Pack, Junior Pack, and Senior Pack. I don't think they need to; if they want to enlarge the line with other character packs, I suggest (and it's worth exactly what you pay for it) that those packs, if they come about, have other characters in them. Then the characters can be from the same cohort or simultaneous, as the GM prefers.

Yes, I'm complaining about a small press product. I know they don't have much money to spend, I know that it's done on a shoestring by very few people as a labour of love...but they're also saying it can be used with little preparation, and these kind of inconsistencies make that difficult. I like the line, I like the products, but I'm aware of where it comes up short for me.

We will run Halloween Ball as the next adventure. One of the players would like to move on to a different system, I think. James is content with ICONS for a while. Another player is content with ICONS but for less time, so it'll stay a fill-in. And that'll give them time to get one of the spring adventures out. I believe they're revamping the layout of the Handbook, and I suspect they take my criticisms seriously. They might decide not do anything about them--colour-blind fifty-year-old GMs without free time are a rather small subset of their market--but I think they take them seriously and weigh them.

It occurs to me that I've missed the intention in one part: do they mean for the GM to run only the adventures they've prepared, or some mix of homebrew and prepared adventures? I suspect the latter, because one every two months is not fast enough for a weekly gaming group. Certainly after this one adventure, I have enough potential subplots to populate a session or two, so long as I can fit them into the High School esthetic. I won't create my own adventures—ICONS remains a fill-in for our group, much though I love it, and part of the intent is to be able to use published adventures so I don't have to spend a lot of free time.

Oh, sure: this idea would make money (not)—a set of two- or three-paragraph descriptions of fallout from various thngs in adventures. The Hope Prep Followups. In a convenient small package so these plot threads can be dropped as subplots into any adventure to flesh it out and make it even longer....

Ways to handle the Big Villain?

So you have a group of characters, and for whatever reason, they have to face a single character. The nature of ICONS powers and defenses suggest that if you have a group with mixed power levels, the defense level of the villain will be high. So what to do in a fight? I'm sure somebody has written about it somewhere, and if I can't find it, I will. Look for a pointer or a discussion in the future.

Various Ideas for Hope Prep

I was thinking about Hope Prep on the bus, and there must be a club, not school-sanctioned, for what would be jokers and deuces in Wild Cards. Essentially the Hope Prep version of the Legion of Substitute heroes. So you'd have Micro-Fish in there (a character from an M&M adventure that the players remember fondly--he's not my invention, but I'd import him wholesale), and Shadowflask, who has TK and forcefields, works in Shadows only, but whose powers can be defeated by a lit candle and who can't see in the dark to make it all work, and Ice Cream Man, who has "elemental control: Ice Cream (create,attack,control)" but nothing else...but his parents sent him to Hope Prep because, hey, he has superpowers! I don't know what you'd call the club--the Fizzle Club? It might be fun to build a subplot about trying to give a chance to shine to one of those kids. ("Sure, you're a big-time hero, but me? I'm Ice Cream Man. Yeah, my father made up the name.")

Clearly Jade has someone from the Science Club in mind to hack into the school computer and add the gossip blog. Have to think about it, and where the information will be. Will Dakota Heil be involved? Perhaps she's trying to find the source of the anonymous blog, because I'm sure that the blog will be a big topic of conversation while it exists. Heh. Dr. Bailey secretly approves, so he doesn't do anything to fix it, claiming fatigue from "dimension-lag". We'll see if Dr. Bailey continues to approve after they publish something about him...

I am sure that Tommy's and T'kla's upcoming breakup, when the pheromones wear off, will be covered in the new gossip blog.

Also, can Sia read anything electronic? I'm going to say no for now, but it will be only seconds before someone prints out the text of the blog, and he knows what's been said.

The Substitute, GM's Notes Part I

SYSTEM: ICONS

We played The Substitute from Melior Via. GM fills this in as he has time. Also includes comments on some of the characters in the >Hope Preparatory School Freshman Pack, also from Melior Via.

We met the primary purpose: We had fun, so the main thing is done. The rest is kvetching.

On the Hope Prep adventure and style:

• The adventure took quite a while: this is not a one-night adventure, even though I cut out the living chess portion with the Science Club. That may be because I miscalculated and did too much with the slugs. In the grand scheme of things, they are just a side line. (Memo: Have to have them see the giant slugs while they're in the alternate dimension, so they know that the slugs came over then.)
• Why do Jimmy Tauran and Johnny Starr both have names that begin with J? I used Tommy Starr, just to make it easier, but that meant I had to do the translation. (I am acutely aware of this since I made the Khes mistake earlier in the Jaws of the Six Serpents adventure.)
• Having Jimmy pick on Glim was a mistake, in retrospect. I should have known better, but maybe in the future, there should be some guidance in the adventures for the GM that says something like, "picks on the character most likely to fight back and get in trouble" as a hint to the GM to look at Qualities and Challenges. If I had been thinking, I would have used Sari instead of Glimm for that conflict, because Sari is (a) not nine feet tall and a wall of muscle and (b) has "Never Backs Down."
• I found the whole adventure kind of confusing. I added the part where they discover that Tommy found his adoration for the alien sophomore (I had a lot aliens, so I made her a sophomore) with Dr. Bailey. The players, bless them, jumped to the right conclusion. A writeup of her—I didn't notice one—that I could use or ignore, that would have been nice. I claimed that as an alien she has feathers or feather-like extrusions and a tentacle instead of a nose.
• Even though the adventures claim they're set up for easy use, I still have trouble finding things in the heat of the session. This might just be me.

On our session specifically:

• Mentioned that there are 10 schools in the metahuman secondary school league. With teleporters and everything, it's hard to claim that each services a particular area, but the majority of students are "local". So there are three in North America (Toronto, New York, San Diego), one in South America (Peru), one in the UK, one in Africa, one in an unspecified place in Europe, one in Australia, one in an unspecified place in Asia (China? Korea? Would Japanese have their own?), and the rest to be named later. Retroactively, I'd probably make it 8 or 6: enough for actual competitions, but not so many that I can't name countries.
• The adventure as written ends kind of abruptly, sort of a let-down. I'm going to let them have the possibility of a knock-down drag-out with the real Twisted Earth Dr. Bailey, who used to be a superhero but had an operation to make him evil, and who sports all kinds of cyborg enhancements. (I'll start with the Dr. Pulse writeup and go from there.) (Now, we didn't get to the ending, so I can't be sure that it's a let-down, but it reads that way.)
• But in the interests of sowing confusion, I had Dakota Heil wondering aloud if Dr. Bailey's new interest in sports was the result of an infatuation with someone who played or taught sports...that is, Moon Maiden.
• Miz Beazley works in the cafeteria. She's the one who supplied Hari with anti-slug chemical...just enough to annoy the mother slug rather than kill her. (And so what if the name is taken from Archie comics?)
• The players rightly wondered why the janitorial staff weren't looking after the water problem; I claimed that the janitorial duties were handled by a robot, which was currently sitting down and reciting haikus in Japanese, a language which it doesn't know. In other words, an early attempt at takeover by the clone.
• And I stated that Dr. Bailey sponsors the Science Club, which makes sense, and when they found irregularities in the security system, they told...Dr. Bailey. Which didn't work out well for them.
• The Shock Troopers have no weapons in their armour, and it's not clear to me that they are supposed to use their natural powers or something in the armour. Probably natural powers, though I didn't (using the excuse that those two were an extraction team).
• Gonna have to work up a reason why the teachers seem so unconcerned when the kids tell them about a potential threat, or otherwise it's an idiot plot. (Maybe it's an unspoken assumption that the patrol will handle it, or that as metahumans, weirdness is guaranteed to follow these kids for the rest of their lives, so HPS provides a way for them to learn to deal with it, with the teachers there as backup when they fail?)
• I didn't give out enough Determination, in retrospect; remembering the session, there were at least two incidents where I should have given some out, and I didn't. And anytime they try to warn a teacher, who blows them off, they should get a point. Because, like, they're the Metahumans of Tomorrow. Or people expect great things. One or the other.
• Have to figure out what gets done with the slugs in the long term. I think they get shipped back to Twisted Earth.

Interesting that Glimm has a crush on Serena. Have to bring her back, then.

We've got these two powerful (and similar) characters and two underpowered characters. One has an obvious niche, the other does not: she's not excellent in brainpower or has powers that no one else has. She's foreign just like the other three. Tough to make her stand out. Have to think about that.

Note: I think I'm going to give Glimm and Sari, the two underpowered characters, the options of their origins (unearthly in one case, probably trained in the other). I don't recall if it suggests this in the Freshman Pack or not. This might be one of the things that happened in the conversion from M&M. The Freshman Pack doesn't include origins at all, so I think this is just a dropped ball on Melior Via's part. (See, they could mention it as a bit of customization for the characters..."You can apply the character's origin as a way to customize...")