Tabletop RPG: Marvel Superheroes advanced! (using OpenRPG)

[DWZippy]

Okay, was talking on the steam group earlier, and figured this idea has a bit of merit. I'll be running a Marvel Superheroes advanced game, using the 1984 system. I don't remember the rules very well, but the Faserip system is easy enough to play - so.. let's give it a go.

Contrary to the topic title, we may use a different thing. I'm more family probably playing once a week, although if my masters gets me too busy, it'll slip back to once a fortnight. I'll need 4-5 players to start, and extra players will be drafted in to replace attrition. I don't intend to have a party of bigger then 4-5 at any one time because it'll make scheduling insanely difficult.


Players:
1: Harlander
2: Liquorish
3: Elesium
4: Egg
5:

Reserve:

Characters:
1: Harlander - Sentinel
2: Liquorish - Triple A
3: Elesium - Raiden
4: Egg - NAME YOUR CHARACTER
5: Gunrun

[DWZippy]

I'm sitting down and building everyone's characters with them on mumble at the moment. Some of the limitations, weaknesses ect just don't get very well together, as it's a slightly flawed system.

Harlander's char is done though, and it's come together pretty well.

[DWZippy]

Some world building information:

It's near future. Aside from newer model I-phones and a few extra seasons of Burn Notice the world is pretty identical, except for all you superheroes running around. Those of you with comic books, this is a world just before the House of M storyline, so there's still mutants everywhere.

This would be all well and good, but the tense relations between muties and norms was ignited by a terrorist bomb on the presidents lawn in Washington DC.

Mutants were blamed for the attack and while the President was away at the time, the government seized the opportunity to set up a taskforce to round up and "question" mutants, but rumours of Kill teams persist, passed by word of mouth around the terrified mutant community. After a conflict at Xaviers institute led to the death of Cyclops, and his death made him a matyr, further fanning the flames of conflict. The X-men have gone underground and there are further flashpoints opening up across america.

Russia has offered protection to any mutants requiring it, and the EU is in heated debate on the subject. The world is tense, and the superhero community is entirely divided on the subject, with many going underground for fear of discrimination.

This is a rough outline, just to show you the tone of the campaign. Think of Marvel Superheroes in a somewhat grittier world to the one you may be used to, where morals are somewhat ambiguous.

[Harlander]

What location are you gonna set all the stuff in?

[DWZippy]

America, but no specific base of operations just yet.

I'm not ruling out a bit of globe trotting later - I do have ideas.

[Elesium]

I think I'm totally going to steal the named Raiden (pronounced like the douche in MGS). I'll write up a description/background in the morning to hopefully get some RPing going.

[Harlander]

Yes, good, good.

And every time my character mentions yours by name, it'll be with a roll of the eyes. From outside the fusion reactor tokamak magnets we use to keep Raiden in place, obviously ;)

[Elesium]

Just because I could buy the entire team twice over... everyone just gets jealous! :P

[egg651]

Hey, am I allowed to have Jackie Chan as one of my contacts?

[Elesium]

New Name - Raiden
Old Name - James Walker
Apparent Age: 28

Description: Large clean shaven and well built man with short black hair. Crystal blue eyes with the sparks of lightning rippling across the whiteness is the only sign to the outside world that anything is untoward. Raiden when angry has lightning play between his finger tips even through the gloves he always wears. Aswell as the gloves he also wears a tight fitting black bodyglove, black sunglasses (on which shadows of lightning dance across) and a urban camoflage jacket/trousers over the body glove. This is capped off with a red beret.

Background: This ex-British paratrooper seconded to the 133rd Special Operations Battalion moved from Britain to the US to begin training with the 133rd who were conducting experiments to create 'Super Soldiers'. Whilst standing guard at one such experiment an electircal fault took place, blasting out from the soldier being experimented upon and hit James square in the chest. Arcs of lightning blasted from his body as he started to disintergrate, a blood curdling scream echoed around the place as the energy level grew, with a flash the lights go out in the room, mere moments later emergency lights come on, smoke filling the place as medics and scientists rush between James and the soldier in the centre of the room. Of James nothing remained, just charred and blackened dust and scraps of bone. A week passed when reports of a haunting became prevalent within the facility, a silhouette of a man roaming the corridorswalking through doors and walls, intangible. Upon contact with this figure, people were left with mild electrical burns. This continued for days until suddenly the shape entered the commanders office, half way towards drawing his side arm the commander hesitated as the shapecondensed to form the body of James, in his new form. Lightning flickered around him. "Raiden reporting for duty sir." He said before collapsing upon the office floor.



What do you think DW is that ok?

[DWZippy]

You can't have Jackie Chan as your contact. You behave ;)

Elesium - yeah, I'll take it - It's a little cheesy, but that works very well in this setting.

[Harlander]

A little bit of prose for my character's origin story:

"Son, the United States is perched on the cusp of a new era of terror."

General Plexico thrummed with patriotic fervour as he led me through the subterranean base's winding corridors. A week ago, I'd accepted an invitation - not orders, but an honest-to-god invitation on DOD-headed paper - to attend a briefing on a new anti-terrorist task force that was being formed. I didn't know exactly what the story was, but when you're singled out for a secret briefing, it's usually something interesting.

"There's a new breed of terrorist out there. Something we've never seen before." He opened the door to an observation room, a glass panel covering most of the far wall. He touched an intercom and gave an order to proceed. The panel turned clear, showing a scrawny man held to a sturdy-looking chair by heavy steel bands. A voice came over the intercom. "Releasing subject." The bands clicked open, and the man rose to his feet. "Now, let's let him see us." the General said, with a wry smile. The lighting in the room beyond changed, and the figure within locked his gaze right on me. He leapt forward with shocking speed, and slammed his head right into the glass, which shuddered, crazing around the impact. "This is blast-proof glass, stop a tank shell, son." the General explained, as the figure leapt twice his height and clung like a bug to the room's ceiling. The General touched the intercom again. "That's enough." With that, the window went black, and I heard a low hissing sound issuing through the intercom, followed by a loud thud. "Subject is sedated," the curt voice from earlier declared, "Team A, secure subject."

The General turned from the window to look me in the eye. "Imagine if AQ had a dozen men like that. And that's just the simplest of this new breed. There's..." He paused, just a moment, before continuing, "mutants who can fly, shoot laser beams from their eyes."

"So -" I began, but the General's booming voice cut me off. "Son, the only way to beat these terrorists is to take on powers of our own. We have the technology - we can make you sense 'em, give you the strength or the speed to take 'em on. Your skills are just what we need as part of our team - to hunt down and crush this terrorism before it gets out of hand. What do you say?"

I gave the idea some thought. It must have been a whole two seconds. "I'm in."

[Harlander]

Codename: The Sentinel
Real name: Capt. Miles Galison, formerly of U.S. Army Signals Corps, now attached to [insert mutant-hunting group here]

Age: 34
Physical description: A muscular, but not bulky, figure. His most notable feature is a slight elongation of the skull, giving it an almost ovoid shape. He keeps his head shaved to enhance this unusual appearance.

Subjected to Treatment 32, causing development of significantly enhanced analytical and reasoning abilities, as well as remote sensing capability of Extranormal power deployment and Category 18 (neurokinetic offensive capability) psionic tendency. Use of C18 tendency linked to migraine and possible subarachnoid hematoma.

[Harlander]

DW, have you managed to drag yourself away from DX:HR to confirm what kind of VTT or other mechanism we're gonna use for this?

[DWZippy]

I'm experimenting with Traipse - but we'll use Mumble. I know so far that everyone has Mumble.

Will see how I get on with Traipse and let you know.

Just a reminder to everyone else - 8pm.

[Harlander]

I need to sort out my Python installs from my abortive forays into coding with it ("Python - it's just similar enough to C++ for the differences to appear incredibly confusing!") before I can get Traipse to go. It does look pretty slick, from the screenies, much slicker than the very obviously bodged-together look of the OpenRPG trunk

[DWZippy]

Yeah, I was on HR till 8am this morning, so I've literally just woken up and thought about the RPG.Cracking onto it now.

Just realised though, that Traipse requires quite a bit of setting up just to run. searching for alternate route - going to download my old client, Gametable.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gametableproj/

[Liqourish]

BACKSTORY TIME

General Plexico waited impatiently for Doctor R.R. Raskolnikov to greet him. He had known the doctor for a while, having personally lobbied for the project, but something about him still bothered the general. His theories just weren't right. The general smiled across the wide lobby at the secretary, Janet, and adjusted the hat in his hands. 'Damn him!' the general began to think, but was interrupted by the footsteps of the doctor echoing down the hallway. He straightened his pose.
"General."
"Doctor."
"If you would come with me."
The general complied, and followed Doctor Raskolnikov through the maze of hallways, deeper into the research facility. The walls were white, flawless. It was sterile. The fluorescent lamps flickered just too fast for his eyes to catch, giving him a headache.
"I think you'll like how far we've come. Once we solved the problem of the pseudo-muscles with the generalized locomotion substructure, the mechanisms for rapid transit through varied terrain fell into place quite easily, leaving space for both a modular weapons systems and AI capability."
"And the energy problem?"
"Darling, would you hand him the test results?"
The doctor's assistant silently handed General Plexico a clipboard with the results. They were impressive.
"Excellent."
They turned into a short corridor, and the assistant keyed in the password. The doors slid open to a room, or rather, a balcony, overlooking a large hall, littered with oddly shaped obstacles and several vehicles. In the far end some scientists were gathered around the prototype, making sure everything was ready to go. Doctor Raskolnikov leaned down over the intercom.
"Commence the demonstration."
The scientist who looked like she was in charge stood up and gave the thumbs up, and walked away with the others. Everything was quiet except the hums of the generators and fans.
The robot slowly stood up, and stood perfectly still for well over ten seconds. The air was tense. Then, it took a step forward, and then another one gathering speed. It broke into a full on run, sprinting forwards towards the obstacles. The general was impressed.
Then, suddenly, the robot flew into the air as if propelled by jets, vaulted off a buss and soared for well over fifty yards before landing in a perfect roll. It continued to bounce off of obstacles and walls for the following half-hour, very impressively.
Following this, there was a combat demonstration. The robot, as expected (the general had seen this before) performed very well.
"Excellent. How fast can you have a production model ready?"
"With all the red, tape, anywhere from-"
"I'll streamline it. Just worry about making it."
"We can have a prototype ready within the year."


A.A.A.R.G.H.
Artificial Armored Assault and Reconnaissance Generic Humanoid
Commonly referred to as The Triple-A R G H.

A combat-model android, specialized in mutant-hunting. Changeable parts gives it a variety of applications.

[DWZippy]

The first session was, I'm told, a triumph.

--

From the desk of General (Redacted).

General Plexico,

I sent Galison's team out on their first real snatch and grab today. He's settling into the command role well, I think. Omega is back in our hands, and seems to have mutated slightly while he was away - He's developing control over heat, in addition to minor psychic abilities.

we are hoping to indoctrinate him again and put him back on a team - Maybe Black 2, they've been on the bench since Starlight got torn in half on the Wolverine grab. I'm considering sending "Sentinel" out to Russia, only Miles has the military background, the rest can easily be disavowed. The Russians managed to get their hands on Xavier, and are using him in conjunction with some funky location device, and it's helping them stay one step ahead of our boys.

Still no further leads on the white house bomb, but I'll keep you informed. Give my love to Marcie, the worse part about this whole scandal is that I'm missing the chicken at your place every week.

Regards,

[Have you seen this potato]

KV here, confirming I'm in!