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.

Strange City background

SYSTEM: ANY

Assuming I have not just destroyed text while trying out an iPad app (which I have done twice now, in the vain hope of finding something useful that Blogger recognizes), here is the Strange City background information presented as a blog entry, rather than a PDF. I hope this will be easier to update than the PDF, and won't require jumping through hoops to read.

STRANGE CITY IN 10 SECONDS

• Mid-sized American city
• Highest frequency of super-powered individuals in the world
• Highest ratio of super-villains to heroes in the world
• Yesterday, the city's superhero team, the Centurions, disappeared.

OVERVIEW

Strange City was founded in 1666 by Ezekial and Hepsibah Strange, and it remained a small (almost endangered) community for hundreds of years. The discovery of high-quality pitchblende in the 1950s changed that, and the city quickly mushroomed because of its new connections to the tech sector. (Strange Village became a city in 1961.) The city has two universities. Both are well-respected, though not at the very top of their fields; Enoch Strange is a world leader in dealing with the sociology of the strange and the occult. SIT has developed some amazing new technology but critics say it exists mostly to feed the city's hungry tech sector.

Residents are "Strangers," even though the motto for a long time was "There are no Strangers in Strange City!"

DISTRICTS

The city has districts:

• The Mines is now the factory and warehouse district, although it was once the mining area. There are underground tunnels here and occasionally one will collapse.
• The Office is the business and banking district.
• The Flats is the slums and the poor housing.
• The Coast is where the rich people live.

Other districts to be named as needed (the artist district, the theatre and entertainment district, and so on).

TRANSIT

Like most North American cities, Strangers love their cars. Even if you don't have a car, you can get around, though.

Strange City has a rail system. It is mostly an elevated rail system because parts of the city are on a floodplain, but some sections are underground. There are also buses, taxis, and Karry, an electronic ride-sharing service that has disrupted the lives of taxi drivers.

Ideas:

• There is violence between taxi drivers and Karry drivers.
• A super starts “flight-sharing,” carrying people to destinations as part of Karry.

MEDIA

Strange City has two and a half television stations, a dozen radio stations, a daily newspaper, and two weekly newspapers.

Television

Two of the stations are network affiliates. The networks do local news, but most of the programming is imported.

The half station is part of the educational process at Nugget College, a private institution in town. Its programming is entirely local and changes with each semester. Some shows have a continuity because students stay with them from term to term, but all of them change once in a while.

Ideas:

• Annoying or sycophantic questions will probably come from reporters at the network affiliates; truly oddball shows and “events” will come from Nugget College as a student experiment.
• A new reporter is looking to make a name and get hired by a bigger station somewhere.

Radio

There are three big stations whose formats change occasionally. They are currently oldies, talk radio, and country & western. They are owned by syndicates, and the programming is dictated elsewhere. The rest are small radio stations that cater to specialized tastes.

Ideas:

• A talk radio hosts chooses to make vigilantes (or a vigilante) a convenient scapegoat for everything.

Newspapers

There are three newspapers.

• The Bee is the daily, and is part of a chain. Leans conservative or Republican.
  
• The Strange Times is a weekly with excellent investigative journalism. Founded in the early 1970s. Leans liberal or Democrat.
• The Citizen Weekly is best known for its ads and its personals, though the personals are mostly online now. (Still, the Weekly’s Strange Happenings column is looked at by everyone from occultists to cat-loving grandmothers.)

Ideas:

• The Bee sometimes hires someone who wants to make a name and move up. It is also an excellent adversary if someone wants to be persecuted by a paper.
• The reporters from the Strange Times are likely to uncover things that someone doesn’t want uncovered.
• The Strange Happenings column is an excellent way to spread rumours and news, and its pseudonymous author might actually be a super or occult master.

HIGHER EDUCATION

The two universities are well-regarded, but their names alone not going to get you a job, unless you're in their specialties.

Enoch Strange College

The much older of the two is the Enoch Strange College. It is a liberal arts collegis wit a reputation for turning out independent thinkers. Its specialty is the sociology of the occult, and its rare book library is the envy of universities this side of Arkham. There have been scandals — one of the professors founded a cult 5 but the place has been free of trouble for about fifteen years. (Of course, some would say that it's ripe for problems.)

State Institute of Technology

Despite the name, the SIT is no longer affiliated with the state college system, but it is a public college. (There is a move to change the name to Strange Institute of Technology.) The Institute deals with technical matters. Critics say that it exists primarily to feed the ravenous maw of the local tech scene and that it turns out drones instead of thinkers—but they are well-learned drones, for all of that. There certainly are professors whose experiments are on the cutting edge, and in fact a bequest from the Judas Strange Foundation requires experiments that are risky.

The SIT campus is on the edge of town. It has a complex maze of delivery and steam tunnels underneath it that make it well-suited for criminal lairs, but the criminals in question are usually creating or growing dope.

Ideas:

• The Judas Strange Foundation requirement justifies some of the (frankly unscientific) experimentation practices in the comics.
• SIT is where PICA and PRAT send captured supervillain devices; it's also where other proto0villains go to steal the gadgets they need.
• It turns out that a group of supervillains are taking some of the technology courses to try and understand their (stolen) technologies. After they fail the midterms, they decide that kidnapping the professor is what they need to do.

Other

There are other schools and colleges in the area. The best-known is Nugget College, a vocational college that teaches electronics and media presentation.

THE SUPER SCENE

The city has a super-group, the Centurions. Its most prominent member is Quantum Strange; his principle foe is K-Osprey (who sometimes spells it Chaos Prey). As the campaign begins, the Centurions go missing.

In the last few years, though, the Centurions have taken to fighting global or even interstellar threats, and the business of protecting the city largely falls to the Parahuman Reconnaisance and Tactics team and vigilantes. PRAT is always willing to bring out its big weapons, and Lt. Karpinski has a somewhat adversarial relationship with the local vigilantes...possibly because they tend to deal with the problems before PRAT can. (They never refer to themselves as PRAT, by the way, though everyone else does. In the police force, they're Strange City Parahuman Reconnaissance and Tactics, or SCPRT.)

There is an unusually high number of supervillains in Strange City: they outnumber heroes by between 15:1 or 20:1, depending on the definitions used. Enoch Strange's sociology professors have been working on why, but they haven't come up with a reason why there even are supervillains. The conservative press claims that having powers makes you a supervillain.

As a powered person yourself, you know:

• There is power suppression technology that works on most supervillains most of the time. (In ICONS, treat it as a Power Nullification rank 9.)
• The federal government agency that deals with superhumans is the Parahuman Investigation and Corrections Agency (PICA). (They also hate their nickname.)
• Medical care with no questions asked is available from the Abattoir, from Dr. Chimera. The Abattoir moves from time to time, but someone usually knows where it is (a difficulty 3 task for a known super). Dr. Chimera rarely has the most up-to-date equipment, but it knows its business. Dr. Chimera can handle trauma from violence and has a comprehensive knowledge of the effects of various superpowers. Some have wondered why Dr. Chimera’s has never been raided; those who wonder too loudly disappear.
• There is a supervillain prison outside the city—the Black Rock Prison. It is administered by PICA but the actual day-to-day operations are contracted out to a private company. (Black Rock will have a riot and the private company will be replaced when I come up with a cool place to have the replacement prison.)
  

There are a couple of places that are regarded as neutral ground. Generally, no one steals there (largely because there isn't anything worth stealing) and they are places to have a talk. The existence of places like this are one reason why the police force has a guarded relationship with vigilantes. One of the places is a bar; the other is a vegetarian cafe. The third place is medical.

• The bar is Free State, a country & western bar in the Mines district.
• The vegetarian cafe is Home on the Grains, over in the Offices district.
• The medical place is the Abattoir. Dr. Chimera and its staff do not allow fighting on the premises.

Almanac

Known Heroes

Characters are ones that I have come up with. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. Player characters are not in this, yet.

Magnificent Centurions

The Centurions are the original superheroes who now handle mostly global or even interplanetary threats. They consist of whomever you need, but you can start with:

• Quantum Strange, a powerful wizard-like figure who controls the very power of quantum reality. Quantum Strange is the de facto leader.
• Black Aster, an environment controller who can shape things to her will. She can control the weather or shape the wall itself into a fist that grabs you.
• Heartbreak Kid, a mentalist who is best at manipulating emotions. (The “Kid” hasn’t aged in ten years.)
• Blue Streak, a speedster. (Evil twin or alternate personality called “Mean Streak.”)
• Shadowguard, a vigilante who plans for everything.

(The existence of five heroes implies the existence of about a hundred villains.)

Team Qualities

• The Premier Team (With Premier Problems)
• Been There, Done That
• “Carry the Standard!”

Adam Silverback

Intelligent gorilla. Polymath. Lives in a compound in town under PICA/military supervision. He's not a weapons or technology guy, but anything else...

Qualities:

• Polymath genius
• Under military protection
• Still a gorilla

Dr. Ghost (Dr. Andrew Wassermann)

A beginner at this hero thing. In his secret ID of Dr. Wassermann, he is an oncologist with a clinic in the city. Phasing, Density increase, healing, affliction.

Qualities:

• Doctor with Hippocratic oath
• Good Samaritan
• In love with villain

Known Villains

Agent of Chaos

A nihilist villain, named but not developed.

Blastshadows

A group of villains who got their powers from explosions.

Cruncher (Francis leTourney)

A very strong tough guy, with extra strength when he's squeezing or crunching things.

Qualities:

• To survive, give out more than you get
• Revenge for, well, everything
• Cares for crippled sister

Epiphyte

Transformed into a plant person, Epiphyte (also known as Caroline Flow, as the Lady of the Glade, as Sundew) lives in Isley Park, and has a rough deal with various criminal activities, who deliver to her people they want killed. The police tend to avoid the park, which is officially closed at night.

Qualities:

• Eats her prey
• Now a plant, not a person.
• This is her home

K-Osprey (Thabiso Lincoln)

The madman genius who has killed, but who always manages to find henchmen. Lots of Strangers know someone whose life has been touched by K-Osprey. His origin is a mystery. He might have been an experimental subject for one of the various create-a-superhuman programs; he might be born a mutant. Flight (wings), gadgets, some innate damage resistance.

Qualities:

• Stochastic mastermind
• Madness is liberating
• If all else fails, smash it

Lucky Strike (unknown)

Lucky Strike got her name from her lucky breaks. She’s a thief, and a good one. She is best known for her luck, but the gadgets she carries and improvises are also well known. Gadgets, Wall-crawling, Leaping, Gadgets, and an uncontrolled probability control.

Qualities:

• Thief with a heart of gold
• No man is good enough
• Grudging respect

Mr. Bland

A supervillain with supremely practical evil plans, some of which are legal.

Rebound (Karl Groenveld)

Reflects the attack back at the attacker; if a "good" power is used on him, like Healing, he can reflect back the harmful version of the power. (This is an extra.)

Qualities:

• Child to protect
• Hates cops & authority figures
• Hurts you because he can

Silver Prism (Brendan Li)

A fellow with "quantum silver blasts." Not a goood person, but someone who keeps bargains. Invisibility, force field, Energy Drain aura.

Qualities:

• Bully
• Show your status
• Connected in the criminal world

Twitch Kid (Owen Carmichael)

Handsome, born to wealth, built armored suit to regain family’s lost fortune by force.

Vampire Squid (Harlan Cornell)

A creepy little fellow with tongue tentacles that can wrap around a victim and suck out his or her life. The victim is stunned by the act of wrapping them up often stuns the victim. (In game terms, after a page of Binding, start draining Stamina until death.) The two tongue attacks can happen separately, but target gets Determination point if one happens without the other.)

Qualities:

• Creepy in looks and deed
• Light attacks do +1 degree of damage
• Addicted to “feeding” and “flavour” of person

KNOWN SUPERS: OTHER

Parahuman Security, Incorporated

A small security firm that hires parahumans as security guards, usually by organizations that expect to have to deal with parahuman invasions. (There isn’t money to hire PSI for the university labs, though.) Buildings are generally set with alarms, and three-person teams head out (the third person stays in the truck). Team structure depends on the powers available, but PSI doesn't like to break up a team that works.

Because powers are relatively rare, PSI has had to be quite egalitarian in its hiring. Color, creed, sex, or criminal record don’t matter as much as whether you have a useful power. It is notable as a place where ex-cons can get work, once they have a Certificate of Rehabilitation from the government.

Here’s one successful team.

• Stalker (River “Eyes” Glimpt) Fixes “third sight” on one of the team and reports back if there’s any unusual problem. Unlike the other two, Glimpt has a criminal record, arrested for being the eyes for a criminal gang for a couple of jobs. Qualities:
  • Parahuman security guard
  • Working stiff
  • Something to lose
• Padlock (Dwight Celenza) He can bind things up. The binding doesn't last long, but it usually lasts long enough to get the target into the van, which usually is proof against a lot of powers. Qualities:
  • Parahuman security guard
  • Working stiff
  • ?
• Scope (Mackenzie Ney) The one who finds things. Qualities:
  • Parahuman security guard
  • Working stiff
  • ?

Standard Supervillain Minions

There is an employment agency that makes them available. Its owner, Carmine Childress, always refuses offers of work from known supervillains, but the thinnest of excuses will work. His cousin is a real estate agent who finds these people lairs.

Qualities:

• Normal guy
• If I lose, the boss’ll kill me

Team Hero!

SYSTEM: ICONS

Team Heroes, a team of super-powered teenagers

If you need them, a set of rivals who are all teenagers (all have the extra quality “Teenager”). You can calculate Determination if you want to use these as player characters. EDIT: Amended to add some details about the characters.

Team Qualities

• Like We Practiced!
• Ready Or Not, Here We Come!
• We Get No Respect (From Old Folks)

Membership

Aria started the group with Gateway. Growth Spurt joined after that, and then Identity Thief and Argus. Backspace came last.

In a game, they can either shame your players into developing maneuvers and team qualities, or provide relief to be rescued. (Team Qualities are rather a new discovery for me, despite them being in the rulebook from the very beginning. But I wanted to do something on the lines of "the lesser-powered heroes who work together." I haven't actually come up with tactics for them, but the "Like We Practiced!" Quality can generate advantages they can all use.)

Aria (Chloe Simpson)

Chloe is straightforward. She is the child of..."supervillains" would be too strong a word; her current view is "powered losers." (Family problems are a theme here.) She has family members who were heroes, too, and has a strong connection with her aunt, the former Slinky Siren ("the stretchable seductress!"). Unfortunately, her aunt lives in New Zealand now, so they can only communicate over the internet.

Expect trouble if her parents ever pull on the old Spandex (and Spanx) and show up at a crime scene to take her home.

Aria (Chloe Simpson)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	8
3	4	3	4	3	5	Leadership (+1)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Sound Control (Blast) 5 Extra: Burst Extra: Flight Limit: Exclusive Extra: Force Field 5					"You can't stand idly by!" Family history of parahumans This is the family I always wanted Teenager

Identity "ID" Thief (Laverne Bostich)

Laverne is named after her uncle, Laverne. She is confused about gender and sexual attraction, a confusion that's only exacerbated because as a shape-shifter, gender and shape are conveniences for her, and she has switched her look for school to be more androgynous while she figures things out. Or rather, she doesn't want to be whatever she was born as, but she's not sure what she wants to be.

She doesn't try more extreme body modification yet (like Stretching or other kinds of Transform) but I could imagine a sequence where those become addictive until she figures out how she wants to live her life.

In the group, she tends to be the infiltrator, having the ability to absorb Specialties also, and a kind of utility player. No, she never duplicates anyone strong (she just doesn't have enough Mimicry for that to be worthwhile), but she can grow along with Spurt if they need some extra muscle, or something that seems useful from the other side.

ID has also been known to change into someone from the opposing side, take their powers as well as their identity, and sow disruption that way.

Identity Thief (Laverne Bostich)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	7
4	3	3	4	5	4	Performance [Acting] Expert (+2)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Transform (Humanoids) 4 Stunning vs Strength 6 Power Mimicry 5 Extra: Specialties Limit: Preparation					Doesn’t like to be herself Family problems Gender confused Teenager

Backspace (Stan Joseph)

Stanley Joseph Lieberman was a scientist whose specialty was temporal mechanics. (With superheroes around, that's a heck of a specialty.) His best days (which, if he admitted, were not that great) were behind him, and the Valentine's Day before he turned 65 and faced mandatory retirement, he was sitting there, depressed, about having ruined his life.

And then he realized that there was enough confiscated supervillain technology in his lab to fix that.

He was actually trying to go back and change history, but that's not what happened. Instead, he came out of it as a fourteen year old, as he had been fifty years before, but with powers. Time researchers set up contingencies in case they're transported to another era, or turned into babies, so he had access to his money. He withdrew it and disappeared, to become the new Stan Joseph.

He has some trouble remembering the place of teenagers in the social hierarchy; there seem to be a lot more restrictions than it looked like from age 64. And he loathes teachers lecturing him about physics.

He can now "undo" certain kinds of damage or some powers (GM's call as to which) but once he undoes a certain amount of damage, he has to get rid of the accumulated "alternate reality energy," generally as an Affliction. At the GM's discretion, the use of Neutralize might "fill up" the Affliction tank as well, but that seems a bit restrictive. An appropriate trouble when needed, though.

In combat, he's more a thinker than a fighter, but he heals his teammates or bystanders as soon as he can, and then he's able to do some actual help. When someone needs to puzzle out the evil bad guy device, it's usually Argus and Backspace who do it.

Backspace (Stan Joseph)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	7
4	4	3	5	3	4	Science Expert (+2)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Time powers ("Undo"): Healing 5 Limit: Healing "fills" the Affliction tank; after healing 10 Stamina, can't do any more until Affliction is released. Extra: Neutralize (to “undo” powers like Duplication or Affliction) Affliction 10 Limit: Level of Affliction limited to amount of healing done Immortality 1 Extra: Regeneration 1					Problems with authority Secret: Old person reborn Temporal scientist Teenager

Gateway (Franz Guttierez)

Since he was about ten, Franz has had this problem: if there's a problem, he appears there....with everyone who was near him. He can't turn that part off; everyone in range comes with him. He gets around it by running to be alone at the first intimations that it's going to happen.

Given that he never knows where he's going, Franz is actually pretty easy-going. He can get along with lots of people, even if he doesn't speak their languages (he's gotten pretty good at miming things) and he's a killer at trivia nights. He's also a novelty hog, always looking for something new to do, read, see, or be.

He doesn't have a choice about whom he takes with him (that's why the extra is Burst instead of Passengers), but he doesn't get teleport-sick, and he's mastered he part of teleportation where he lets just his hand apport into someone and then bounce out, while they get hurt. The group generally uses him for transportation, but he can defend himself.

Gateway (Franz Guttierez)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	8
5	4	4	4	4	4	Performance[Acting] (+1), Athletics (+1)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Teleport 7 Extra: Burst Extra: Accurate Limit: Extras always Limit: Troubleseeker Stunning (vs Will) 7 Limit: Close Range (+2, figured in)					People person Knows something about everything "Hey, try this!" Teenager

Growth Spurt “Spurt” (Dylan Connor)

At thirteen, Dylan is a scrawny small kid. But Dylan can grow...not in an adulting way, but rather get big. And when Dylan gets big, Dylan is tough and strong. (Dylan usually chooses to go full growth, but sometimes that's not advised in the current area. They've already had the scene where Dylan sinks into the marsh and has to shrink back to normal and be teleported away.)

Raw strength is fun for Dylan.

Growth Spurt (Dylan Connor) or "Spurt"
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	12/6
4	5	8/2	3	5	4	Athletics (+1), Performance[Music] (+1)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Growth 8 Get -2 to Defense & hiding, Damage Resistance 8, Str 8, "Large" quality Alteration Resistance 6					Short & scrawny Trying to impress Clumsy Teenager

Argus (Tori Vivaldi)

Tori has always, always known about machines. In fact, Tori had to study computer programming harder than anyone else because it was so easy to just make the computer do the right thing. Machines are Tori's friends.

People... well. Tori discovered Team Hero while cruising the Internet and looking through people's webcams (Tori has an amazingly broad knowledge of human behaviour and is somewhat cynical because of it). Tori arranged for them to get some money and have the truancy warrant on Backspace reversed (Tori figured out who Backspace is, but hasn't told Stan) and then set about doing favours for the group in order to join.

Tori is more comfortable staying behind and being the "guy in the chair" but that isn't always possible. (Tori should probably also have Gadgets. Maybe in the future.)

Argus (Tori Vivaldi)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	7
4	4	3	5	3	4	Computer Programming Expert (+2)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Technopath: Machine Control 5 Extra: Interface 5 Extra: ESP (Limit: Medium, video systems) Force Field (Device) 4 Limit: Level Duration (+2, figured in) Invisibility 5 Limit: Machines only (+2, figured in)					"Privacy" and "ownership" are foreign concepts Nerd, for good and bad "I need...friends." Teenager

An idea for online roleplaying

SYSTEM: ICONS

I'm thinking of running a drop-in ICONS campaign on a regular basis...the same time and day every week or every two weeks. It will probably be on Roll20 (though how is that for drop-in kinda stuff?). Here's what I've already decided:

• I show up. If no one else shows up within a half an hour, I shrug and go on with my life.

• There will be pre-gen characters available (45 points). If you commit earlier in the week, you can use the lead-up time to generate your own character by rolling or point-buy. Point-buy is 50 points for anyone who commits more than a day ahead, just as a reward. (A rolled character might be the equivalent of 55 or 60 points, and that's a reward, too.) I still get to veto characters.

• I'll try to keep the adventure complete and under 3 hours. (At three hours I'll quit unless it really is no more than five more minutes.)

• Roll20 is used for its rolling and storage abilities, not for its maps. I put up a map, and my brain switches gears to something much more finicky and tactical. I might put up a map so that people can see where they are fighting, but I'm not going to be moving characters around. We'll play mostly by voice and Theatre of the Mind.

• We might do recordings so there are more actual play recordings of ICONS Assembled. I haven't decided that yet.

With all that in mind, what would be a good time for you to drop in to something like that?

From a personal scheduling point of view, my current front-runner is Thursday nights (Eastern) but I haven't heard from anyone about what nights are good or bad.

Ideas in a superhero setting

There are some things that I keep coming back to in superhero settings. I don't know if they'll show up in the Strange City setting, but if one doesn't, it's because I've made a conscious effort to keep it out. You might have mental tics like this too, wells you keep returning to.

The underground complex. Whether it's mines or a forgotten city, I often have some kind of dungeon/subway complex/tunnel situation, complete with people or things living there.

Some journalists are scum. While I greatly appreciate the estate of journalism (having spent years on the school paper), I also recognize that some of the practitioners are, well, media whores. It's much easier to put this kind into a story than the good kind, though I try to have both.

The really stupid parody hero. I can't help it. I might be parodying something that's years out of date, but hell...I gotta.

Trying to justify certain superhero tropes with law or technology. A common superhero game, and one I won't stop with because I like certain superhero tropes, even if they fall apart when you think about them.

The missing heroes. I love legacy settings, but I want the players to be the important ones in the setting. Maybe not in the world of the setting, but in this area. Sometimes that means that everyone else is missing. (Or they're busy.)

The antagonistic base. An intelligent base that has an agenda different from the heroes? I'm all over that.

So I run into old Crimson Claw (he tried to kill me back in the day), and it turns out... Hey, both heroes and villains are still people. Some of them must give up and do something else.

I didn't comment because you didn't want me to. Sometimes, they know you're a superhero, but they're respecting your privacy. Kinda like when Ollie Queen was mayor, and the beard made it kinda obvious that the vigilante was the mayor.

Hey! My name is trademarked! For some reason, I just think that names should be trademarked. I don't believe there should be superhero schools or community colleges that teach heroism (though a weekend course that ended with you getting your Vigilante Certificate could be fun), but I keep going back to characters with the same names and trademarks. Villains would ignore the IP laws, though.

It's a secret ID, dammit. Look, if you want to have a secret ID, you can. I'm just gonna make it tough on you.

Hidden in plain sight. A lot of strangeness will have a perfectly ordinary appearance and be out in public, if you know where to look.

A Sketchy Background

I'm going to try to create a background for stuff I produce. A first draft of a few items is here:

Strange City background

Don't be surprised to see other ideas that I have proposed make their way into this.

For now, I purposely want to keep this short. I don't want a thousand pages that players or GMs have to read through, but I want it to provoke ideas, and it doesn't do that yet.

Eventually, I will release it under a Creative Commons license of some sort, but not now.

EDIT: I should actually release this in parts on this blog, rather than requiring you to download and read a PDF. So maybe I'll do that.

Oh, there's an odd concept

Well, not odd in the sense of "new theory" but odd in the sense that I can't recall seeing it in a character before.

So Legacy is the latest in a long, long line of superheroes, and her ability is to manifest the powers of any of her super-powered ancestors. How would you do that in ICONS specifically or any game system generally?

It probably isn't Alter-Ego because that either limits the number of alter egos or forces them to be random. You'd want a defined list of ancestors, and "long, long line" might mean twenty ancestors...

So as a GM, I'd probably want to see a list of ancestors.

Maybe it would best be done as the Magic power--you take a panel to commune with the ancestors and then manifest the powers.

Of course, this could be considered a variation of the Transformation power, where the power level sets an upper limit on your abilities, so it might be Transformation (Ancestors) 8.

Or it's kinda like the Nemesis power.

Anyway, there are a number of precedents for an alter-ego kind of power that isn't Alter Ego.

(Watch, it'll turn out to have been done as an Adversaries character who I am not remembering.)

Okay, stage one...

My intention right now is to pick a time and be available to host a game at that time, probably on Roll20. Weekly, if possible. If people show up, we'll play. If they don't show up, I'll wait a bit and then go do my own thing.

To make it easier, I've finished a bunch of pre-generated characters people can grab. (The kinds of characters are dictated by the art I've purchased and can re-use. Archer, Armored Suit, Blaster, Crimefighter, Ice Controller, Feral guy, Martial Artist, Mystic, Paragon, Psychic, Speedster, Tank, and Wizard, where the latter is essentially a Green Lantern or Starman kind of figure who can do anything.)

I have a couple of ideas for game sessions in case I actually get started.

So I'll write down the game ideas, then think about what auxiliary info each needs. At that point, I'll be ready to pick a time.

A clarification about stunting in ICONS

SYSTEM: ICONS

So over on Facebook, I asked, in a long-winded way, this:

Looking for a clarification here.

Do extras on a stunted power cost additional Determination points or Advantages? (That is, stunting a power with an extra costs 2 DP, and requires two Qualities activated.)

The situation is that I was playing a phased character, and I wanted to simulate the gag of "hurt someone by turning solid inside them." I figured I needed to stunt the Blast, so that was fine--I had one Determination point, so I stunted off the Phasing and had a Quality that was appropriate. But I needed the "Affects Solid while Phased" extra, and I would have liked the "Burst" extra as well. (I was looking for a way to destroy an item from the inside.) So I needed to stunt a complex power: a new power with two extras.

• Does it require three DP/Advantages to do this? Or just one, stunting a power will the extras involved?
  
  In the moment, I spent the DP, did a maneuver, and took Trouble for the last one (because I failed the second maneuver roll--I stunted Slashing instead of Blast, and took damage from the explosion.
• Do Limits offset Extras when stunting a complex power like this? (Normally, a stunted power lasts until the end of the chapter, according to my imperfect memory, but I guess you could make requiring a new stunt/DP into a Limit for this purpose.) Inventing Limits didn't occur to me in the moment.
  Also, if it requires multiple DP/Advantages, they have to activate separate Qualities in order for them all to go off in the same panel, right?

And Steve Kenson answered back:

Generally speaking, the answer is no, stunts involving powers with extras generally don't require a character have advantage more than once or cost more than 1 Determination Point, although the GM is free to make exceptions for extremely powerful or unusual stunts. In my opinion, worrying about balancing all of the "moving parts" of a stunt is more work than is needed in the midst of game play.

Actual play: A solo superhero session

SYSTEM: ICONS

If you follow this link, you get to a PDF of a solo superhero story I just did with the Mythic GME version I've been tinkering with (apparently the Mythic Yahoo group has one similar to it; I can only say that I have never looked at it, but I will now) and ICONS Assembled.

I wrote it mostly as if it were a story because that's what I do, but it should serve as an example of the things that can happen. (It's not a story because it's not focused enough, but random rolls, hey.)

Note that there are lots of errors and inconsistencies, like where I changed a character's name half-way through and might not have gotten all instances. And there's a weird thing in the PDF that I thought I'd gotten rid of, but apparently not.

And it got me to ask for a rules clarification from Steve Kenson, but I'll post that tomorrow.