Marvel Mondays - X-Men - Session 5 Report

Hey, readers!

So, with this session, we finally finish off the Breeder Bombs module which is, admittedly, pretty lousy when it comes to the actual plot. We had fun with it, however!

For those of you just tuning in, the basic plot here is that Magneto has been setting up these nuclear devices called Breeder Bombs that flood the atmosphere with radiation in order to create more mutants, and our team of X-Men are travelling to shut them down due to the danger they present to mankind. However, it turns out Magneto isn't really behind it, since he's working to stop these bombs as well.

Whodunit?

Well, the answer is... Probably not what you expected.

Let's dive in.

Session Summary:

Our intrepid team of X-Men consisting of Beast (Feline version), Mr. Immortal (On leave from the Great Lakes Avengers), and Rogue (With Ms. Marvel's powers, played by me), ride the Blackbird to Chile, to the Andes where the last Breeder Bomb is located. Apparently, it's holed up in some sort of ancient temple made by some great civilization of the past. It seems quiet... Too quiet!

Our team enters the hallway, which is sloping downwards and slowly expanding outwards the further along we go. Out of the shadows emerges a trio of flesh robot things! One is modeled after a circus performer of some sort and is incredibly strong. Another has an optical blast very similar to Cyclops'. The last one is super fast!

Beast targets the super-fast one and does his best to wrangle him down, with little success at first. Mr. Immortal, being the suicidal one of the bunch, decides to take on the strong man with a dizzying array of feats that are surprisingly effective, including wall-running in order to poke him in the eye and a good old fashioned sucker-punch. Rogue pairs off against the optic blast guy, hoping to use her energy absorbing powers from Ms. Marvel to give herself an edge, but she isn't doing so hot. Beast finally manages to catch the super-fast robot off guard and smashes his head apart. Using a trick used against her in a previous battle, Rogue decides to pick up the dead super-fast robot and smash her opponent with it, ending the fight.

Feeling a little cocky, Rogue and Beast throw the remains of their opponents into the entrance of the main chamber. Turns out that was a terrible idea, because, in the room with the Breeder Bomb is none other than... Magneto!... And... Magneto...? Apparently, we have finally met robo Magneto who has somehow captured regular Magneto and has him bound to the wall.

Beast asks the astute question, "How did a bunch of robots capture the Master of Magnetism?"

And, somewhere, the author of this module cries in shame from his obvious plot-hole.

(Nope. He's happy.)

Turns out robo-Magneto is not alone, for he is joined by a half-finished collection of his Brotherhood of Mutants, consisting of Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and the Blob. Proclaiming that they are doing the will of the Sentinal God, they attack the bewildered X-Men. Beast immediately begins to scramble to the real Magneto in an attempt to rouse him, but robo-Magno manages to stop him in his tracks. Quicksilver does his best to deliver a punch to everyone, and manages to do so! Rogue is also trying to make her way to Magneto for completely irresponsible reasons, but robo-magno is intent on not letting his captive free.

Blows are traded across the board, and dice are rolled poorly on both sides! Mr. Immortal met his untimely demise when he attempted to bull-rush Scarlet Witch into the Breeder Bomb, but ended up tripping and impaling himself on a spike. Beast tries to wrangle robo-Magneto, giving Rogue a window of opportunity to reach the real deal, which she does! He then tosses robo-Magneto into a computer panel, which temporarily dazes all of the robots. Odd...

Robo-Magneto and his cronies gather around the Breeder Bomb as the pretend Master of Magnetism tries to boost up its power. By this point, Rogue has announced to Beast that, should this plan of hers go horribly wrong, that he has every right to take her down. Summoning her courage, Rogue absorbs Magneto's powers and memories and proclaims to the pretender that he will pay for impersonating the Master of Magnetism!

In a moment of awesomeness, Rogue uses her new powers to lift robo-Magneto from the ground, and impales him with a variety of sharp objects from around the room, which ultimately resulted in shutting down all of the other robots. Magneto's personality passes from her, and she and Beast work together to shut down the final Breeder Bomb, ending the crisis. With many questions, the pair pick up the remains of Mr. Immortal and head off to the Blackbird, having saved the world from... Radiation, and stuff.

My Reactions:

This was my favorite session of our X-Men game yet, for one very important reason. I finally got to do what Rogue does best, which is absorb powers with all of the consequences! Mechanically, I got to try out her power-set with awesome results, and it was just a cool conclusion.

My own personal bias aside, this group continues to do a good job. My fellow players are great, and our GM has one quality that I really admire. He knows how to straddle the line between challenge and good story-telling when it comes to coordinating his action scenes. Sure, his knowledge of the system isn't great, and there were a lot of things mechanically that he could have adjusted to make the ending scene run better (Such as creating a timer when robo-Magneto surged up the Breeder Bomb), but he knows when to go hard and when to ease off for the sake of spotlight and awesomeness. This is a trait I'm hoping to incorporate into my own GM style in the future.

Not too much to say besides that, really. I'm looking forward to how this group will proceed, especially now that we are off the rails of a pretty old and poorly constructed module. That said, I hope you enjoyed this session summary! If not, here's a funny picture.

-Wes

  

Marvel Heroic X-Men - Session 3 Report

Hey, readers!

So, first I've got a spot of good news that is almost too good to be a coincidence. Originally, I had a fear that my X-Men and Civil War games were going to collide, considering they were both held on Mondays in the exact same time-slot. However, by stroke of luck or God, it seems that they were both scheduled on alternating weeks allowing me to have a Marvel session every single Monday for the foreseeable summer.

Ain't that just great?

So, I may just call these session reports 'Marvel Mondays' because alliteration is awesome. (See what I did there?) Though, that really doesn't matter in light of the topic.

Let's dive right in, shall we?

Session Summary:

We started out this session almost exactly where we left the last one. Beast was tinkering with the severed robot heads. Mr. Immortal was hanging out in the infirmary. Rogue was in the library trying to clear her head.  With Mentallo somewhat conscious, the Professor was able to glean some important information. It seems that he was hired by Magneto to run a machine through telepathy (the weird device he was strapped to) to jump-start these other machines called 'Breeder Bombs' that are supposed to flood the world with radiation over time so that more mutants would be born.

(Yeah. This was the best quality of this scene on Youtube, and I'm a Brony. Deal with it.)

As luck would have it, the video feed had the four locations of the Breeder Bombs on file, and Beast was able to figure out the location of the one in North America. If you haven't gotten a 'Masks of Nyarlathotep' vibe from this yet, then you obviously haven't played enough Cthulhu. We saddle up on the Blackbird (Which I called the Quinjet. Thanks, Jared) and start heading off for the wonderful state of Colorado.

So far in my Marvel Mondays adventures, I've been getting a good taste of the US. Oklahoma has fallen Asgard stuff, and Colorado has giant super-weapons guarded by insane hillbilly miners.

(I get to use this picture again. Yay!)

Rogue (Played by me) and Mr. Immortal get out of the jet and investigate where Beast's geiger counter contraption says the device is. They run into a hillbilly with a shotgun, and Rogue totally relates and stuff. Using a little white lie, they say that they're interested in purchasing the thing he is protecting and they go inside a bunker-looking building to get a look at the machine. One particularly amusing line from this exchange was the following uttered by Mr. Immortal.

"You should touch him and knock it out. Sure, you'll think you're a strange hill-billy for a while and love guns, but what else is new?"

Instead of infecting her mind, she leads him outside to negotiate prices while Mr. Immortal and Beast try to figure out how to shut the machine down. Then, Sentinels attack. It just wouldn't be a proper X-Men game without these guys, now, would it?

This was a great fight, and while I won't exactly give the blow-by-blow, I'll point out some great moments. Mr. Immortal caused the Sentinel to smash the machine and over-charge it. Beast yanked a tree out of the ground and hit a Sentinel with it. Rogue ripped the blaster cannon off of a sentinel, got crushed by his hand, then brushed off the damage and flipped the guy over. Mr. Immortal looted the hillbilly's stash of weapons and tried to shoot the robot with a 9mm. Finally, Beast got into the X-Jet and effectively finished both of the injured Sentinels off while spouting off this gem.

"Sir, I usually think it crass to give one the bird, but in this case, I am more than willing."

The military was on its way after this whole debacle from the nearby military base, so the team got out of there as quickly as possible. Professor Xavier sent them a message via telepathy that he had the next location ready to send to them, and the group had an in-depth discussion on why Magneto would be using Sentinels. Beast hypothesized that the Magneto in the footage may be a robot also!

 Apparently, the next bomb is in Russia somewhere in a former Soviet state. Back in the USSR, anyone? No? Just me?

So, just as we get there, zap! Something shuts down our engines and we fall to the ground and crash. We're all fine, 'cause, y'know. Superheroes. Come to find out that Titanium Man and his minions are on the warpath!...

And that's where we ended, since someone had to leave.

My Reactions:

Gotta say, I enjoyed this session much more than the last two I have been in with this group. I'm kind of the new guy in this group, considering these guys play in an Annihilation game every other Wednesday that I'm not currently involved with, but I finally feel like I've acclimated myself in. The guys were in great form tonight, all in-character, doing cool and creative stuff, and our GM was a bit more focused and ready than he was the previous two times.

What was really great to find out is that, now that I'm aware of the 'Weird Thing' that I described in my last X-Men session summary, I'm much better able to deal with it. Of course, it's also a big part of knowing the people and being able to read when they're IC or OOC, but I'm getting much better at doing that. With that said, we actually got into some good role-play this session! Instead of one-lined quips in a row, we actually carried on conversations and started exploring some light character stuff dealing with the situation. This is more what I'm talkin' about, and I hope that this trend will only continue.

The Sentinel fight was the main feature of the session, and after playing with large groups the last few times out, it was really refreshing to go back to the small-group setting. The fight was really a lot of fun, especially seeing what Mr. Immortal was going to do to make a difference, considering he is the quirky one when it comes to powers. Unfortunately, it seems this campaign is mostly centered around fighting robots, so I don't get to use Rogue's 'cool' powers as much, but I gotta say, Ms. Marvel's power-set is incredibly satisfying. Between Energy Absorption and her version of Second Wind, you can get the d12 strength quite a bit and shrug off stress like it was nothing. I love it.

Besides a few hiccups on the GM's side involving things beyond his or our control, there really wasn't anything too wrong with this session. I had a great time, and despite the rail-roadiness of the module in question, I'm looking forward to the game in two weeks.

Hope you enjoyed the post! If not, here's a funny picture.

-Wes

(A little dark humor never hurt anyone.)

Marvel Heroic X-Men: Session 2 Report

Hey, readers!

One of my new groups that I'm playing with just had a session of X-Men the other night, and for my benefit and yours, I'm going to summarize and rant and stuff. I was thinking of possibly doing these as in-character journal entries, but we'll see.

Anyway, the team is currently Beast, Mr. Immortal (a probationary X-Men member on leave from his team 'The Great Lake Avengers'), and myself as Rogue with Ms. Marvel's powers. This was the first session where we actually had the entire team assembled, so that was cool to see the dynamics and how everything functioned.

We're playing through an old Marvel TSR module (FASERIP as I like to call it, 'cause, y'know, ripping off faces is creepy and cool) which is called 'Breeder Bombs.' I somewhat wish that he didn't mention it was a module because I have a terrible habit of looking stuff up and spoiling things for myself, which I kinda did. I only skimmed, but still!...

Session Summary:

Anyway, the session began where the last one left off, which was Rogue and Mr. Immortal in the Danger Room going through an exercise when things start to go haywire and someone is attacking the mansion. Come to find out it was Mr. Fixer who crashed into the kitchen to confront Beast, yelling about how he killed his partner and was here for REVENGE!

So, combat begins, of course. Mr. Immortal tried to slam into him, but was easily repelled and flung out the giant hole in the wall. Then Beast tried to distract the villain by juggling rubble, which was.. Interesting! Nicely enough, it slapped a d12 complication on the guy, which allowed me to piledrive Mr. Fixer and knock him out in one shot. Usually, I'm not too fond of Rogue when she has Ms. Marvel's powers, as I feel it cheapens the super-awesome power stealing stuff, but I must admit, it makes her a heavy hitter and a great asset to the team. The way I'm playing her is that the whole Ms. Marvel incident was fairly recent, so she's still getting used to the fact that she can punch guys fifty-feet away in one hit.

With that done, we picked the villain up and brought him over to the infirmary so that we could question him. The Professor probed his mind and found a video in his equipment that showed a rooftop battle where Beast was fighting Mentallo and apparently killed him. Beast had no memory of this, and spent a day scanning the video for errors or idiosyncrasies. He discovers that it was in a warehouse in New York, so he decides that we need to go take care of it. Unfortunately, Scott and his A-Team have the Blackbird, so we have to settle for Mr. Immortal's 'Quinnjetta' car. Rogue rode shotgun, changed the station to country and broke the knob.

Yeehaw!

The team made it to the warehouse and spent a good amount of time examining the crime scene. Not finding much evidence, we decided to enter the warehouse and see if anything was going on inside. Come to find out, there's Mentallo in a vegetative state hooked up to a weird machine! We trip a laser-wire and two laser guns pop out of the floor. Beast tries his best to wrestle one to death, not doing so well. Rogue threw a crate at one, and when it tried to shoot her, she dodged, causing the laser to hit a metal crate and somehow reflect back and destroy it.

Isn't comic-logic great?

As the team tried to work on the second turret, two figures break through the wall! It's Beast and Mentallo, somehow! Beast, enraged by the prospect of this doppleganger who tried to implicate him for murder, assaults his double, but manages to get slammed into a pile of crates and knocked out. Mentallo shot his laser pistol at Mr. Immortal, wounding him slightly. However, using his hurt pride to propel his attack, Mr. Immortal did a crazed flying crotch kick of some kind that I couldn't even visualize, sending Mentallo into d12 stress and revealing that he was a robot! Rogue then picked up Mentallo and slammed him against this force-field that appeared around the strange machine, smashing him to pieces.

The remaining laser battery shot at the two remaining heroes, but Rogue was able to absorb the energy and use it to amplify her strength. In a final move, Rogue used her enhanced strength to rip the laser cannon from the ground, spin around, and send it flying into the Beast robot, destroying both in one move.

So, yeah. Rogue is awesome. But we knew that.

The force-field went down, and we peeled the real Mentallo from the strange machine. In an attempt to bring a little deeper story, and play with the Rogue-angst that I love so much, I decided that Rogue would try to touch the villain and get his memories to see how this all happened, despite Beast's protest. Unfortunately, I failed the roll, but I do plan to factor in the scattered pieces of Mentallo's psyche into Rogue's in the future.

We wrapped up by heading back to the mansion, each of us trying to work on a different piece of the puzzle. Rogue and the Professor worked on the vegetative Mentallo. Mr. Immortal healed up in the infirmary and was bragging to the others about their experiences. Beast was working on the severed heads of the two robots, trying to get more information. What he found was a map to several locations across the world and a video feed revealing the supposed culprit: Magneto!

My Reactions:

So far, I'm having a good time with this group. I'm the 'senior Marvel Heroic player' it seems, which is funny, considering I'm the youngest. The other players are so far doing a great job portraying their characters. Our Beast has the character down to a 'T', dialogue and all. Mr. Immortal's player has actually made a seemingly useless hero useful in a team, which is a great accomplishment on its own, not to mention his good jokes and ideas. Our GM is pretty good too, though sometimes he's a little scatterbrained or jokes a bit too much, but it's all in good fun, and he's doing very well with both moving the story along and making sure things run smoothly.

The only major issue I'm having, which I've had in a lot of other online groups in the past, is this... Weird... Thing. I'm not exactly sure how to explain it, other than it has to do with what's in character and what's out of character sometimes. See, like, most people use their normal voice to portray the character they are playing, since not many roleplayers are actors. I like to throw some theater into it since that's my background, using a more feminine voice if I'm playing a woman or tossing in an accent or way of speaking to differentiate my character speech from my regular speech. However, sometimes someone will say something in-character that sounds out-of-character, or make a joke out-of-character that's kinda in character. Or, even worse, someone will say something in-character, and someone will make a joke, interrupting the flow of conversation. This prevents me from getting into character a lot, which means I'm usually quiet or preface my in-character dialogue with, 'My character says, "-" '

And this is a real shame, since most of my enjoyment in roleplaying games is being in-character and interacting with NPCs and the other players. Hell, the best sessions I've ever had usually had very little combat and a lot of talking, emotions, and character growth due to stuff that's going on. I can get this in my Teen Titans game, but that's different, since I'm running it as opposed to playing. With a lot of these online groups, this sort of thing is harder to get since there's a degree of unfamiliarity with each other at first, and the best way to get comfortable is to make jokes and seem likable, and sometimes that doesn't stop.

Maybe one day I'll get this kind of thing in a 'pick-up group', and I've come close with a few groups, but that's a personal thing. I do get some fun out of beating the snot out of villains and making quips, but like a Disney Princess, I can't help but want...

More.

Other than that rant, there was a rule clarification that I was happy to get. It had to deal with exceptional successes in regard to counter-attacks, which I wasn't totally clear on. Apparently, if you do the option to counter attack and you exceed the attacker's total by five or more, it is treated as an exceptional success. This is good to know, as it can make villains just a hair more dangerous, especially if they are supported by a huge doom pool. The unfortunate recipient of this action, Beast, was a bit put-off by the potential power that it gives the GM, but I think it's completely fair, given what the players are able to do, such as one-shotting Mr. Fixer.

Overall, I'm enjoying myself, and I do hope that this doesn't come into conflict with my Civil War game that is coming up next week. We'll see how that goes. Either way, hope you enjoyed my rant! (I would love some comments on my IC/OOC rant to see how other people feel.) If you didn't, here's a funny picture.

-Wes

What I'm Playing Right Now

Hey there, readers!

While I do seem to be cursed to run games until the day that I die, I do get to play every so often! This has been happening a lot more lately since my current life situation has separated me physically from a lot of my real-life groups. I've been getting my playing fill thanks to the wonderful people I've met over the Margaret Weis forums, Roll20, and Google+.

So, as a companion post to the last one, I'll go over what games I'm involved in as a player right now and in the near future.

What I'm Playing Now:

X-Men (Marvel Heroic)

I've got two confessions this time.

First.

I fuckin' love the X-Men. They are, by a fairly large margin, my favorite team in Marvel comics, maybe comics in general. Sure, it's usually a flawed series plagued by an incredibly large cast, Mary Sue/emo characters out the whazoo, and plot lines that seem to fly in the face of the rest of Marvel's continuity, but I love it anyway. The characters that are well written are amazing, their plight always seems to be culturally relevant, and they actually have a reason to be a team other than "Well, we're all good superheroes with sub-par rogue galleries; let's team up to sell more comics!"

I'm lookin' at you, Avengers.

Second confession.

I fuckin' love Rogue.

I'm serious. She's my favorite Marvel character. I've got her action figure on my wall, still mint in box. A Rogue figurine is dangling off my phone, showing everyone my heart-throb every time I get a text. I could create an entire post about why I adore this Southern Belle, but I doubt you guys want an in-depth character analysis. If you do, let me know, and I'd gladly share why this girl has taken my number one spot.

Anyway, back to the game. I'm currently in a new group that is running an X-Men game based off of an old TSR module. It's a small group, which I love, and I finally get to play Rogue, which I also love. We've only had one session so far, but I'm looking forward to more!

What I'll Be Playing Soon:

Civil War (Marvel Heroic)

Last August, I got involved in my first Marvel Heroic game over Google+ run by a rather talented GM. We were playing through Breakout, which is the introductory scenario in the back of the Marvel Heroic book. However, our GM was clever enough to extend it by an extra act and even throw in a few twists to make sure that this was the Breakout we would remember. While I know some of my readers were actually involved, for those who aren't in the know, you can watch the entire game on Youtube!

I played none other than Wolverine, which is another character that I'm quite fond of. It's not often that I get to take on the gruff, macho, bad-ass role, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Starting in June, we're going to be doing Civil War, the first full-campaign module put out for Marvel Heroic, in the same universe as our Breakout game with all of the same people, plus a few more!

I'll be taking on the role of Wolverine again, and I get to pick one another character, but I'm a bit stumped on that avenue. I want someone that is different than Wolverine in both personality and play-style and someone I'm somewhat comfortable portraying. Ergo, no brooding gruff bad-asses. Not a scrapper (For those of you who have every played City of Heroes). No one too obscure. I've still got some time to make a decision, so, I'll come up with something.

While I am looking forward to the game immensely, I am a bit concerned about the number of players. If we are going to have, what looks like, eight players and the GM, I'm not quite sure how that's going to fly. I've ran for and played in large groups, and it's not easy. Not to mention that having the video feed for nine people is going to wreak havoc on certain internet connections.

But, I hope for the best!

And that's pretty much it! I was in a New Warriors campaign that sort of fizzled out, but if that comes back, I'd be willing to play again. Also, a group I played Escape from Mos Shuttaa with may be delving into The Long Arm of the Hutt, so that's another possibility.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed my brief foray into my current playing schedule. If you didn't, here's a funny picture.

-Wes