Necessary Evil 2 - Released!

Well, it's out. I don't know much about it, but I'm interested. The blurb:


The villainous resistance of New York City was one of the last to hold out against the alien invasion. The evil v’sori responded by placing the island of Manhattan beneath an unbreakable energy field.
Trapped within, the city’s toughest and most cunning super villains must battle it out for food, weapons, resource, and dominance. But they are not alone. A strange creature swarms in the sewers and subways. Powerful gangs rise and raid their rivals. The Black Hand controls a vast black market of scavenged goods. And rumors of a way out are–so far–nothing more than street gossip. Only the strong will survive, and only the most calculating will eventually…

…BREAK OUT!

DTRPG link is here.

Additional notes specifically mention going to street-level supers and that's probably smart as a concession to challenging the players. Original NE could get tricky as more super type supplements have been added to the game over the years - but that's part of the fun of running a super-powered game right?

Also setting it in a real place (well, sort of) is a nice change too.

Anyway, I don't have it yet but I likely will soon and I'll have more to share then.

Combining City of Heroes and Necessary Evil - Why Not the Rogue Isles?

Z3-R0 at the beginning of his career in crime

One obvious question that might occur to some people is this: If you're running a Necessary Evil game and want to set it in the City of Heroes world, why not use the City of Villains home area? Why not use the Rogue Isles? That's a good question.

For one, the campaign is all about juxtaposition and if I have villains running around the "villain homeland" it loses some of that feel. I need them to be reminded that they are "fighting the good fight" whether they like it or not.

Second, the Rogue Isles are a dump and no one cares about them compared to the attention given to Paragon City. What are the big landmarks in the Isles? There's not much. The interesting, memorable stuff is over in the big city where people actually want to live.

Thirdly, Paragon is where the money and the power is. If you're interested in taking control of things, then you need to go to the center of things, and that is not the Rogue Isles.

Boss Thunder out for a stroll

Also, my players and I spent a lot more time hero-side than villain-side so it is far more familiar. That matters. For a group that played more villainous characters when the game was active I can see it becoming the focus of a campaign but for us it just does not make sense.

In-game I intend to justify it by saying the Isles were blasted by the V'Sori early and often. Much like before, it's a somewhat anarchic zone that is monitored but not occupied. We may take a trip there during one of our missions, but it's never going to be the focus of the whole campaign.

No, there's really very little mercy here

"But what about Arachnos and Lord Recluse?" I hear you saying. To which I reply "yes - what about them?" Perhaps that's something that needs to be investigated. Perhaps our villains protagonists will investigate that. We will just have to see.

Astro-Ranger suspects this might be an old Arachnos base ...

Combining City of Heroes and Necessary Evil - the Content

Well, that's certainly still relevant

So now that I have a framework for how I think I can run this, I need to decide on the meat of each session. Since it's still "Necessary Evil", regardless of setting, I'm going to start with that.

The core plot unfolds in 11 adventures. Originally it was 10, but the explorers edition added an 11th which is good because the original finale was not good and I was planning on changing it anyway. With the reset to Paragon City I plan on changing it even more. For those familiar with the adventure, Star City has a sort of plot of its own tied to its history, and it ties in to the original finale. I'm planning to drop that whole element anyway, rendering that particular plot point meaningless. My players also finished the first 3 plot points back in 2010 when we started this and we're keeping those adventures with a little bit of a retcon to reset them in Paragon City. So I have 7 core plotline adventures. These are pretty much usable as-is with simple changes to names, locations, and some NPC's to reflect the new setting. There's only one other major setting discrepancy and I'll talk about that below.

Iconic characters like ... Fusionette!

Fleshing out the main plot are a bunch of other adventures that form the meat of the campaign. Given my plan I need to build out 5 of these into "main" adventures, and pick out 12 of the remainders as "B plots" for the campaign. That will use most of what is provided but it does leave me some room to skip the entries that don't fit as well.

Finally I have to think about working in the flavor of City of Heroes. I think there should be some kind of touch point to Paragon City in each session. CoH had a lot of landmarks, like statues and islands and buildings and those could play a part. There are a lot of good and evil organizations and those should have a role. There are also specific heroes and villains that show up in the game and those make it feel like home too. My initial thinking is that each session should involve a group, a location, and an individual character in addition to whatever A & B plots are happening. Frostfire was a big adventure run at the lower levels in the game. One session will probably deal with Frostfire, the Outcasts, and the Hollows. If I can find a plot point that would tie into them nicely, so much the better. The Hollows zone was also tied into the Trolls and the Circle of Thorns and might lead into something with those groups in either the prior session or the next session. Officer Wincott was a normal cop in the zone and he might show up too. Laying out a web of these kinds of connections is the real challenge here in my eyes.

Faultline ... err "Overbrook" Dam - infested with Vahzilok

Another example: There is a non-core plot point involving a dam. I like it, so I plan to use it. In the original adventure it's Hoover Dam, so it involves a trip to Vegas and while that's very comic-bookish involving the landmark and all, it felt a little odd in a campaign that is so heavily focused on a single city. Fortunately, Paragon City has its own dam which was the location of a popular task force. Revisiting it during an alien occupation invokes both a familiar location and allows for some ties back to that original task force. The primary enemy there was the Vazhilok, a sort of zombie group. The primary allies were Longbow, a Shield-like organization. It involved a running fight into, through, and on top of the dam itself. This gives me some nice ties back into Paragon City lore and some ideas on how to expand it into the focus of an entire session. There were also some ties to the Clockwork and the Circle of Thorns in those missions so now I have some potential links to other sessions if I want to focus on any of those groups.

Battle atop the dam!

So flavoring and tweaking the preset adventures, then adding in some additional material for additional flavor is he plan. There are also some plot complications to resolve as well. The biggest one is that Atlantis plays a large role in Necessary Evil but there is no Atlantis in City of Heroes. This was a conscious design choice from what I have read and there were no plans to develop Atlantis or an underwater city of any kind. Solutions:

• Just add in the NE version of Atlantis. I'm still toying with this but it really seems like the easy way out. I'm of two minds on the concept too:
• Adding in something new that significant to the setting detracts from the effort to make it feel like Paragon City and shouldn't be done. 
• Think of it as an "expansion" for the original game - new zone, new race, new other character options - all of these things are pretty common elements in an MMO expansion, so why not take advantage of it?
• Find one entity to replace Atlantis - maybe the lost magical city of Oranbega can serve as a less-watery stand-in? How about the Shadowshard? Maybe Cimerora? Croatoa? I really just need a lost city that's difficult to access and has magical elements to fill in.   
• Part-out the Atlantean story elements to other areas instead of trying to go for a one-to-one replacement. 

Honestly my initial reaction was the second bullet, but after taking a break for a few days and coming back to it, I'm leaning more towards the first one. Most comic book settings have some kind of Atlantis, so it's not like it's a genre violation. Also, characterizing it as an MMORPG expansion is really starting to appeal to me, especially since I'm using a no-longer-active MMORPG as the setting. I need to make some more notes but it has a lot of potential and requires a lot less ret-conning effort to the adventure.

Combining City of Heroes and Necessary Evil - the Framework

Once I decided to combine these two things, I took a look at what I had to work with and how I wanted to integrate them:

• Necessary Evil has 11 adventures that form the main plot, plus 20-odd more written adventures, plus a random adventure generator which is pretty solid. There is plenty of material here for a year-long campaign - it's more a question of what I'm going to leave out than what I need to add in. I'd be doing that even if I ran it in the original setting.
• NE has its own setting and its own lore and some of the reveals in the adventure are very much tied to that setting. Changing the setting means changing those elements in some way or leaving them out entirely.
• Paragon City has extensive lore, numerous characters, and a lot of enemy and friendly groups that players interact with during the game. On a basic level there is some reassignment that needs to be done but my players may want to know what happened to certain groups or teams or characters during and after the invasion, so I have to think beyond just renaming NE's NPC 's with City of Heroes names and re-write how the whole invasion went at a high level. This will give me some guidance when stuff like this comes up on the fly. I've been working on this the most over the past couple of weeks and I'm pretty happy with where it's going.

Speaking of Faultline Dam ...

I was originally thinking it would be a simple "repaint" (e.g. there's a mission involving a dam, well I'll just recast it at the Faultline Dam and we're good!) but there's so much more background available with COH that I want to do a lot more. Attempting to run this on a fixed schedule though means that adding anything in might require eliminating something to make room. With roughly 30 NE adventures and planning to run 12 sessions for the whole campaign (once a month for 2015) I'm looking at 2-3 of those per session before I make any changes. Now these are not lengthy dungeon-crawl type adventures, and Savage Worlds plays pretty fast anyway, so for now I'm going to schedule it out like this:

• I'm keeping 10 of the original 11 core plot adventures. There's one I didn't like. Now my players have already done the first 3 back when we started this game years ago. So really I have 7 original core plotline items left. 
• I like about 18 of the "other" NE adventures and think I can adapt them to Paragon City fairly easily.
• Assuming I can fit in roughly 3 "plots" per session then this leaves me about 11 slots to work in something specifically tied to City of Heroes - about one per session. 

If I can pace this out correctly, that means I run a core plot item once every other session, an "other" plot item every session, sometimes more than one, and one Paragon-specific item per session too.  Now that's all fine as a mathematical exercise, but things rarely flow that neatly in play. Players get interested in a particular character/group/plotline, somebody misses a session, we have to cancel one somewhere, distractions mean we get less done than hoped for - there are a lot of variables. Heck, I don't have a great feel for how much we can get done in a "normal" session just yet so this is all just estimating for now. 

Atlas Park - head-on!

The other main consideration in planing is to make sure each session is self-contained - an episodic campaign rather than a normal serial-type campaign. By the end of session A, we should have completed X,Y, & Z. Playing only once a month I don't want to have to track combat states with a 3-4 week gap in between. This also helps deal with player schedule hiccups, among other things, and it feels more like a comic book anyway. 

Note: Thankfully in a supers game or any mission-based campaign it is possible to do this kind of planning as they tend to be more closely directed and/or more reactive so the GM has a lot of control over when and how things show up. If I was running a sandbox game or a mega dungeon I wouldn't be trying to manage it this way, namely a fixed-time type of campaign.

Now, with a framework for the campaign sketched out, I can start planning what goes into each session. More on that next time!

The New Campaign for 2015: Necessary Evil - with a twist

Things finally came together and I had a chance to fire up a new campaign alongside our continuing Pathinfinder adventures. I've been wanting to play more Savage Worlds, I've been wanting to play some kind of super-RPG, and I've been thinking a lot about City of Heroes, so ...

I know NE already has a twist - you play Supervillians pressed into saving the world - but the city setting in the book is a gimmick that while I was OK with it, I always felt like it could be better, less "generic modern city" on the surface. I felt that as far as the players were concerned it had an unusual shape but the background behind it kind of washed over them or was never fully discovered. I never had a good feel for the street-level view of the place. Given that my group were all fans of City of Heroes and played it quite a bit, why not use that familiarity to amp up a tabletop game? Why strain to make "Northpoint" interesting when I can say "Steel Canyon" instead and they instantly have a picture of the skyline, the layout, and where it is in relation to the rest of the city - and so do I.

The Heart of Steel Canyon 

I did consider taking another tack. I did think about using the DC or Marvel universe but those are so detailed and so vast I think a "devastated and conquered earth" campaign is tougher to pull off. I lingered for a while on using M&M's Freedom City setting but a) my players are not that familiar with the city as I've never used it for a sustained run and b) I don't want their introduction to the setting to be post-alien invasion Freedom City as I'd like to use un-invaded FC for a future campaign.  Then I realized the answer was Paragon City, the setting for City of Heroes:

• Familiar to everyone? Check.
• Easy to visualize iconic locations? Check. (plus I have lots of screenshots to refresh memories)
• Well-known heroes and villains and organizations to play various roles in the campaign? Check.
• Conflict with canon? Nope, since the game closed two years ago I can pretty much blow up whoever and whatever I want after a certain year.  
• Online resource with tons of information? Check.

I'll cover more of the details in future posts and how I'm substituting parts of the adventure with my own and stitching together some other elements to make it more tied to Paragon specifically. They are still villains, they are still working for a major supervillain who has formed the resistance movement (some more willingly than others). In the original adventure this is "Dr. Destruction", a Doom-esque villain. In my version it is Nemesis.Yes, it is literally a "Nemesis plot."

He's sort of a steampunk Dr. Doom who's always plotting something

Why not Lord Recluse as the resistance leader? In fact where is Lord Recluse? Well that's an interesting story. My players may uncover it during the campaign - or they may not. That's one of the keys to my approach. There are a ton of threads one could pursue in post-invasion Paragon City. We could spend years on "Whatever happened to hero group/villain group/giant monster/villain/hero etc." and while I have plenty of ideas I'm going to let the players drive the focus on where things go.

Also, we are picking up the game where we left off in 2010. We're assuming that all of those events happened, even if we are retconning the location and some of the names into Paragon City from Star City. The players brought back all of their old characters (everyone managed to hold on to their character sheets in paper or digital form for 5 years!). I'm working on a "retcon recap" to update the events of those old sessions to fit them in.

Atlas Park lives again!

While this is not quite as zero-prep as running it straight out of the book, it should be quite a bit more rewarding. plus, knowing the setting so well makes it easier to run on the fly anyway. If you are familiar at all with both games then you will know there are certain elements of NE that do not have an easy counterpoint in CoH. I have thought about them and I already have some possible replacements and re-works. Some elements I'm just going to de-emphasize, others will be ignored entirely. As far as the core concept and general plot, it's still Necessary Evil - but it's MY Necessary Evil, and when we're done it will be mine and my players' take on it, by way of Paragon City.

Finally,  this is not just planning - we played the first session over the weekend. Three of my four players were available so it is officially kicked off! Right now the plan is to play once a month though if schedules line up we may work in an extra session or two. I'm going to sketch it out as 12 "Issues" with this kick-off session as an "Issue Zero". If we play more, well, there's no lack of material in my head. More to come.

Super News Thursday

I keep bumping into superhero RPG news this week so I thought I would share:

Mutants and Masterminds

• Emerald City is out in PDF and will be out "soon" in print
• Next up is the Cosmic Handbook
• Q2 2014 is supposed to see the compiled Gadget Guide book released
• Gen Con 2014 will see Freedom City 3rd Edition
• The "weekly PDF" for 2014 will be the Atlas of Earth Prime, a series of articles on the rest of the world of Freedom City and Emerald City

ICONS

• Adamant is running a 10th anniversary sale and Team-Up! is on sale for $1.99. 

Savage Worlds

• Pinnacle is working on Necessary Evil 2!

Lots of cool stuff there. It's nice to see a full schedule for M&M. I like everything I see on that list. I picked up all of the weekly villain releases in 2011 and the power profiles in 2012 but this year I backed off of the gadget guides, just getting some here and there, because they weren't as immediately useful as the other stuff. A collected guide though is something worth getting. I wonder how setting material will do in that format? They mentioned that it will be priced a little higher, be a little longer, and will come out every two weeks. If there's some crunch in there too then those could be very interesting. Updated Freedom City should be a treasure trove of ideas and characters.

Team-Up - Hey, for being two years late it's pretty cool. I'll probably put up a full post about it down the road.

Necessary Evil 2 is a surprise - I never thought they would seriously return to that specific universe - but it's a good one as that is a great campaign. Apparently this one will also involve playing villains pushed into unexpected behavior. Christopher McGlothlin is writing it and I've liked a lot of his stuff (Time of Crisis for M&M among others) so the limited information I have is all positive so far.

Necessary Evil - Session 7 - Other Peoples' Hostages

We open in Star City. The villains have returned home after a successful extraction of The Monolith from a monastery in Japan. The team decides to follow up on their strange encounter with "The Gray One" by calling the number on the business card he threw at them as he retreated. Nissa calls it and attempts to talk her way past the secretary who answers, but ends up frustrated that her mind control powers don't work over the phone. Eventually though, a meeting is set at The Olive Branch (a high-end Italian restaurant) for 8pm.

There is much maneuvering as 8:00 approaches as Nightblade and Night Terror stake out the establishment - they plan to make an example of this guy for taking a shot at Night Blade. MegaStrike waits nearby as backup for Nissa who will be heading inside to meet their quarry. Neither of them originally wanted to off Gray, but Nissa's frustration over the phone games played earlier has turned into a killing rage and she plans to make a meal of him at the very least.

The Gray One suspects an ambush so he hires an escort and goes in his secret identity of Gary Noe. He looks like just another customer to the casual observer (and he effectively is since all of his powers come from gear which he has decided to leave home for tonight). He has left a message for Nissa at the desk noting that he can't make it but that he has paid for her meal. Then he sits down to observe the crowd.

The message does not help Nissa's attitude and she suspects something is going on. She orders the others to stage a robbery so she can examine everyone more closely, glamouring them if necessary. This is about the same time Gray decides to leave and he manages to slip out with his rent-a-date before MegaStrike can smash in the front door. He does call the police on his way to his car though. The team goes ahead and robs the place anyway, netting about $5,000.

Frustrated over not finding The Gray One the group is somewhat relieved when Dr. Destruction calls them and asks them to rescue some hostages - namely the first family of the United States. They have been in hiding since the invasion but the V'Sori have finally caught them and are holding them in an old state police barracks near Boston. He wants them recovered alive and brought to the warehouse. There are only 3 members left - the president's wife, daughter, and granddaughter and he is leaving extraction and transportation up to the team.

The group rents a van (Nissa glamours the attendant) and heads for Boston. They find the building where the hostages and observe it quietly for an hour. There is a single transport parked outside, one alien "Manta" fighter craft, and half a dozen drones standing guard on the roof and near the vehicles. The only entrance appears to be the front door.

Being a "Plan A" kind of team Night Terror phases out and drifts into the Manta fighter and starts it up. As the guards look up, he begins firing at them with the ship's guns. This is the signal for MegaStrike and he smashes a new door through the back wall of the building which Night Blade and Nissavin use to enter the place. The drones outside the building are quickly dispatched by fighter pilot Night Terror while the fin troopers inside the place are just as quickly dispatched by fang, katana, and radioactive punch. Nissa charms a guard and has him lead the team to the first family, who are in the center of the building.

In the main detention area a battle royale takes place as the V'Sori Warlord who captured the family and his elite fin guards fight to the death to protect their career-making prizes. the mental blasting and stunning powers of the warlord are a new threat for the team and they spend much of the fight being stunned or trying to shake it off. Night Blade blows open the front of the building in an effort to help, stopping some reinforcements, but then decides that's too dangerous to his allies and stays on cover duty outside. The fins are handled one by one until only the warlord is left and he finally falls to a savage thrust from Night Blade.

The cell is broken open and the first family, though a little shaken by what's happened and what's still happening goes along with them. Night Terror lands the fighter and sets the engines on overload, joining the team inside as they race through the building and out the back, jumping into the van and heading home as the building is engulfed in a huge explosion.

It's another job well-done for the Plan A Team.

DM notes:

• The whole episode with the Gray One was my second attempt to get the new player to join the team. as you might have guessed from the description, he didn't. Again. more on this tomorrow.
• The main focus of the evening was supposed to be rescuing the first family and that's where we spent the majority of the time. The game ran somewhat later than usual because of the restaurant business but everyone did well and as far as I can tell had a good time with that part. They came up with a decent plan, made it work, and achieved their goal with no casualties on their side.
• I say everyone but I mean my 4 original players. The new guy didn't have much to do because he walked his character right out of the team in the first part of the evening. Sorry, I can only spend so much game time catering to one player. When you actively avoid joining the rest of the party, and go so far as to jack with them, practically taunting them, before running off, I don't think you have a right to complain when you don't have anything to do the rest of the session.
• Overall I feel good about the system and the campaign. It plays fast and loose and I am enjoying the DMing part of this quite a bit. I have decided to make a cheat sheet for Savage Worlds to make sure my players have options in front of them as I think they could do more with grappling, tricks, and wild attacks than they have. Plus it's easier to keep track of modifiers when they are on one sheet in front of you rather than scattered throughout the book.
• Next up will probably be some underwater adventuring... Atlantis Awaits!

Necessary Evil - Session 6 - Curse of the Monolith!

In our prologue, the team uses their skills and powers to steal various aircraft and fly across the U.S., then the Pacific Ocean, finally landing on a street in Japan. It was a very impressive performance for some very skill-limited characters although Night Terror (phasing) and Nissavin (Mind Control) stood out for their particular contributions. When you can move through any wall or control minds so that you don't have to, it makes theft and trespassing quite a bit easier. This part was actually handled at the tail end of the last session since we had time left, but the real action was saved for this session.

We begin in Kobe, Japan after the team has successfully landed their stolen airplane and fled the scene. They know their target is the Gray Lotus Monastery, a retreat for meditation and contemplation, and that their target is a former super villain named The Monolith. He was defeated by Champion years ago and agreed to go into seclusion and retirement if Champion took up the environmental causes he favored. he has been at the Gray Lotus ever since.

The team wandered around the city a bit, then decided to steal a minivan and head for their target. During the trip there was much discussion of how to get in to the place and extract their target, and a rough plan was formed.

Arriving at the monastery the team attempted to talk their way in but were stonewalled by the monks who were very protective of their most unusual resident. The master of the temple spoke to them at the gate, then sought out The Monolith, but returned saying that he did not recognize their names and did not h to be disturbed. While Nissavin was trying to talk her way in, Night Terror phased out and went wandering around the monastery looking for the big villain. He located the correct building by watching the monks' movements and returned to the team as negotiations were breaking down. MegaStrike smashed down the gate while Night Blade charged in, intending to force the master to comply with their wishes. Instead a dozen monks appeared from the shadows and bushes nearby and a general brawl opened up.

As the fight started, a huge stony figure appeared at the top of a small hill inside the gate. The ground began to tremble and two mighty stone arms flexed and a voice called out "You have disturbed the tranquility of this place and my meditations and NOW YOU WILL PAY!

MegaStrike went straight for The Monolith while 'Terror, 'Blade, and Nissa took care of the monks, including the master. This took some time, during which a new player entered the scene. A man in western dress appeared near one of the buildings, pulled out a rifle, and began shooting at the team, nailing NightBlade with a crack shot. When 'Blade recovered, the enmity was on and he went after this new target, who fled, tossing out a business card and yelling "Call me sometime".

In the meantime, the two titans were still slugging it out when the last of the monks dropped to the ground. Night Blade gave up his pursuit and landed a critical strike on The Monolith and allowed MegaStrike to deliver the final blow. The huge fighter toppled over at last and the earthquakes gradually faded out.

The group made a call to Dr. Destruction who agreed to take care of the pickup. The team waited until a flying vehicle appeared and then fled the scene as another cell loaded up the unconscious villain.

Speeding back to Kobe, the team met a private charter (courtesy of the Doctor) and flew home in comfort.

DM Notes: This was a good session in most ways - the players succeeded despite several setbacks, they were creative with their approaches (even though they ended up going with Plan A in the end - sometimes the old ways are best) and they had a good time.

I had fun as well as I got to play a supervillain who didn't succumb to mind control and I got to use a lot of bennies, keeping him in the fight longer. The monks were really a warm-up act - the real fight was big guy vs. the party and it lasted almost 10 rounds total.

There was really only one thing that didn't go well but it was a big one: Dave the Swordmage from the D&D4 game wanted to join the NE game as well. Now the timing wasn't great as the team was headed for Japan at the end of the last session so I was going to have to work him in there somehow. I told him that he was at this monastery when the team attacked. I asked him to come up with a reason he was there and I would be fine with almost any reason. He struggled with this for the entire session. Once the fighting broke out he decided to get into costume (he's a wealthy millionaire batman-ish type who uses money as his super power and bought a lot of guns and gadgets) and take a shot with his big gun at Night Blade! I asked him if he was sure and he was. This annoyed Night Blade's player quite a bit, especially when it was a hit and a raise and caused a wound! The Gray One was pretty cocky at that point but then Night Blade burned a Bennie, got up and went after him - so he ran away!

This pretty much wrecked the "let's get him integrated into the team" subplot for the evening and I'll write more about that tomorrow. For now though it was a problem.

NE Character Close-up: Night Terror

All we know about Night Terror is that he was a wealthy, successful assassin for-hire before the V'Sori came and that though he is still wealthy, he developed a problem - he got bored. Blessed with powers of darkness and with the ability to phase in and out of reality, he began infiltrating the alien facilities just to amuse himself. Eventually even he was caught and he went along with it just to amuse his jaded tastes. When Dr. Destruction rescued him it gave him a new challenge and a goal worthy of his considerable talents.

NE Character Close-up: MegaStrike

I have no written background for MegaStrike, but we know he is a "child of Chernobyl" from the former Soviet Union who fought Red Hammer and Scarlet Sickle in his youth. He is super-tough and super strong and he practically glows with low-level radiation that he can ratchet up when he feels the need.

NE Character Close-up: Night Blade

I don't have a background write-up for NightBlade, just pictures. All we know is that he is a ninja-ish character who wields a fancy katana and seems to know a lot about a wide variety of things:

NE Character Close-up: Nisavin

(For a change, here's something not written by me. This is the character background for Nissa in the Necessary Evil campaign, totally written by her player.)

Meredith Gibson grew up in the small town of Astoria under the watchful eye of her father, a small-town Southern Baptist preacher, and her mother, the ideal preacher’s wife with her ultra conservative looks, thoughts, and values. For most of her years, Meredith lived happily in her surroundings of a typical, simple, small-town life. As the only child, Meredith was doted on endlessly by both of her parents. But, when Meredith was just 15, her mother became very ill and died suddenly from a mysterious illness that even the most highly trained specialists couldn’t explain. Meredith would never fully recover from the loss of her sweet mother. The loss sent Meredith on a dark, steep path in the wrong direction on the roadmap of life that her parents had created for her.

Meredith soon tired of what she now considered her dull, claustrophobic, small town life and wished to travel the world. She was able to convince her father that by traveling the world and exploring places she had only read about or seen in movies, she would be able to stop grieving the loss of her mother and start living the life that her parents always wanted her to have. While he was hesitant to let his only child, his precious daughter, stray so far from the safe confines of their small town, Meredith’s dad knew that she would eventually go with or without his blessing.

Using her own savings and the money her father gave to her upon her departure, Meredith was able to travel from town to town frugally as her mother had taught her how to handle her money. Meredith met some fascinating people on her travels and most of them were kind and generous just like the small town folks she had grown up with. One night after dinner and a few drinks with friends, Meredith was walking alone back to her cheap loft apartment on the East coast. It wasn’t the best of neighborhoods but she had taken this same route many times in the past few months she lived there and had never felt any reason to fear for her safety. Before she even realized she wasn’t alone there was suddenly a stranger’s hand over her mouth and another strong hand around her waist. She briefly felt the cold touch of the stranger’s cheek before he sank his teeth into the soft skin of her neck. Meredith couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, she couldn’t break free from the clutches of the stranger that would forever change her life. Her world went completely dark.

She awoke alone in the alley near her loft. She was groggy and unsure of how much time had passed and what happened in the lapse of time. Meredith went to her loft, showered, and crawled into her warm bed for a solid night’s sleep. The changes weren’t immediate but it was only a matter of days before Meredith realized what she had become. She craved the taste of blood although she knew it was wrong, she had to have it to survive. She tried drinking the synthetic blood that was readily available in the vampire underworld and it sometimes helped to get her through the day but it was a far cry from the real thing. Meredith realized she could never return to her small town life and started the process of creating her new identity. There were some positive attributes that came along with the undeniable blood thirst. Meredith became unexplainably strong for her 5’5” slender frame. Her light brown hair had turned a beautiful dark black color that complimented the much lighter complexion of her skin. Her eyes turned darker as well although if she didn’t feed regularly they would turn a chilling color of deep red. Even though she didn’t struggle with the typical aversion to the sunlight, Meredith had a difficult time finding a typical job for a beautiful woman in her early 20’s.

Most recently, Meredith met a fellow vampire, Josie Sibohan, who was looking for a young vampire to serve as her personal assistant, manage her travel schedule and keep track of her expenses. Josie was much older than Meredith but looked almost identical to the striking young woman. Soon, Josie and Meredith, who had changed her name to Nisaven at Josie’s request, had forged a bond much stronger than a simple working relationship as Josie taught Nisaven how to control her urges and use her new found strengths to her advantage. Nisaven was a quick study and Josie relied on her for just about everything. They were together the day of the alien invasion……

Necessary Evil - Session 5 - Red Hammer!

As our villains relax after their underground adventure, they get a call from Dr. Destruction informing them that the Red Hammer has returned and is killing V'Sori and their sympathizers very publicly, along with some other Omega cells as he apparently still considers the supervillains his enemies too. Additionally...

"I have learned that the Hammer's former partner, Scarlet Sickle, has been seen talking to him between his mad forays into the city. Sickle may be the only person who can reason with the addled avenger so I advise you to find her first. She lives somewhere downtown and Red Hammer may be with her. If you can convince her that influencing the Hammer to cooperate with us is the best way to help him, you may may be able to bring the mad mutant in without a fight. If not, use her as bait to lure him out then capture him and bring him to me. Failing that, kill him."

So the team heads out to try and find Sickle. Since the duo was once a part of a famous Russian super team, they start by locating the best Russian restaurant in the city and watching/making some inquiries. They know what she looked like in costume, but they do not know her secret identity - then again, how hard can it be to locate a 6' blonde athletic woman with a Russian accent?

Our team's investigation approach is not subtle - Nissa mind controls the bartender and holds up the picture above, asking if he has ever seen a woman like this but not in these clothes. He replies that yes he has, because he has internet. Frustrated by the language barrier with the young immigrant, Nissa orders some drinks for the team then feeds on him behind the bar.

NightBlade does better with an amazing display of skill (and some 30-range rolls from a d4 streetwise skill!) and the hostess points out Countess Kuznetzov who comes in at this time every week -and there she is now! The countess admits nothing at first and resists a glamour attempt from Nissa (finished with her snack in the bar) but finally admits who she is when MegaStrike appeals to their common Russian heritage and the shame of not taking a more active role in Hammer's situation and the invasion as a whole.

Sickle sighs and admits that she was severely injured in her last battle with Dr. Destruction years ago and had to learn to walk again - her heroing days are behind her, though she does still have her gear. She married a wealthy aristocrat and retired. She hates Dr. D more than anything else fro what he did to her and Hammer. She has heard rumors that he has something to do with the resistance and secretly hopes Dr. D will intervene personally so that she can team up with Hammer one more time and destroy him.

The team convinces her to lead them to Hammer's location to try and get him some help before the V'Sori take him down. They are careful not to mention anything about Destruction. She leads them to an Overpass where a group of homeless men apparently live, one of whom is Red Hammer. He is clearly disturbed ranting about aliens, villains, and the Doctor. The party struggles with their limited social skills to convince him to come along and has no luck until Nissa once again manages to glamour him into coming along quietly (there were some very strong rolls tonight).

Along the way the villains ask Scarlet what exactly happened in that last battle with Dr. D. She describes Hammer's attack on Destruction and that the mastermind hit him with a strange beam that she had never seen before and he disappeared with a flash. She assumed he had been disintegrated and she went berserk. She managed to crack D's armor and then he went into a rage that led to her being beaten into unconsciousness, with massive injuries and many broken bones. He took down several other members of the Russian team that day and they were never the same afterwards, disbanding a short time later. In his rage he went strictly physical, dropping his various beams weapons and using the raw power of his armor to physically beat down their entire team.

Having contacted Destruction on the way to the warehouse contact point, the Dr. is waiting when the team, the Red Hammer, and Scarlet Sickle arrive. As soon as he steps out of the door, the Russians start to go into a frothing rage, breaking Nissa's control, but before they can do anything Doc hits them with a beam that freezes them in place, then walks up and shoots them in the head with a blast from his megablaster, killing them both. He tells the team "I was listening to your conversation on the way in - they were beyond help, and we don't have the luxury of imprisoning them or trying to reason with them. You did an excellent job here, it just didn't work out."

He went on: "They would have been a powerful ally for our movement. Despite the outcome here I am impressed with your work. I would still like to try and bring in another powerful ally and I would like your cell to take the lead on it. This time we will recruit an old villain, so he should be a little more open to contact from us. You'll be heading to Japan to bring back The Monolith."

DM notes:

• My team has very limited social skills - no persuasion, limited intimidation and streetwise. Nissa's mind control makes up for a lot, but I would be happier if we had a few more option besides it and Night Blade's Jack of All Trades edge - we're relying on a lot of default rolls to get through the non-combat encounters. I will say that this lack does lead to some very funny situations and we are having a lot of fun with it.
• City of Heroes is a very handy tool to have when running a supers game as it makes creating character images (and building images too if needed) easy and fun, both for the players and the DM. So much of the Supers genre is visual, having a picture of Hero X in his costume adds a lot to the game. The Champions MMO would work too. If you are interested, both games have free demo versions that have full access to the character creator so you can work through a characters look then drop them into the city and take a few snapshots of your new hero or villain in action, all without spending any money on it. The COH demo can be found here. The Champions Online demo here.

Necessary Evil - Session 4 - Underground

Our Party begins at Night Terror's hideout. Their comlinks all have a blinking light when they check them in the morning - they have voicemail. Dr. Destruction's voice comes through and tells them that he knows the now-deceased supervillain Terron had a secret base under Star City, and that he used a special geothermal power source to run it. Destruction needs that power and has placed a power terminal in the drop warehouse. He wants them to get the terminal, head underground, find the base, and hook things up. He suggests using the Underground Irregulars as guides.

The team is on board with this plan. They check out the device they will be transporting and decide to use the anti-grav clamp they kept from the incident with the robot to make it easier to move. They also do some investigation into how to get underground quietly. In the end they grav-clamp the device, load it on a truck, and head over to a nearby pumping station that has access to the sewers.

Terron's base was located in the caverns beneath the city which are below and separate from the sewers, but there are known to be access points from the sewers to the caverns. Night Blade's ninja sense detect one right away and the group heads down even deeper, planning to try and make nice with the Underground Irregulars as plan A. If that fails, plan B is to beat them into revealing Terron's base.

Once they enter the caverns they are quickly detected and followed by the Undergrounders, though our villains only have a vague sense of being watched. Distracted by this they are ambushed by a group of hungry G'Roks, alien beasts released into the sewers some time back to try and flush out the Undergrounders. Combat ensues and Nissa quickly discovers she has a hard time fighting the beasts - they are the size of a horse, heavily armored, and have an animal level mind, rendering them impervious to most of her offensive capabilities, though her Vampiric abilities mean she is also immune to most of their attacks. . Night Blade and Night Terror find their armor resists the creatures' claws and teeth but that a vicious shaking might not be fun, so their weapons come out and Night Blade cuts one creature cleanly in half with a mighty sweep of his katana. MegaStrike, tough enough and strong enough that he fears no beastie uses his fists and piledrives one into the cavern floor with his powerful radiation-enhanced punch. The fight is fairly short, and our badguys emerge unscathed.

The Undergrounders have been watching and make contact after this fight. They lead the group to a large cavern where many people are gathered, including their leader - who is Valerie, the helpful prisoner from their first mission, who also displayed something of a crush on MegaStrike back then. She is very happy to see him again, and the rest of the group too. After hearing their mission she agrees to show them where the base is but she wants them to bring down food for her people - 1 ton of food. Nisavin considers mind-controlling the woman and Night Terror attempts to haggle with her over the timing - he wants to do it after hooking up the generator - but it's not looking good until MageStrike joins in and convinces her to do it his way.

A team of 5 Undergrounders leads the party to Terron's base. It is very apparent that most of the base collapsed during some kind of attack - maybe aliens, maybe a super hero - but the generator is still intact. Terror phases out and checks out the room through the walls and notices several dead G'Rok's in the room along with ANOTHER GIANT ROBOT! This robot however is all spiky, pointy,and bladed, much different than the Cosmic Robot the group recovered at the golf course.

Getting in to the room is tricky as the tunnel is a drainage tunnel, not a passageway. MegaStrike takes his time to carefully widen the hole until it's big enough for him to pass through while Terror watches the room (remaining phased out) and Nissa and Night Blade watch the cavern passages. All is quiet though (no more G'Rok encounters) and the opening is large enough after about an hour.

Mega steps into the room and almost instantly the robot lights up, announces "STOP THE INTRUDER", and attacks. Mega punches it and stuns it while Night Blade drives his katana deep into the metallic torso. Nissa finds she can barely scratch it. Night Terror phases in, pulls out his HeroKiller pistol and begins blazing away, actually penetrating the armor with the big gun. The two dark viallains manage to connect with their special powers and succeed in blinding the robot completely. After a brief struggle, Terror finishes the thing off with his dark blast that penetrates into the bot and fries its inner workings.

With the robot guardian down MegaStrike plugs the device in and starts it up. Their commlinks beep immediately as Destruction informs them he is receiving the power signal. He congratulates them and says he will be in touch. After using the smashed bot to block the passageway that accesses the generator the group heads back to the Undergrounders HQ.

Once there they work out some details with Valerie then part of the team heads up to arrange the food delivery while Mega stays behind to close the deal with the attractive leader of the Undergrounders.

DM Notes:

• This was a pretty loose session. Since we hadn't gotten together in a while we spent a lot of time talking about things other than the game. I didn't push very hard since part of the reason we get together is to chit-chat and once we got started we stayed on track pretty well. That said one thing I like about Savage Worlds is that it plays so quickly that we had time to to that talking and we still got through a complete adventure with 2 combats, some legwork, and some roleplay/negotiation. Most other systems would not have allowed us to do that.
• The Underground Irregulars are not especially well detailed in the book so I described them as part street gang, part homeless people, part resistance group and a little like the Outsiders from the Batman comics. There may be some minor supers among them but it's mainly regular humans who have chosen to live outside society and they are not liked by the aliens. The romantic interest with the leader was something that got started in session 1 so I was pleased that the players continued with it and it turned out to make things a lot easier for them.
• Mechanically there was some confusion for all of us with the G'Roks - they aren't mentioned as having heavy weapons for their claws which are described as "razor sharp and hard as steel" so I ruled them to not be heavy attacks. Now this matters because 3 of the villains have heavy armor and if you don't have a heavy weapon they are essentially immune to that attack. You can bypass armor by attacking at a -6 and I decided the G'Roks would try to shake them hard if they couldn't bite through but it would take the same -6 to set this up. This really decreased the threat level of the things, which is my fault. When I read over them before I saw the heavy armor descriptor for them and just assumed they had heavy weapons too. Reading it when the fight started I realized they did not. I probably should have thrown in more of them to make it a slightly bigger threat but I didn't.
• Defenses are interesting as we discussed after the game. Heavy armor means you are immune to non-heavy weapons but it doesn't actually raise your toughness - it's just a property that you can have regardless of the toughness number. MegStrike has the highest toughness in the group at 15, but he doesn't have heavy armor. At first I thought this was a problem but after looking it over most normal guns and weapons do about 2d6 or 3d6 in damage which is unlikely to do more than Shake him in one hit, so he is already nearly immune to normal weapons anyway! Most man-portable heavy weapons do 5 or 6d6 or more in damage which is going to punch through everyone's defenses (including his) anyway and heavy armor doesn't help you there. So it looks to me right now like if you really want to be tough, you don't sweat heavy armor - you just build up your toughness. Heavy really only helps if you want to be bulletproof but do not want to build up your vigor stat to high levels. It lets those pistol rounds bounce off but it means when they bring out the bazooka your toughness of 8 is going to be a problem. This is the kind of stuff that really only comes out in play and ensures that your second character will be much more efficient than your first.
• Bennies continue to be used very conservatively - none were spent until more than halfway through the game, mainly in the robot fight, and everyone ended with at least 1. It's smart play, but I would like to loosen this up a bit, I'm just not sure how.

All in all it was a good session and I like the way the campaign is going. There is a lot more focus on character and story than on mechanics and XP's and it makes for a nice change from our prior 3rd edition D&D campaigns.

April Campaign Plans -- Necessary Evil

Another planning post since there's been a little bit of a gap here as well although the next session is scheduled for Friday, so more notes on that coming this weekend.

The game has gone very well and I am very happy with the system. I think for a campaign with a definite starting and ending point that it works extremely well. For a more open ended, let's just start some characters and play type of campaign ala most of our old D&D games it might not work as well but even there I can see some strengths. I can say that 4 sessions in (one character building and 3 play sessions) that I have no issues with the rules and no plans to house rule anything. The players seem happy with it too, no complaints so far. Not having to track hit points for multiple bad guys is just a revelation, it dramatically decreases the overhead for the DM.

So long term, there are 10 encounters that form the spine of the campaign but there are numerous other adventures that can be done along the way and there are tables for random mission and opponent generation included as well. Assuming we meet twice a month and get 1 encounter done per session, I could easily run this through the end of next year.

But I won't.

Here's why: I've noticed over the last decade or so of playing D&D3 that there is some real-world time fatigue that sets in with most campaigns. Even when I have planned out a set timeline for the game, or even a set deadline as in "I'm going to run this through December and we get where we get" that sometimes we don't get that far. People may be really excited when the game kicks off with shiny new characters and a clean slate, but schedules change, players miss or drop, new players come in halfway through, if there's not enough scenery changing it becomes a grind (this happened with Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and even with Tomb of Abysthor) but with too much scenery change it starts to feel like disconnected parts and not a continuous campaign (this happened when I mixed the Savage Tide Adventure Path with the Freeport Trilogy). I am guilty of this as well - I may be all fired up to start a new game but when I am reading the same set of adventures a year later, my enthusiasm may have dropped quite a bit. Some of this is having too many games and not enough time, and some of it is falling in love with adventure paths so that everything is pretty much planned out in advance, a bit of a downside when you realize it's going to take 2 years of biweekly play to get through the whole thing.

Anyway, back to Necessary Evil - I like this book too much to kill it with apathy. So I'm figuring twice a month for 8 months left in 2010 - that's 16 sessions. The players have gone though one spine episode and one side episode at this point. That leaves 9 sessions to cover the required episodes and 7 for side adventures, spill-overs, and missed sessions and we wrap it up at the end of the year. Sounds good to me - we will hit the highest points in the adventure, have a lot of fun, and have some good stories to tell when we're finished, and it will leave some of the material unexplored for the next time I run it, maybe with the apprentices in a year or so. I might reskin it to make it Marvel or DC or use City of Heroes as the background next time - COH is our only MMO in this house - shout out to Aluminum Man!

That's the plan for now. It could change drastically if schedules suddenly changed or if the player's took a dislike to the game - I don't see that happening but you never know. I f I can have this and a game or two of D&D going at the same time I will be a happy gamer.

Necessary Evil - Session 3 - Playing Through

The team climbs from the wreckage of the alien shuttle as the drones and K'Tharians close in around them. The alien robot gleams under the lights as the V'Sori scientist realizes he may need to take drastic action.

The alien scientist pulls out some kind of rod and begins doing things on his computer. Concerned, Nissa closes in to try and beguile him. Seeing that she's not close enough, Night Terror shoots him and he staggers, but doesn't drop. In the meantime, MegaStrike and Nightblade, freed of their bad luck, are rapidly thinning the alien minions.

The scientist really puts up a struggle, staying on his feet even when Night Terror shoots him a second time and resisting Nissa's mind control as well. Annoyed, she ends up grabbing the activation rod from his hand to prevent him from touching the giant robot with it, as the team assumes that's how it's turned on. In the end, the battered, frustrated scientist succumbs to a punch from MegaStrike and crumples to the ground.

The sound of alarms is heard in the distance...

Using the anti-grav clamp that the V'Sori were using, the villains move the robot to a small flatbed truck and cover it with tarp (vehicle theft not being something they are concerned with). They contact Dr. Destruction and arrange to meet him at the warehouse.

After some negotiations between MegaStrike and the Doctor, they drive the truck onto a waiting shuttle and depart the scene.

Nissa keeps the alien rod, though she doesn't mention it to anyone else. She's just kind of that way.

The adventure ends with the team back at the penthouse having drinks and relaxing after striking a blow at the aliens and avoiding major injury among themselves. All in all, a solid day's work.

GM Notes:

- This one was fairly short as we were all tired at the end of the week and spent a lot of time discussing all kinds of other things. Movies, schedules, and a potential 4th edition D&D game.

- The players did really well with getting the bot out of there. It was very professional, no panic, no paralyzing indecision.

- I was glad to get it wrapped up and give out their first XP's. I wasn't sure this was a great choice for their first run but it worked out well and everyone had a chance to shine.

- The relationship with Dr. Destruction is already interesting and I am sure it will develop in even more unexpected ways.

Necessary Evil - Session Two, Part 2: Driving Lessons

So the party has jumped into a car and headed out for the Rolling Hills Golf Club to investigate V'Sori activity on the course. Night Terror drives becasue hey, it's his car.

Arriving at the club, they have a little trouble at the main gate until Nissa leans across from the passenger seat and flashes her baby reds at the guard, convincing him that they do indeed have an appointment with the pro-shop manager and that he has in fact already called it in and gotten confirmation. (There was a brief moment of near-panic here as the group realized they had not worked out a cover story ahead of time, but they pulled through.)

Pulling into the parking area the group spreads out a bit and confirms that the activity is centered around the club watering hole the "19th Hole". Not wishing to appear conspicuous, they end up playing a round of golf (won by MegaStrike) both to kill time until it's dark and to give them more time to observe V'Sori activity levels in the area.

Finishing up their round they gather information from other players on the course and in the locker rooms, learning nothing especially revealing except that the course is where Champion once battled the giant robot guardian of The Outsider. Our villains instantly realize that this is probably the target of the excavation. Since it is nearly dark they decide to go ahead and take a look at the site directly.

MegaStrike, lacking all Stealth capabilities, is left in a "reserve position" while the other 3 baddies sneak over to the dig. They note a large hole in the ground, some drone guards, some K'Tharen diggers, and a V'Sori in a lab coat type garment who appears to be in charge. There is also a shuttle parked nearby. Shortly, the diggers back off and the scientist manipulates an anti-gravity clamp, using it to pull an intact giant robot out of the hole, practically rubbing his hands with glee.

Now based on the description of the battle with Champion, the party was expecting robot parts, not an actual giant robot. This is enough of a pickle that the team decides to signal Dr. Destruction to ask for some guidance. (I assume that the comm bracelets are mainly one-way devices but do include a red button to send out a signal indicating the team has something interesting or important - the Doc doesn't have to answer but it gives them an option if they want to try to bring him in. I was clear that it's not a "help me" button).

Dr. Destruction does come online fairly quick. The team describes what they have found and he agrees that they should retrieve the robot and bring it to the warehouse in Southpoint. If they can destroy it then that may have to do although getting the parts away from the V'Sori would still be important. He wishes them luck and cuts off. This was not exactly what the party was expecting, but they realize they can probably take the guards and escape with the robot - they are supervillains after all, stealing is not exactly new to them - so they forge ahead.

The key to the operation is the shuttle, so the plan is to jack the shuttle, load the robot, and get away, smacking down the guards as necessary. MegaStrike is called up to a closer position and the group springs into action.

Night Terror phases out and secures the shuttle while Night Blade goes into super-ninja mode and cuts down several drone guards before leaping onto the shuttle. MegaStrike draws most of the drones to him and works on beating them down with some assistance from Nisavin. There is a moment of uncertainty as the ninja figures out how to fly the shuttle and Night Terror tries out the blaster cannon in the nose, but the ship slowly lifts and glides over towards the robot.

Several drones are gunned down, Nisavin leaps into the back of the shuttle, and MegaStrike continues to occupy half the guard force. Things are going well for the team as they start to discuss how to get the bot into the cargo bay. Then things go badly wrong.

As the scientist supervising the dig screams SHOOT THEM DOWN, one of the drone guards near him manages to do just that! One blast hits a weak spot on the belly of the shuttle, blasting through the hull and cutting all power to the craft. It crashes back in the treeline where the heroes had been hiding earlier. The ship was not at a real height (10' or so off the ground) so the heroes in the ship were not injured but they are down, stranded to some degree, and MegaStrike is outside the ship neck deep in K'Tharen excavators.

This is where Session 2 ended - Session 3 to come as soon as it happens! Spring Break has caused some delays around here but things are getting back on track now.

GM Notes:

- The whole session was a lot of fun as everyone is starting to figure out their characters both mechanically and personality-wise. Night Terror is a little flighty as he phases out as soon as any gunfire comes his way. MegaStrike is the team brick but always seems to get in just a little bit over his head. Nisavin is vicious but is really a jack-of-all-trades - a little bit HTH nightmare, some mind control, some stealth, and is the face of the party as much as anyone. Night Blade went absolutely nuts with his melee skills in the early part of the fight, then ended up being the shuttle pilot.

- The utility of a low-level mind control power is remarkable, especially considering the group has limited social skills. It really greases the skids in some situations.

- The single biggest plot turn was totally random - one of the drones landed a shot on the M'Buna that penetrated the hull - not an easy thing to do. Night Blade who was piloting the ship blows his piloting roll and manages to spin the thing. A penetrating hit also means a roll on the critical hit table and Will, playing Night Blade, felt the need to anger the dice gods by saying "Just don't roll a 12" which he promptly does, which means the ship is wrecked and ends up flipping over and crashing spectacularly. The only thing that saved the crew is that they were only about 10' off the ground when it happened. Totally unexpected and totally hilarious when it happened!

Now I normally hate to end a session in the middle of a combat but it was getting late and we were all tired, the characters were low on bennies, and I decided it was dramatically appropriate to end it there, visualizing a 24-esque multiple panel closing showing the 3 characters inside the ship shaking their heads, MegaStrike surround by enemies looking over his shoulder as the ship flips over and crashes, the V'Sori scientist grabbing a pistol and shouting at his guards, and the motionless robot gleaming in the artificial lights, looming over all.

Necessary Evil - Session Two, Part 1 - "Homecoming"

Last time we ended as the villains were dropped off in Southpoint after helping/being helped by Dr. Destruction. FireStrike was killed extracting a prisoner, and MegaStrike picked up a female prisoner named Valerie.

As we begin, Valerie thanks Mega and runs off into the city. Another escaped prisoner who had been unnoticed until now thanks to his amazing ninja skills introduced himself and asked if he could stay with one of them until he could find his own place. This brought up the question of where they were going to stay. Fortunately Night Terror is extremely wealthy and has a penthouse condo in Uptown, so he invited everyone back to his place.

Interlude: Correct Character names - I kind of dropped this last time so here, for the record, are the names and the players:

Night Terror, played by Dave: he has a ranged Dark Energy blast and can make himself intangible, phasing through walls and being difficult to hit. He was a hired assassin before the invasion (and probably after too)

MegaStrike, played by Steve: He is strong and tough and somewhat radioactive. He is from Russia and has an accent and was clearly a super-thug before the invasion.

Nissaven, played by Aubrie: She is a teenage vampire. She is fast, strong, and can hypnotize people into doing what she wants if she can get close to them.

Night Blade, played by Will: he is a Ninja who is deadly with his katana*, fast, and stealthy.

(This is the replacement for FireStrike, RIP. I brought him in this way because it was easy, fast, and fit the character - less bogdown, more fun.)

So the team proceeds to Night Terror's pad to hang out and decide what to do next.

(DM note: I am not afraid to push things along as a DM** but when I am starting a new campaign, using a new system, and have a new group of players I like to back off and let them figure things out. So there was a LOT of in and out of character talk and debate and teasing and general bonding. I liked it so I let it go on without an urgent call from Doctor D. Productive? not especially, but it beings the players together and that's a long term investment worth making.

So Day 1 of the campaign is breaking out and then finding their way back to the Stackpole Building and the condo.

Day 2 of the campaign starts off with the group looking at a way to strike back at the V'sori - some were thinking money robbery, some were thinking assassination - basically they're looking to hurt these guys where they will feel it. Several rumors were heard and they decided to head out to the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Prospect Point, where talk around the building says that the aliens have closed the 19th hole and started some kind of project. The party gets in the car and heads out. Notice - no calls to Dr. D, no out of character worrying about the plot, just find a target and go - I have great players.

This is getting rather lengthy so I will continue in part 2

* I know ninjas didn't use katanas but 30+ years of Hollywood is getting in the way of that.

** I know it's not D&D so I technically shouldn't be the "DM" but we've used that for so long that I'm always the "DM" even if there aren't any dungeons in the game we're playing. Plus being a football fan and a bit of a car guy "GM" already has some fairly common uses that are just confusing. So "DM" it is.

Necessary Evil - Session One - The Campaign Begins

I gave the players some time to tweak their characters after the first combat in case they saw a glaring weakness they wanted to fix. Then we moved on.

Now we flash forward 5 years. The earth has been occupied for 2 years. The Heroes are dead or in hiding. And our Villains have been captured by the V'Sori...

The adventure opens with the PC's captured and carried aboard a V'Sori shuttle, wearing nullifier cuffs that disable their powers. Dr. Destruction, Villain Numero Uno of this universe, shoots it down and brings the surviving villains aboard his craft and makes them an offer - join me or die - then ejects them from the craft. The PC's all join so he blows their nullifiers off before they hit the ground and are told to rescue a particular prisoner form the alien prison camp they are now landing on. Going along, they gather on the roof of the main prison building and FireStrike blasts a hole in it.

The group jumps down into the prison. MegaStrike and Nissa start freeing prisoners and make friends with one who tells them where their target is. NightStrike starts looking for him, while FireStrike starts blasting the cyberdrone guards.

As MegaStrike frees their quarry, NightStrike leads him to the exit hole. FireStrike drops another guard while Nissa glamours the last one using it to shoot the new drones coming through the front doors.

The new drones shoot Mega, Nissa, FS, MindJack (their target for extraction) and Valerie (the helpful female prisoner). Valerie and MJ go down, so MeagStrike and NightStrike start lifting them up out of the whole while FireStrike and Nissa's drone return fire. Tension is high at this point as the drone blaster cannons are pretty potent.

In the end MegaStrike and Nissa make it up to the roof with MJ and Valerie while NightStrike phases through the walls to escape. FireStrike's luck runs out as one final lucky shot hits him hard, blasting him into a cell wall and knocking him into critical condition. As the other villains escape FireStrike expires on the floor of the alien prison camp.

Notes:

• Everything I read said the drones should be pushovers for the heroes and the adventure has 12 of them guarding the prison. I only used 8 and ended up with 1 dead villain and 2 wounded villains. It's not the toughness of the drones, they are easy enough to destroy, but it's their gun - it's a 3d6 blaster cannon that can fire 3 shots per round, or one shot per round to overcharge it and make it 'heavy'. Since all of my villains have heavy armor the drones fired one round on normal single shot then switched to overloaded mode after that. I had 4 already inside the building then 4 more showed up on round 3 and caused all kinds of carnage. Without the Heavy option the drones are no threat to the villains, but with it small groups of them are very nasty - I even had them fire at separate targets to endure no one was being bennie-drained and it still hurt. I'll be thinking about this for awhile, but 12 of them would have been a TPK I am sure.
• FireStrike's death was entirely due to being out of bennies. The player said he thought we would stop after the bank robbery so he felt fine burning them all - he didn't realize how fast things played and that we would have time for a second scenario. I offered to let him keep using FS as in this campaign you aren't dead unless you choose to be, with some possible complications (like a rescue mission as session #2) but he decided to let him go and make a new character for next time.
• Heavy armor is important and it's kind of like mega-damage armor in Rifts: Having it doesn't mean you're invulnerable to everything but NOT having it means a lot more things are going to hurt you.
• The game plays FAST (as advertised) but it doesn't feel abstract or "lite" at all. It has a lot of the positives I associate with old-school D&D. You don't need a 3-page character sheet to have a mechanically interesting character. By the end of the night I felt like we had a pretty good handle on the flow of the combat system.

Session #2 is this weekend and I am looking forward to it.