More Memorial Day Pictures and Super Heroes

[orikes]

These are kinda belated, but here they are.













In other news, my gaming group is FORCING me to try and run a game. I'm going with a super hero game since that's the genre I know best and no one else is interested in running. They're all willing to play in it, but no one loves it quite enough to run it. Just little old me.

Currently the plan is to have the entire group start off as normal people who, through a variety of circumstances I already have worked out in my head, develop super powers. This way it gives them a chance to learn the system along with learning their powers at the same time. And, because they're developing them in game, it's no big deal to tweak them a couple of sessions in if they're not happy with how they're working.

I've got five players. One likes the cosmic power and the versatility that offers. I was hoping he'd go with his original idea which was 'the guy who can't die'. I would have had more fun helping develop the powers and stories for that one. His wife wants someone who has the ability to travel in space without a spaceship. That's easy enough, but making sure she's useful on the planet is going to be a bit trickier. The other girl in the group just said, "Mental type. Kinda like a cross between Jean Grey and Rogue!" I'm pretty sure she only has the movies to go off of. One of the guys is in love with trying to emulate Jack Jack from Incredibles. (Hi skotte!) The final player.. I have no idea what I'm going to do with him. He's gone from "I want to fly!" to a deaf dominatrix (long story) with sonic powers to ... I have no idea, but I imagine the idea will probably change by tomorrow when we get together to make characters.

God help me with this. I've been a gamer since 1986 and I've never actually run a game of my own. I guess I should get it in before my twentieth anniversary when it comes to gaming. Yeowch. Anyway, wish me luck. :)

Comments

[7th-son.livejournal.com]

You'll do just fine.

For your first adventure, don't worry so much about going out of your way for the space hero. If the character can do that, she can probably fly, and she's immune to tons of stuff, and she probably is either really strong or shoots lasers out of a body part, so her abilities will still be handy. Later on, you can give an NPC a disease incurable by Earth scientists, and off she can go, to the rescue.

Alternately, invade the earth with aliens. This will give both her and the cosmic guy something to do.

For the cosmic guy, you want to watch how powerful you make the bad guys. Because cosmic power is expensive, and that means he will not be able to have many ranks of it. Which means he'll have a +8 energy blast when everyone else has a +10. He'll keep you busy with the extra effort and HP rules, doing wierd things with his powers, but if you make villains that can bounce a +10 blast off their chest, the +8 guy is going to get really frustrated.

Cosmic heroes usually need cosmic villains, and since cosmic villains travel through space, you can tie this into the space girl too.

The "Jean Gray + Rogue" would be really hard to do if the player was serious. Rogue is a huge ton of points because of the way her powers work, and Jean is no slouch either. But if your player is working off the films, these characters are much tamer in comparison, and you may be able to get away with it. Again, you might want to recommend specializing in a couple of core powers for now -- either the psychic hero or the power-stealing hero would be whole characters on their own. She might want to pick one. You know the mental powers pretty well from Haley.

Jack Jack has one power: "Whatever I want, as long as it's funny." This is very hard on the GM, especially because the character can't really communicate with other characters and he's got an Int of about 5. Baby talk will be funny, for all of about half an hour before it becomes tedious. What you might try is to arrange something more or less self-contained for Jack Jack. That is, while everyone else is fighting Major Rager, Jack Jack has fallen down a chimney or something and is surrounded by a dozen fire elementals. This gives him something interesting to do, without forcing the other players to try and talk to a baby.

I know that probably sounds impossible to do, but you would be surprised: just run both combats at the same time, on the same init chart, as simultaneous actions, and you'd be amazed how smooth it goes.

As for the guy who keeps changing his mind -- I sympathize.

Kibbitzingly Yours,
JT

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Well, the guy wanting Jack-Jack doesn't want to play a baby. He just likes the random nature of the power set. I'm thinking maybe it can be done with Alternate Form. Maybe. I'll have to take a peek at it some more.

I think, from talking to him, that he may end up with something a similar to Quintessence and based around elements with a bit of randomness thrown in. I know how I would do that in Champions, but need to figure out how to do it in M&M now.

Of course, if I'm wrong, speak up now, Skotte. ;)

[skotte.livejournal.com]

You got it exactly .. The powerset of Jack-Jack is interesting. Tho 7th_son makes a good point: he really only has the power of Whatever-is-fFunny. I do have the concern of having too many powers, or too broad a power spectrum.

However, An idea I have been treading into is making the character a teenager, rather wild and kind of emotionally unstable sometimes. And thus, prone to semi-wild fFits of powers, having little or no control over them. If a teenager is too, you know, conventional or something, i could go the crazy-person route. again, very little control over how the powers act and when. Might have a random-table of stuff which might happen when provoked.

But that's stuff I don't know if can be done, or is even necesarry. You do know more about the system than me.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Remember, you're making a person without powers first. The powers won't influence your character until you actually get them in game. (I think Woody is forgetting this too.)

And a teenager is fine. :)

I think I actually have a fairly good idea how to give you an interesting power set with what you're interested in. I think your character will be fun.

[skotte.livejournal.com]

I'm really happy to see you run :) Don't worry too much, we all realize you've never run a game before; so we'll be there to support you all the way :)

take comfort in this: I'll probably be the next one expected to run a game :) (prolly not fFor a while -- 3 games at once is *plenty*!) but anything you are fFeeling right now .. it'll be someone else's turn soon enough

Cheers!! I'm sure you'll do great!! :)

[pomr.livejournal.com]

Don't sweat it. EVERYONE goes through this at first. The group is like 'Run for us!' and then someone gets the panic attack. :)

7th Son gave you some very good advice. As to the Jack Jack powerset; he's primarily Alternate Form, probably with Variable Effect as an extra, and then various other forms stunted off the base power.

So...

Alternate Form: Solid [Special: Iron; Extra: Variable Effect; Stunts: AF: Energy--Fire, AF: Solid--Reptile Monster; Cost: 6PP/Rank, +4]

This would allow a very flexible character, the Variable Effect alone is pretty sweet. :) Just a thought.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Jack-jack is the inspiration rather than the bible. The character is going to be more of a mystical conduit. Sorta. He'll have four alternate forms:
Energy - Fire
Liquid - Water
Solid - Earth
Semi-Solid - Air

They are also uncontrolled. So he can't really choose which one he gets. He'll have a small percentage chance of getting the form he wants, but more often it'll be up to a die roll. He's also going to have uncontrolled Precog and Postcog (and ICly won't be able to tell the difference between the two). He's also got a little bit of illusion, so he can share his hallucinations. ;)

The character is a Vietnam Vet who's spent the last 30 years hearing voices and going in and out of institutions. Now the voices are going to be real.