Something like this...

SYSTEM: ICONS

I was thinking of something like this for the adventure design...something I quickly mocked up using Slides on Google. Nothing bigger than a two-page spread, more graphics than I've used here, each spread is a complete chunk or encounter.

I know that's not the way that D&D stuff is produced, but I'm actually thinking of cutting words rather than producing more. (Hey, go with your weakness, that's what I always say...)

I'll finish the quick mockup, and if I like it, then I'll do some proper design of styles and layout in Scribus, and produce the PDF there.

Characters in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" -- Mynah, Klaxon

SYSTEM: ICONS

Link to story.

ICONS

Mynah (Kendra Wahl)
Prowess	Average (3)	Intellect	Fair (4)
Coordination	Great (6)	Awareness	Good (5)
Strength	Fair (4)	Willpower	Great (6)
Stamina	10	Determination	2
Specialties	Athletics (+1) Power (Sonic Control) Expert (+2) Her sound imitations and Affliction are usually tested as if she were level 4.
Powers	She has Poor (2) Sonic Control with a basic power of Images. She can also discomfit someone (an Affliction) or distract them so that she can give them suggestions, like Mind Control or hypnosis, but she thinks of it as Invisibility; maybe she’ll eventually learn otherwise.
Qualities	Bad luck in picking partners and nemeses Precision over power Doesn't understand the whole dating thing

Klaxon (Jackson Beauregard)
Prowess	Average (3)	Intellect	Average (3)
Coordination	Fair (4)	Awareness	Fair (4)
Strength	Average (3)	Willpower	Good (5)
Stamina	8
Specialties	Power (Energy Control) (+1)
Powers	He has Great (6) Sonic Control with a default power of Blast. He can create a standing wave (Force Field) around his body. Like Kendra, he can distract people with Mind Control. Like Kendra, it has the limitation that he must create the sound (Levels) but the bell overcomes that limitation. The Bell also provides the Burst and Broadcast benefits to his powers.
Qualities	Racist misogynist Connected with Sons of Thunder Connected with Faceless Corporation

Wet Bones: the adventure

SYSTEM: ICONS

Mike Lafferty has put on YouTube the three sessions we did. I have not yet checked to see if he cut out my verbal faux pas, but with the warning that it might still be there (or you might find others), here are the links:

1. session 1
2. session 2
3. session 3

This is an adventure set in the world of James Alan Gardner's All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault, and my thanks to Jim for letting me use the world and my thanks to Mike for letting me run it. Faults are mine; credit is theirs.

(Yes, I should listen. But I really hate hearing and seeing myself. I'll try listening tomorrow morning on the commute.)

I want to try the PDF structure of the adventure to have each section as a two-page spread with a title, an encounter, an isometric map, and character boxes.

Craigslist story: For whom the bell tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls

I have everything planned and then something screws it up. As usual.

About a thousand people are in the public square waiting for me and this idiot to duel to the death. The stolen bell is on the platform along with a shrewish sharp-featured guy and another guy in a white-and-red outfit who I assume is Klaxon. And me: I’m functionally invisible, skulking along because I have a plan, right?

I hear Klaxon say loudly behind me, “She’s here. It’s her.”

I do not get to equalize the odds before his sonic blast hits the bell and makes it vibrate in sympathy—

“Kill her!” he shouts.

The crowd turns into a thousand bloodthirsty mind-controlled hooligans with an appetite for moi.

The life of a supervillain wannabe is not without its problems.

#

After defeating Merlin Furioso and getting the amulet, you would think my rep would be assured and I would be swimming Scrooge McDuck-like in a vault of money and felonious contracts.

You would be wrong.

Oh, I got some nice press out of it, but that was offset by the facts that (a) I still had no way other than Craigslist (blech) to find jobs and (b) my performance in that job got criticized and minimized at every turn.

So far as (a) went, I actually considered getting jailed at one point just so that I could hob-nob with supervillains. Then my St. Bernard puppy Slobberkin would ask to go out and I realized that I couldn’t go to prison.

And (b)? I mean, hello? There was no one else in the museum but me and him, and it was all on security cams. (Okay, I had to leak the security footage but the footage was unaltered.)

But no: I had to contend with people claiming that some man did the real work, whether it was a partner or that I just waltzed in and took the amulet from Merlin. Some nights, fuelled by too many Long Island Iced Teas, I got on the Internet under an alias and argued with my detractors. (I ignored the ones who claimed I was a vigilante out to stop Merlin Furioso; that level of self-deception you cannot argue with.)

It was on one of those occasions that I encountered him. He had posted a list of “proof” that the security cam footage was a fake, and I was just drunk enough to respond. I demolished most of his points. He was online and patronizing, and I challenged him to do better.

His smug response? “Watch the news over the next couple of days. See how a man handles it.”

In the morning, I was hungover and in the process of deleting my browser history (I do it every morning, just before Slobberkin’s first walk) when I found the postings.

So I kept an eye out.

Damned if the Confederate Bell didn’t disappear from the same museum that night.

The Confederate Bell, according to the news sites, was a rarity: an actual Southern bell donated to be melted down to make cannons in 1862. Most of the bells were made by northern manufacturers, but this one had been from the south, and was spared only by the fact that it was sent to New Orleans to be melted; the city was captured in April of that year and only the clapper had been removed.

It wasn’t a subtle job: the bell was a good 700 pounds and on a stand. He disabled the security cameras and every guard was found unconscious. I presumed he had a buyer for it, because it wasn’t worth that much. Spanish bells of the same vintage go for more.

The annoying thing was that the reward offered for his capture was higher than the one offered for mine.

I posted a brief congratulations (because, hey, always networking) and figured that would be the end of it.

Okay, maybe I said something about how Mynah had done better because she had to deal with a supervillain and still got the job done.

Man, I suck at networking.

#

The shrew-like guy on the platform grabs for me. I dive through the bell stand but my heels graze the bell with a gonk. That ruins my dive and instead of rolling off the platform and under it to a safe place to turn visible, I am still on it.

I swear and I go visible anyway.

My “invisibility” is sonic: I make a sound that people don’t want to look at. It lasts as long as my breath does. I have good lungs but a minute, maybe two is tops.

The crowd is somewhere beyond hooligans. They are chanting “Kill Mynah!” in a disorganized way and the platform is shaking as they charge it.

The platform is not safe. Not for me, what with the guy trying to blast me, and not for the people around the platform. The second-last thing I want is for a seven hundred pound bell to fall and crush a bunch of people. (The last thing I want is to be killed by a mob…well, anything.) I get to a crouch and then sprint down the length of the platform off it. I make a beautiful leap over the railing and it’s kind of like crowd-surfing except where the crowd has their arms raised in fists to crush you. By ignoring who I poke and prod and pummel, I manage to get to the edge of the local knot of the crowd and hit the ground.

I don’t have any plan at this point: I’m just running with them following behind me like a pack of imprinted ducklings.

Murderous spittle-flecked rage-filled killer ducklings.

#

The online abuse was torrential, especially considering how I had never mentioned the exceedingly small and flaccid dicks these guys must have had. I shut down the account and went on with my life, which was mostly about the next score. I wasn’t terribly worried: when you decide to pursue the whole supervillain thing, you start bouncing messages through a couple of anonymizing servers and maintaining as clean a separation between identities as possible.

But I am not a hacker.

Then I got this email, sent to Mynah but addressed to the ID that I had closed. I’m not going to quote it because it called me obscene names. But it called for a showdown the next day to “prove” that I wasn’t as good as Klaxon.

Yeah. That’s what he called himself. Given the other obscenities in the note, I was surprised it wasn’t KKKlaxon. (That at least you could trademark.)

I made a T chart of the pros and cons of actually showing up. On the pro side, he knew how to contact Mynah. At least that part was working.

Lots of cons if I lost: I’d be unconscious and possibly arrested. The work trying to build my brand would be wasted. Win or lose, I’d probably get doxxed because the guy had connected one identity with Mynah.

My fingers trembled as I wrote the reply.

No win in a public contest. Mynah doesn’t see any reason to show up.

I saved it as a draft because experience has taught me that I will not see the embarrassing typo right away, and ten minutes wouldn’t hurt.

I switched computers and started researching the place where he wanted to duel. It was mentioned a lot today.

Because Klaxon had shared his challenge with media and they picked it up. The place was going to be a circus: the sketchy one-ring-no-sideshow kind.

Why did he want a lot of people around? There was a PR benefit, sure, and maybe that’s all it was. But maybe not. What would he gain from the audience?

Too many possibilities: he could have any power.

I took Slobberkin for a walk and tied him up outside the police station while I went in and stole the police report. (I can turn sort-of invisible and I take advantage: sue me.)

Then I checked to see if Shelley, the drag queen across the hall, was free at the right time.

Someone had to claim the reward for me (or bail me out of jail), because I was going to be busy as Mynah.

#

I’m busy, all right: There’s a knot of people ahead of me, so I dodge to the right. That gets me another dozen yards so I dodge right again.

Dodging right turns out to be a bad idea so I have to go left….which is away from the bell.

The bell is important. I have to get back to the bell.

Klaxon screams at me again. Unlike me, he can focus his screams and he doesn’t care if people get hurt. A guy is pulling at my carrier bag (please don’t call it a purse) and Klaxon’s scream hits him and my bag. Through the earplugs I hear something in the bag rupture and I know I have to get rid of it.

My bag has six aerosol cans of foam insulation. I was going to fill the bell with insulation so it couldn’t ring but I have no time to find and discard the leaky can—which means that the other five cans are going to be embedded in foam. I duck my head and let the bag slide off my shoulder. There’s a sssss-Whump and insulation starts leaking out the bag.

I dodge left because there’s no point in getting back to the bell if I can’t silence it.

#

My working hypothesis was that Klaxon had my powers but turned up to eleven. I hadn’t seen any evidence that he was bullet proof or could teleport or fly. In fact, the way that he stole the bell indicated that he couldn’t do any of those things.

Control minds? Sure. Evidence suggested that the guards knocked each other out. Blast things? There were a couple of broken things that suggested it. (Okay, I couldn’t blast things, but the principle is the same.)

But I figured that he just had more raw power than I had. He was different in quantity rather than quality.

Plus he used the name “Klaxon.” Kinda hinted at sound powers.

By this thinking, the bell wasn’t a symbol for his abilities, but rather a necessity. Like Merlin Furioso’s habit of talking, the bell was a necessity disguised as a quirk.

So I figured that the bell and sound were involved. I went to the hardware store and got myself some spray cans of foam insulation.

All I had to do was show up early, go sort-of invisible, and fill the bell with spray insulation so it couldn’t make sounds.

I also brought a set of filtering earphones that rendered me immune to his mind control.

Such a good plan.

#

First things first. The bell is still ringing. People are still crazy-mad.

There’s a clear patch so I’m moving in a big circle, but that gives Klaxon the opportunity: his next shot hits me and I feel like my guts are water. My knees buckle and I fall but manage to roll twice before getting up. Dammit. I need a minute. Five seconds, even.

And the filters in the earplugs are not quite good enough. That damned bell is giving me a headache.

Someone has lost a shoe. I grab it (it’s not mine) and pitch it at the bell.

And hit. The sound is muffled and fuzzy, but it’s not that damned mind control sound. One or two of the crowd that I can see come up for self-awareness before Klaxon zonks the bell again.

Conceive replacement plan: achievement unlocked.

Some of the killer duckings have sticks; I’m looking for something metal with a hole in it so I can fasten a rope to it. I don’t have a rope, but baby steps.

Ah: heavy-set guy with muttonchops and a T-shirt with a Confederate flag. His gut is too big for me to be sure that a punch to the solar plexus will do it so I deliver a foot to his crotch and catch the pipe as he drops it. Then the ducklings are nearly on me, so I start sprinting again.

My lungs are burning. If I survive, I’m adding running to my workout.

Rope, rope, rope… Nothing but an obvious answer comes to me. Sometimes you need to clip things on, so my costume has a belt with no other function. I can sacrifice the smart belt.

So I’m running, dodging, and threading my belt through this T-junction at the end of the pipe.

This is not easy.

The buckle keeps the pipe on the belt, so I swing the belt like a mace so I can get back to the platform.

Of course, even if I can silence the bell, I still have to deal with Klaxon.

#

I planned for the bell—did you think I wouldn’t plan for Klaxon?

No, the plan was not to have Shelley hit him with a tranquilizer dart. If I were just trying to get past him, that would be fine. No, I had to defeat him and do it publicly without a man’s help. Despite Shelley’s many virtues, he still identifies as male.

No, my plan had been inspired by Slobberkin: I had two dog anti-bark collars that gave a little shock every time they felt the vibration of the vocal cords. Each was taped to a big adhesive pad so I just had to get them onto his neck and then presumably I could fasten them. (I’d replaced the actual nylon collars with the pads and some zip-ties so I could close them and tighten them without a lot of extra fuss.)

Those collars were not in my bag but in the pockets I have under the epaulet-thingies on my shoulders.

You don’t think I’d design a costume without pockets, do you? The belt didn’t have pouches because that was too obvious, but I had to have a place for lockpicks, zip ties, emergency cash, and electric shock dog collars.

Do not underestimate me. I’m a working thief, not one of your runway femme fatales.

That was the message I was trying to get across to Klaxon, but he didn’t seem to be picking up what I was laying down.

#

Even killer duckings avoid being bashed in the head by a whirling pipe so momentum gets me onto the platform. The weaselly guy is gone but Klaxon is right there. This is a problem.

I need a second to look up inside the bell and figure out if I can attach my makeshift clapper. Then I need five or ten seconds to actually do it.

The clapper is usually held on by a bolt through a hole. I can thread the belt through the hole and run a zip tie through piercings in the belt. If Klaxon isn’t shooting at me.

I can’t fix the bell until I deal with Klaxon and I can’t deal with Klaxon until I fix the bell.

Well, crap. He inhales to zap me a good one—

So I grab him and run him head-first into the bell.

The sound is deafening, even with my filter ear-plugs. It’s gotta be worse for him.

Except he’s still moving. I only used one arm because I’m still holding my makeshift clapper.

He twists and grabs at me but only gets some Spandex where my belt would be. I try to clock him with the pipe but I just end up gently baffing him with the belt and the pipe hits me on the shoulder.

He opens his mouth and screams at me.

I drop the belt, I drop him. One more of those is going to take me out. Because I'm going to fall down I put my hand on the bell to steady myself and it rocks.

So I give it a hard shove.

He’s starting to get up again when seven hundred pounds of swinging bell comes up and whacks him in the head. He drops back to the platform.

I slap my first dog collar on his neck and tighten the zip tie. I don’t want to choke him but I make it snug. I'm in a hurry because there are people trying to get to us.

I scream invisibility so they won't look at us. I hope.

The bell reverberates with it so that even I don’t want to look.

The bell keeps ringing as I talk to him as urgently and memorably as I can.

“I don't want you to even think about who I really am or you will be in a world of shame and anguish. I know you worked for Faceless Corporation, Klaxon.”

Except I said their real name. And his.

Because I was just at the edge of the “accident” the company caused.

He was the one in the accident—at least the one who lived.

Who knew he had such loathsome attitudes?

(Besides every woman who worked in his department, I mean.)

#

Me beating his ass was on camera. Shelley turned him in but we haven't seen dime one of the reward money.

I felt sort of bad returning the bell—it could be useful, but it was too unwieldy.

Still, I got two jobs out of it.

I think I’m starting to get the hang of this supervillain thing.

ICONS

Mynah (Kendra Wahl)
Prowess	Average (3)	Intellect	Fair (4)
Coordination	Great (6)	Awareness	Good (5)
Strength	Fair (4)	Willpower	Great (6)
Stamina	10	Determination	2
Specialties	Athletics (+1) Power (Sonic Control) Expert (+2) Her sound imitations and Affliction are usually tested as if she were level 4.
Powers	She has Poor (2) Sonic Control with a basic power of Images. She can also discomfit someone (an Affliction) or distract them so that she can give them suggestions, like Mind Control or hypnosis, but she thinks of it as Invisibility; maybe she’ll eventually learn otherwise.
Qualities	Bad luck in picking partners and nemeses Precision over power Doesn't understand the whole dating thing

Klaxon (Jackson Beauregard)
Prowess	Average (3)	Intellect	Average (3)
Coordination	Fair (4)	Awareness	Fair (4)
Strength	Average (3)	Willpower	Good (5)
Stamina	8
Specialties	Power (Energy Control) (+1)
Powers	He has Great (6) Sonic Control with a default power of Blast. He can create a standing wave (Force Field) around his body. Like Kendra, he can distract people with Mind Control. Like Kendra, it has the limitation that he must create the sound (Levels) but the bell overcomes that limitation. The Bell also provides the Burst and Broadcast benefits to his powers.
Qualities	Racist misogynist Connected with Sons of Thunder Connected with Faceless Corporation

The idea was...

SYSTEM: ICONS

 I was just going to say that I was going to step back from the big canvases I've been trying to create and just do a small introductory adventure that isn't a bank robbery. It has implied background but the idea is that you can build on it, in the way you want, rather than being stuck with my ideas about superheroes and the world for them.

 Life and estate/executor stuff got in the way. In good news, we have found enough money to pay for the funeral and cremation without selling the house, which is good and proper.

Maybe I can think about something as frivolous as superheroes for a bit.

I have, in fact, written most of the next Mynah story while on the train. So far, they seem to have a structure:

1. There is a plan.
2. It goes horribly wrong.
3. Try to avoid being hurt while preserving the possibility of fulfilling the objective.
4. Notice something that might help.
5. Try based on that.
6. Watch it fail in a way that provides more information.
7. Make another attempt, usually at a cost.

That's a pretty classic try-fail cycle, though to minimize as-you-now-Bob narration I play with flashbacks. I'm at step 6 in the current story, and know half the final answer: I've figured out how to deal with the angry ducklings but not the main villain.

 (My current conceit for all the Mynah stories is that she's telling them to her captor at some time in the future to buy time until something or other comes to fruition.)

It would have been nice to figure out a story with the brain-in-a-jar as the main character, but I kept thinking about how to deal with the one story seed (the nutrient fluid is replaced with beer, so you have to deal with a drunk brain-in-a-jar) but I couldn't find a way to make it work as a story with him as the main character: all the versions I did of You Were Perfectly Fine by Dorothy Parker involved something darker than I wanted. The girlfriend was a world-destroying robot or an alien conqueror or something...not quite the light tone that I want for the various Craigslist stories.

Gavin de Beers NPC to help or hinder

SYSTEM: ICONS

Here's a relatively low-powered character with very little in the way of combat skills and some infinitely-abusable powers. I came up with him/her/it while thinking of a one-shot I'd like to run (more on that tomorrow). The character is a reason for the hook at the start, but since the secret is revealed at the end of the first scene or start of the second, it's not huge.

This is Gavin de Beers, professional bodyguard, hostage, and distraction. Through whatever mechanisms you have in your game, Gavin has ended up with two and a half actual superpowers.

Gavin can look like anyone. It takes time and requires either a skill roll or eating a part of the person with DNA or both (try imitating someone who has had a nose job and see that the skill roll is necessary). It takes ten minutes or more; the skill roll is not necessary if there's no alteration of the body; the DNA isn't really ever necessary, it just makes the skill roll easier or unnecessary.

He generally gets the physical characteristics of his original but rarely powers. (If the power is strictly physical, is visible, and Gavin has ingested the DNA, maybe. GM's call.)

Gavin's other main ability is duplication. Depending on the size of the person, Gavin can make three to eight duplicates. The duplicates are generally under his mental control, and can do the shapeshifting but not duplication. The duplicates are of Gavin at the time of the duplication. For time reasons, he prefers to shapeshift first and duplicate second.

Gavin can shapeshift so that his skin looks and feels like clothes...but he prefers not to do that. Hostages tend to have their clothes ripped and torn and if it's his skin...it hurts.

The shapeshifting comes with an ability to regenerate slowly and while thinking very hardabout it. Yes, he can heal, and no, he never goes into the field thinking that he will do that. If he's not conscious, it doesn't happen, so a gunshot to the chest kills him just like a normal person. While he's regenerating, he does need to keep rolling to keep the impersonation going; otherwise there tends to be a balding early thirties man sitting there healing.

One additional ability that is generally done as a stunt: if he has ingested the person's DNA, he can usually tell if the person has powers in the sense that they will "taste" different if they're super in some defined ways, like a mutation or a physical transformation. He can't tell what the powers are, he just knows they exist. On a good roll, he might be able to distinguish between expressed and latent powers.

Your use of Gavin depends on your needs, but by default, he works for a small agency.

Here's how he might look in ICONS for 35 points:

PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STA
4	3	3	3	4	5	8
Specialties		Military Performance (Acting) Weapons (Guns)
Powers		Fair (4) Transform (humanoids) Limit: Preparation, Requires Roll (+2 to level from 2) Extra: Effect Regeneration, Limit: Concentration Good (5) Duplication Extra: Mental Control Limits: Preparation (pays for extra), level depends on current size (+2 to level from 3)
Qualities		As useful NPC: Licensed bodyguard Gavin de Beers Good threat assessment You scratch my back, I scratch yours As irritating NPC: Licensed bodyguard Gavin de Beers Don't get in my way Revenge can be legal...or not illegal

Fiction Friday: A Kindness for Raven (Freedom City)

From the days of second edition Freedom City is this one...

A Kindness for Raven

Callie Summers opened her own door, unlike other debutantes. A handsome man stood in the hallway, a valise in his hand, and not dressed for the summer heat. Instead he wore an old-fashioned black suit.
"Greetings, I am Liang Jiangua," said the man in Mandarin Chinese. She gave him no impression she understood, instead staring blankly. "I am your birthday gift." She showed no signs of understanding. He sighed and repeated himself in English. He smiled. "You may call me...Edgar." He looked at her as if it were significant.
"Thank you," Callie said. "My birthday is not until tomorrow, and we already have an Edgar." A loud squawk came from the penthouse as Edgar heard his name mentioned.
"May I come in?" asked the man. Callie moved to one side, and the man entered. He set down his bags and then stood stiffly at attention. "Liang Jiangua, lady's gentleman," he said. "References available on request. I hope you don't mind that I was in the hall. Someone was leaving, so I entered the building." He frowned. "Having a Chinese mother, I assumed you would speak Mandarin."
"No, I never learned the language," Callie lied. "Too much shopping to do." Her mother had been the daughter of an international criminal mastermind, but that was not common knowledge.
"Perhaps your mother Jasmine wanted to put her past behind her," he agreed. "I was hired by your father."
Callie considered for a moment. Her father was out of touch right now, looking for a new student for the Claremont Academy at a place near Death Valley that was so remote it didn't support cellphones. "How overprotective of Daddy," she said. "But not needed."
"He was most insistent." The man looked at the truncated hallway. "Surely you have this whole floor?"
The hallway hid The Rookery from visitors, but most visitors didn't notice it was shortened. "No, that part of the floor is owned by the building for maintenance and equipment."
Edgar the raven squawked again. Callie looked over at the clock—she had someone to meet soon. "I have to go—I have to get ready for an appointment. Thank you."
"I will stay and wait."
"You will go. A girl has to worry about appearances." She escorted him with bags out the front door and shut it firmly behind him. He had been cute but with no way to check on him, she wasn't about to give him access to her home. Especially when she had an appointment as the Raven.

* * *

It was hot and windless out. The small man stank of fear. He kept looking over his shoulder.
The Raven stood in the shadows so no one could see her. "You wanted me." In costume, she pitched her voice lower, in her natural range. As far as the other debutantes of Freedom City were concerned, Callie Summers had a higher, different voice.
"Yeah. The Crime League is holding auditions. They're expanding." His voice was reedy.
"Where and when?"
He told her: an auto wrecking yard in Lincoln, that night.
The Raven was there first, hiding. Too bad the League was off-planet, but she would just observe.

* * *

"Isn't this a bit of a comedown for you?" Wildcard asked. "Babysitting, I mean." He had a deck of cards in a hand and was practicing one-handed cuts.
"Nah," Orion said. "I think about ways of hunting them. It passes the time."
"Riiiiiight," said Wildcard. Cut. Cut. Cut.
"Sure. Those two?" he said of Rant and Rave. "I'd separate them, first off. Others, I don't know what their powers are yet. You don't use a sharp stick on an invulnerable person, right?" He sniffed. Oil and gas, rust, old metal.
"I do, but it often turns out they are vulnerable to that kind of stick," said Wildcard. "Kind of a disappointing turnout." There were five people auditioning: Rant and Rave, a thin man in a cardboard helmet, a mild balding scientist with a potbelly and his blond friend.
"Just plan more ways to kill each one, is all." Wildcard looked at Orion, but he seemed imperturbable. Orion strode to the center of the lit gravel beneath the gantry of the car-crusher, and looked at the five hopefuls. "This is the first stage. Impress me and you go on. You first." He pointed at the scientist.
"Well, uh, I'm Dr. Olim. And I've worked on certain...techniques...to control people. And things. As an example, I brought along a young man of my acquaintance." He indicated the blonde young man beside him, who looked half-asleep. He wore no shirt, and he was in green slacks. No shoes.
"Techniques?" asked Wildcard, lounging on the hood of an old car, still warm from the heat of the day. Today had been a scorcher. He could wear the uniform now that the day had cooled a bit. The scent of oil still rose from the car.
"Mind control techniques. My work brings me into contact with...special...individuals." He pulled out a device that had hung at his side and twisted a knob. "Behold!"
Hair sprouted all over the young man's body, and other changes twisted and shaped him. In a minute, a man-wolf crouched there on the claws of his hands and feet.
"He's a mutant," explained Dr. Olim. "Extract of wolf glands helped bring out his latent abilities. And I can control his every move. Does anyone want to fight him?"
"I'll take him on," said the man with the ridiculous helmet.
"Impervious to damage?" asked Orion in a bored fashion.
"Better. I'm magnetic. I call myself...Dipole!" He struck a pose.
"Eventual aim?" asked Wildcard, noting it on a piece of paper.
"Retire with my own island."
"Ah, money." To Orion, sotto voce, he said, "Easier to control than the world domination types."
"Just different," said Orion. "To-may-to, to-mah-to."
The man-wolf lifted a leg and urinated on Dipole. Orion permitted himself a snicker. "Best move, son, or he'll be humping your leg next."
Dipole turned on his force field and a yellow glow surrounded him. "Just you wait!" said Dipole, and he moved back as cars flew off nearby piles to form a cage around the man-wolf: left, right, front, back, top. A dark shape flew from one of the cars.
"Raven!" cried Wildcard. A boomerang hit him on the side of the head, but it was only a flesh wound. Raven had melded with the darkness around them.
Gingerly protecting the side of his head, Wildcard said, "She'll leave and bring the Freedom League on us!"
Orion shook his head. "She won't. They're off-planet. And I prepared a few surprises." He spoke to the candidates. "New test. Anyone who brings me Raven goes to the next level."
Wildcard watched them go, then said to Orion, "They won't win."
"No," he replied. "But they'll tire her out."

* * *

Didn't get Wildcard, thought Raven. Mutant luck powers. Of course that was the car I was in. Got to get out of here—odds are bad—
She felt the wire almost too late: the precariously-balanced car came down, and she stepped back in time, but the noise let them know where she was. She immediately dodged to the side and down a different aisle in the yard. I hope none of them can fly.

* * *

Rant held his sister's hand as they moved slowly in the darkness, the beams of their flashlights stabbing the darkness. "Even if we see her, we won't recognize her," said Rave. She touched her hair again. She had only dyed it green yesterday.
"She won't look like a car," said Rant patiently. "You've got your blindness up?"
"Of course. Do I look like an idiot? If we can get into the Crime League, we'll always have someone to spring us—"
Something hit the ground behind them. Rave turned around to see the source of the noise.
The stun grenade caught her full on. She stood like a deer caught by a car.
Rant was shielded from the blast by her body. He looked for the source of the grenade. Whump! and his sister was torn from his hold. She rolled to a stop away from Raven. He screamed then, a shout more potent than dynamite, but he missed, shattering a tower of cars.
Raven shared her father's distaste for psionicists. If you can't trust your mind, what can you trust? She had to put Rave down now. She took position and lashed out with her leg, a powerful position but one that left her open. Rave twisted and took the force of the blow on her arm. Not good enough. Fortunately, Rant missed again. That gave Raven an idea.
She grabbed the green-haired woman from behind and put her in the way of Rave's next shout—which hit his sister; Raven's fingers tingled from the sound, but Rave slumped in her arms. My files show you have ultrahearing, thought Raven, so let's see how you like this. She tossed a grenade at him, averting her eyes, and trusted her earplugs to filter out the worst noise.
The grenade went off loudly enough to deafen a normal man, but Rant wasn't a normal man. Still, the shock was enough to surprise him, and his next shout went wide, tearing the side mirror off an old Toyota.
Raven swarmed in and kicked Rant in the solar plexus—if he couldn't breathe, he couldn't scream. Rant staggered back with a painful oof sound. He held his arms up and made a mewling sound, surprised by it, and Raven closed in with a series of swift blows to the head and gut that knocked him out.
She was going to tie them up—there were warrants on these two—but she heard footsteps. My grenade has attracted attention. She melted behind a pile of cars as Dr. Olim and the man-wolf came nearer.
The man-wolf stopped, bent his nose to the ground, and seemed confused by the fight. Then he stopped and urinated on Rant, but it didn't wake the man up. Finally, the creature began casting around for her scent, going in ever-larger circles.
Finally, he was looking straight at the place where she was. His nostrils twitched. There was no question of surprise—he knew she was there. Dr. Olim twisted a knob on his controller, making the man-wolf yelp as he slashed at Raven.
He was fast, faster than she was, but he missed her with his first slash. Raven moved away from the tower of cars and tossed a grenade at him; the explosion didn't seem to bother him or blind him at all. His front claws tore at her cape as she dodged out of the way, and she could feel the sweat popping out on her back and forehead.
Got to take him down fast, too. She shifted position and kicked. He was better than Rave, so this was more of a risk, but she had to take him down and she had the feeling that a boomerang blow wouldn't be enough.
And his hide was tough: tough enough to shrug off one of her hardest hits. He slashed at her extended leg and caught her, but she went with it and minimized the hurt.
But it still hurt.
Okay, take him down from a distance. She withdrew and threw down a smoke grenade—but the man-wolf didn't depend on sight. He surged forward and hit her again, but this time she had more room to maneuver and managed to ride the blow.
Raven twisted again and hit him as hard as she could but connected with the big muscles of the leg. He shredded her costume again—she felt the coolness of his claws against her skin, and then the heat of her own blood down her arm.
One more time she hit him, and connected solidly with his temple. The blow would have incapacitated a normal man, but it only slowed the man-wolf down. She followed that with a hard punch to the solar plexus, but it bounced off the muscles of his belly.
He raked his arm across her back, but they shredded her cape and only tore skin and flesh. Weakness ran down her side and she toppled to the hard gravel.
Dr. Olim took this moment to dash forward and kick her.
He missed.
She snatched the controller from the doctor. With one twist of a knob, she had the man-wolf on its knees.
Dr. Olim tried—and failed—to get the controller back. "You fool! You don't know what you're doing!"
Raven smiled grimly and flipped a switch. Dr. Olim backed away, then screamed as the man-wolf neared him. She let them get out of sight, then turned the creature back into a man and broke the remote control under her boot heel. There were four ways out of the next intersection: one led the way she had come, another to the center, the third had been the way Dr. Olim had run. She chose the fourth.
Her blood smell was added to the scents of rust and oil. If the light were better, pursuers would easily see the bloodspots—as it was, they were merely hard to see. Her arm and torso hurt, and her claw-slashes burned. All of the entrants to the Crime League were in this half of the auto graveyard; if she could double around, she might be able to avoid Orion's traps and get out, get the police. She was going to need medical attention for these wounds.
She got two hundred more feet, around the circle, when cars flew from the nearby piles and caged her on all sides. She didn't resist.
"No fight?" asked the slim man in the cardboard head-dress. His leg was still dark where the werewolf had urinated on him. If he had kept his force field up— Hmm. It was down now.
Raven shrugged, saving her strength. She could crawl there and she could get loose—
A fifth car landed atop the others, making a neat box. Now she was trapped; exit would involve going through the cars—the back window was gone on this old Taurus, so she could wriggle in, lower a side window, and get out, but it would take time. Fortunately, the cars blocked his sight of her as well. She dove into the Taurus.
"Hey!" he yelled. "Hey, I've got her! Down here! Hey!"
She was pleased he hadn't remembered to use his powers to, say, use the solenoids in the car engines to generate electricity. But she supposed he would have to take apart the car engines for that, and he didn't want to get close to her.
He yelled all the time for the others, and they seemed to be taking their time. Finally, he paused, and she stopped moving.
"You're my ticket to the big leagues," he told her conversationally, gasping between words. "The big money."
She hit him on the head from behind, then, and he never saw her. Another shot, and he was down.
Some day, he would learn to keep his force field up all the time.
Raven sprinted as fast as she could. Orion and Wildcard were coming, and she hadn't the strength to deal with both of them. Her arm throbbed and her side ached.
The way out should be down here. Focus, she thought. Focus.
A large figure 4 blocked her way. She stopped, played her flashlight over it. It's a deadfall, she thought, looking at the car balanced there, but he can't imagine I'd fall for that. Perhaps for runners? She decided that Orion had set up a few of these traps for candidates who lost their nerve.
She edged past it, careful not to disturb it.
When the snare caught her ankle, it was a complete surprise. A car hit the ground in the next aisle, and the cable attached to it yanked her upward. She hung upside down in the middle of the row of cars. And they knew where she was.
She twisted upwards. The cable was metal, so there was no breaking it. She reached for a small torch normally used for solder and began burning through the cable. With her weight on it, the cable might break sooner.
It was awkward holding her body twisted like this. Her cape hung to the ground—and caught on something. Looking down, she saw the spikes below her.
So she grabbed the cable with one hand and pushed her body to one side, beginning to swing. With luck, the rhythm of the swinging would let her fall to one side of the spikes when the cable broke. The cable was white-hot now, but still intact. She kept the flame on it.
She could hear Wildcard's footsteps in the dirt. Orion made no sound. Break, damn you, break!
It broke just as she passed over the spikes, and she flew into the darkness onto a car hood, with a loud thump.
Her ankle throbbed. She moved to cover—Remember Orion has night goggles—then probed it. I think it's just a sprain, but I may not be able to walk on it.
She saw Orion, backlit by lights at the central electromagnet.
But he doesn't know that.

* * *

Orion sniffed. He smelled blood. It wasn't Dr. Olim's—he had found the man in the trap two rows over, the blond man standing dumbly over him. Rant and Rave were still out, as was Dipole. It had to be Raven's.
She didn't have the powers that Lady Liberty had, so she should be easy game. He had tracked her to here. All he had to do was find her. Close work—he would switch to a pistol for this.
"You're underestimating her," said Wildcard. "I've seen that before, too."
"Shut up," said Orion.
"You know what? You deserve to get yourself beaten by her. I'm going home. There's nothing for me here—everyone else has lost."
Orion said, "She's nothing but practice."
"For your precious Lady Liberty? And what am I?" Orion said nothing. "We were supposed to evaluate some people. They failed. We're done." Wildcard knew when his luck had run out. He called out, "Done, do you hear?" and left, his flashlight bobbing as he walked.
"I'll get her." Something glinted in the artificial green light of his night goggles. He picked it up—a length of cable with a loop fashioned in the end.
Behind him, there was a tinkle of breaking glass. He looked, scanning for activity, and saw only a boomerang that hadn't been there before.
A scream beside him deafened him, and he glance: a dark shape blocked out the light, hit him across the eyes: it didn't hurt him but broke his goggles. The cape wrapped around her, hid her, but he fired blindly three times.
Missed, he thought. But the smell of blood was fresher, stronger. She's close.
He rolled down the eyepieces so he could see. It was dark here. He had planned on Raven moving away from him, so he could control her, but she had moved the attack to him. Animals didn't do that, unless they were hurt.
Unless they're hurt.
He backed off quickly and swapped his pistol for his rifle. I want aim and power, he thought.
A grenade fell at his feet. He dived, but the smoke still enveloped him, blinded him. He moved slowly to his feet. According to the files of the Crime League, she couldn't see through this either. He was relatively safe as long as he was in the smoke. Good thing there wasn't any wind tonight.
The smoke started to clear. He lifted his rifle to shoot at her. Assume she's still over there—she's hurt, remember.
She swung on a cable into the darkness, directly into him, hitting him in the chest with her boot. He flew backward, and hit his head on a car. He didn't move again.

* * *

She fell going over the fence and had to choose between calling the police—there were eighteen warrants on Orion alone—or between getting on the motorcycle. She chose the motorcycle. Lincoln didn't have enough tall buildings for her to swing, and by the pain in her arm, she couldn't have done it again, anyway.
She wobbled going down the streets, and though she took back streets, as she approached the Rookery she still had to swerve around several cars.
In the secret garage under the Rookery, she slid the bike into a wall. Eventually she moved. Stupid to die like this, she thought. But he got me with one of those bullets... If I can just get upstairs—
There was a figure over her. A figure in a dark suit.
Liang.
"I am also trained in combat medicine," he said, and he reached for her.
She said in Mandarin, "I suspected as much." Then she fainted.

* * *

The sheets were clean and crisp. She was in her own bedroom. She looked at her arm and belly. Her wounds had been cleaned and neatly stitched. She looked brown with disinfectant. She made a phone call, speaking quietly. She was just breaking the connection when Liang came in.
"Ah. You are awake," he said in English. "I am sorry I had to give myself away."
"I knew you'd be there," she said in Mandarin.
"I am glad you trusted me." He answered her in the same language.
"No. I knew. A deduction. You're not a gift from my father."
He said nothing.
"Be honest."
He looked straight ahead. "I am a gift from your grandfather."
"My father would not have sprung such a gift on me without checking to see if I liked him first. And because you are a gift from my grandfather, you have a secondary mission."
"Miss Summers?"
"You have never said my father's name."
Liang nodded. "I am to kill him."
"I thought so. You would be surprised at how well he can defend himself, but he won't need to. I have arranged for someone to take you to Togo. I'm sure that someone of your talents can find your way home from there."
“But—”
Callie grew cold and dark. "You have saved my life, and now I have saved yours. If you return, all bets are off."
Liang nodded. "I see. So this is good-bye?"
"Yes. Good-bye."
"And that's my cue," said Johnny Rocket as he zipped into the room. "You don't want to struggle," he told Liang. "At my speed, you'll get hurt if you hit the ground."
And they were gone. She allowed herself tears, then, and went to sleep.
An hour later, Johnny Rocket re-entered the Rookery. "Done. Hey—happy birthday. I picked you up a card."
"Thanks, Johnny. You'd be perfect, if you weren't gay."
"I like to think I'm perfect because I'm gay."
"You have any problems off-planet?"
He shrugged. "The usual. You have any problems while we were gone?"
She looked out the window. "The usual," she said. "But I'm older and wiser now."

Update

For them following along at home, we have had the funeral, and I've started going back to work. It turns out that my sister and I are co-executors on this, but nothing much more happens until the lawyer gets back from his vacation, about the middle of August. Then we have to do bank accounts and investments and stuff, but they don't move until we have the original will (and possibly probate). I haven't actually looked up whether probate happens for all wills but is a rubber-stamp if there are no objections, or if it's special.

Player Types Revisited

Wayyyy back when, Aaron Allston formulated a list of player types in Hero Games' Strike Force and it's been reproduced and copied ever since. I thought I'd take a look at the list and maybe ring some changes on it.

The list: Reproduced here with Mr. Allston's terms but my descriptions, so we're not committing accidental copyright infringement.

Also, I'm using male pronouns here, because I'm old and that's my habit. I'll try to change them before I post this to a gender-neutral "they/them" but please forgive me if I miss one. Point it out and I'll change it.

Type	Description	GM Should
Builder	Wants to have an effect on the world	Let them change the world
Buddy	Here because friends are here	Draw them into roleplaying, or ignore them, depending on circumstances and your needs
Combat Monster	Optimizes character for combat and wants to hit things	Have something to fight every session
Copier	Wants a character just like certain other popular character or just like the character they play in every other game. "Yeah, a boxer, but a stealthy sneaky one who lurks in the shadows and throws knives."	Understand the player's goals and try to meet those; also, let them know in advance if their version will have restrictions.
Genre Fiend	Knows everything about the genre you're playing, and will correct you.	Find out what the player's expectations are and try to meet them.
Mad Slasher	Here to blow off steam from a long week at work	Either have a group of mad slashers or get rid of the player.
Mad Thinker	Wants a clever solution to everything	Have a puzzle of some kind every session, even if the combat isn't one
Plumber	Wants to plumb the character, right down to third-grade teacher's name and response to the Trolley Problem.	Provide different kinds of situations and problems to illuminate different parts of the character.
Pro From Dover	The best at what they do. And nobody else better be as good or better.	Let them shine once in a while, and don't step on their toes
Romantic	Has relationships. Not just of the heart, but rivalries, enmities, friendships, frenemies, and so on.	Provide NPCs for all those kinds of relationships.
Rules Rapist	Exploit every edge condition and loophole in the rules	Figure out what the player really wants or get rid of them.
Showoff	Take the spotlight and keep the spotlight	Survive this phase or get rid of the player
Tragedian	Tragic things happen, and always to this character. Not all at once, of course, but spaced out.	Give the character heartbreak, betrayal, loss, and more.

One of the things that stands out to me is that there are certain player types where the advice is basically, "Get rid of the player." I don't fully agree (in my experience, the actions are often a response to other problems that have nothing to do with the game, and while they might damage your game right now, the player often deserves a later chance). Still, there is a tremendous reserve of "We've been excluded, so we have to include everybody" in the gaming communities I've been in, and I've committed that sin myself, so I understand it. Still: it means that the types Mad Slasher, Rules Rapist, and Showoff are there so you can recognize them and get rid of them. The Buddy isn't actively damaging to your campaign.

I suppose that's useful advice, but you can't do much else with it.

The other advice really boils down to, "Find out what each player wants and give it to them if you can." Sometime that's easy (the Combat Monster).

I think the biggest jewel here is: Not everyone wants the same thing.

The general set of game mastering suggestions you can draw from it:

• Find out what each player wants.
  • Make a list; we don't all want the same thing every time.
• Let them know what the limits are on providing it (say, the Copier's demand for a certain character type).
• Let each character be unique. Give them the spotlight in the way that each person likes: Let the Pro from Dover be the best at what he does, let the Tragedian wallow in angst, get the Romantic tangled in heartstrings, give the Plumber a visit from that obscure person in the backstory.

Know whether your game group's equivalent to disadvantages are a quick point grab (the three different things you could do in Hero that amounted to "Hates criminals") or a plea for stories of that kind. I have been guilty of both; I remember that early in my Champions career I had a Hunted that was, well, pointless, and I wasn't really interested when he did show up. On the other hand, after a gaming drought, I carefully crafted every aspect of my character to provide story activities. (Hint: If you're going to do this, give the list of possible story activities to your GM; as a GM, I find it awful when I get a character who has obviously been designed with care and I have no idea what to do with those qualities, aspects, or disadvantages.) (Second hint: We're older now; more than a page of backstory is probably too much. The way I feel today, three-quarters of a page and six story seed bullet points is probably enough.)

Five Campaign Premises

Five Slightly Different Superhero Campaigns

Bored with a four-colour campaign? Start with one of these ideas, guaranteed to be...well, actually, there's no guarantee.

None of these are unique, but they are seen less often.

We know we're in the Matrix All the superheroics take place in a virtual reality: the Pod...which might as well be real. That's where people earn their money and their rep. The players have super-powers in the setting; not everyone does. But something happens, and players have to investigate both in the Pod and outside it (as sort of "secret identity" stuff).

I'll catch that crook, right after a word from this sponsor Why do people do anything? For money. And corporations pay superfolk to be their representatives. Maybe there's an opening because Captain Cuddle was found with an underage leather-clad sub and a whip in his hand; maybe it's just competition between two insurance companies. Or maybe for some reason nobody wants Nerdgasm as their representative, so Nerdgasm has to struggle on its own with other misfits.

We're trying to go wrong After five years of trying to be a group of heroes, the Wonder Four have decided that crime could pay. But if you've been beating up the bad guys for half a decade, you might have trouble convincing them that your change of heart is legit. And maybe it's not...

Sharper than a serpent's tooth You're all mutants sharing the (low-rent) apartment. It doesn't help that some of you are good and some are bad, but at the end of the month, you have to have the rent money...and can you really arrest your cousin? How will you explain that to Dad and to Aunt Jennifer?

Smalltown Trouble It's tough being a country kid with city powers, even in a tourist beach town. Thank goodness you have a couple of friends who want to be heroes...much more than you do. Between dealing with the Rudnoski brothers, gym class, and prom, there's also the fact that you think you recognize the guy who just moved into the McIlvray's rented cottage. That chin, that voice: he might be Dr. Deprivation, planning his next big crime.