OFF CAMERA: SESSION FIVE
The Mutants & Masterminds (2e) campaign continues. I haven’t yet gotten the video recording set up for Roll20 which I
regret. Last night was an interesting session in that I switched up the
structure a little. I’ve been pretty sure that managing individual
character scenes in an online game was more difficult- especially in a
set up where I’m not getting video, only audio from the players. There’s
the risk of boring the other players or losing attention. So my
sessions so far have mostly been either Investigations, where they
divide into teams to track leads, or Conflicts, with a battlemap and
tokens. I did one character/NPC focused session early in the last
campaign that went well, but I assumed that was a fluke. Anyway, since
we’d had a couple of fight sessions in a row, I wanted to do some
development. I’d thrown a number of threads out in news reports, plus
the PCs each had some other leads hanging out in the open. I told them I
would go around and they could suggest something they wanted to do
alone or I’d throw something at them. I ended up being really solid-
everyone listened to each other’s stories, players were proactive, and I
was able to get to each player twice and give them scenes with
interactions and skill checks. I think everyone got about as much time.
Afterwards several players mentioned how much they’d enjoyed the
structure and said we should do that more often.
Mr. Freeze: The
session opened with Mr. Freeze returning back to his labs only to
discover his wife had died. His researchers had tried to get ahold of
him, but he’d been in the middle of his superheroics. One scientist said
directly, “Perhaps if you’d been here, we could have saved her life.”
Freeze started to crack and then he woke up. (This was a teaser, tying
back to the groups meeting with Nightmare a couple of sessions back. I
got the player pretty well.
Freeze first looked into the drone
sightings around the NYC area. Using the former-Cabal computers he was
able to identify some additional incidents. From that he determined that
they’d all happened within one mile of one of the July 4th Attacks from
two years earlier. At that time several different corporate and
technological sites had been destroyed by still unidentified terrorists.
Via model aircraft enthusiasts, Freeze also discovered that the drones
carried weapons as well. Next he spoke with Franklin Richards, head of
LexCorp, who offered to make their business relationship more insulated
and divided. Richards would lease the equipment to Freeze, giving the
hero more autonomy. Though suspicious, he agreed. Finally Prosecutor
Murdock asked Freeze if he would assist in a minor bust, taking down two
supervillains backing up a protection racket. This would be a publicity
opportunity. It would also be a chance to show that the pardoned
supervillains, the Furies, now working for the team had been
rehabilitated. Freeze worked with three of the team and managed to
quickly take down Tiger Shark and the Mad Scarecrow. Murdock thanked him
for his quick response to the request.
Mister Miracle
noted a discrepancy between the behavior of Dr. Simian’s earlier crimes
and his most recent operation. He contacted Sarge Steel who had been
put in charge of the Raft Supervillain Containment Facility. Steel
allowed him to meet with Dr. Simian and mentioned that strange
government agencies had been in to run some tests on the supervillain.
Miracle met with the super-gorilla and confronted him about the shift in
his crimes. After repeated gambits and pressure, the truth came out.
This Dr. Simian came from the future, grandson of the current villain.
But he came from a timeline created by the now-defunct Cabal as a
testing ground and exploitable resource. This Dr. Simian had come here
attempting to keep his timeline from collapsing. Something had happened
recently which had begun the collapse. Dr. Simian suggested to Miracle
that the Government Operatives who had visited earlier had an inkling of
that- and they would be back soon to Black Helicopter Simian away for
testing.
Mister Miracle, always headstrong, decided to break
Simian out. Using various tricks he set off alarms and used his
burrowing power to make it appear (badly) that Simian was attacking him
and knocking him through walls and floors. The plan did not go exactly
smoothly- with Miracle having to rush to disable camera, keep ahead of
guards, and figure out another option when they hit the external wall
force fields. Even worse, after a couple of levels, they crashed into an
occupied cell where Death Adder attacked the pair and poisoned Simian.
Miracle managed to KO the reptilian villain and then bore through the
final level out into the NYC harbor. He flew back to the base with the
freed and unconscious supervillain, calling Dr. Blake for his
assistance.
Loki, still disguised as Thor, spoke
with his minions. They confirmed killing Lady Jane Constantine who had
too much occult knowledge for her own good. However they still had no
new information on Loki’s lost brother. They had discovered that the
All-Father had briefly opened the Bifrost Gate and sent someone through
to the mortal world, though they didn’t know who. Loki suitably punished
his servant and then went to find Wong, servant of the missing
supervillain Cabal-member, Dr. Strange. He pressed Wong to tell him
where Strange was. Loki revealed his discovery that the sorcerer was not
dead. However Wong remained baffled, having done everything he could to
locate his vanished master. Loki allowed Wong to live but warned him to
bring to him any information uncovered.
Loki returned back,
considering his next plot to bask in stolen glory. Nightmare appeared
before him to congratulate the lord of lies on his success. The two
passed barbs back and forth. Nightmare spoke about the irony of Loki’s
having stepped forward to be the hero when his colleague, Nightcrawler,
refused to do so even to save several dozen lives. Nightmare asked when
Loki would carry out his plans- but then taunted the god. He could see
into even Loki’s dreams and how he’d come to adore the adulation of the
public. Then the phone rang, as Mister Miracle called for help dealing
with the poisoned Dr. Simian. Thor/Loki rushed to the base and was able
to use his stolen medical knowledge to save the supervillain.
Iron Man
decided to step out of his normal comfort zone and investigate a series
of killings occurring in a poorer and mostly Hispanic section of the
city. He arranged to meet up with the Heightened Crimes detective,
Lieutenant Castenada, handling the cases. Tony Stark flew down as Iron
Man and walked into the neighborhood taquieria, drawing stares and
attention. Castenada shook his head but briefed the nattily-clad Stark
on the situation, going over the cases and names. Iron man hooked up to
the Cabal mainframe and began to process the information- focusing on
the fact that the apartment of the last victim had been cleared a couple
of hours after his death. He hacked through an obtained cc footage the
police were still waiting on, showing a man arriving at the apartment
building in the middle of the night and leaving with a suitcase. Stark
ran the license plate at got a name, Serrano, and an address. Iron Man
wanted to contact a friendly judge to get an expedited warrant, but Det.
Castenada talked him down. They could simply go over and speak to the
man to see what he knew. They drove over after the officer declined to
be flown.
At the apartment, Stark and Castenada spoke to
Serrano, a seemingly weary old man. Reluctantly, he let them inside.
Stark took the lead with the questions- suggesting perhaps that the
victims had been members of a criminal network. Serrano denied this
vehemently; Stark pressed him on it leading to the major revelation.
Serrano explained that the latest victim had been a vigilante, a
superhero. However because of the Cabal’s control, fighters for justice
had to conceal themselves and seem inoffensive. Hence they became
Luchadors, traveling and fighting the weird and strange monsters
terrifying the common man: Mummies, Werewolves, Frankenstiens, the
Devil’s Robot, and so on. For decades, they had quietly operated at the
margins. Serrano had gone to gather up Draco Guerro’s mask from his
apartment after he heard of the death, to protect the deceased’s family.
Serrano knew that one of the other victims had also been a Luchador and
Serrano revealed his own masked identity, as Hermano Súper. However, he
had little else to offer, except that he’d heard of some kind of
underground fighting league which might or might not be related. Stark
and Castenada left, armed with more clues but still confused.
Nightcrawler
went to look into the situation with the three mutant alleged gang
members arrested. They’d been broken out of the precinct cells the night
before a transfer to the Raft. The papers had little details other than
the breakout had shut down most of the precinct until repairs could be
done. Nightcrawler made his way in and discovered that the floors of the
holding cells had been torn open from the sewers below. He also broke
into the police records and video tapes of the prisoners’
interrogations. The police questioned a woman with a protective field, a
young man secreting oily ooze, and a light-sensitive albino. The
detectives seemed to be focusing on their role in a series of break-ins
at high-tech offices. The three denied any involvement in that, stating
they’d just broken into a Mall after hours. The police, however, kept
hammering on them for the tech thefts. Nightcrawler checked out the
damage to the cells. It clearly had been done by someone with
telekinetic or matter manipulation powers. The three escapees and their
rescuers then fled out into the massive NYC underground network.
Nightcrawler
attempted to follow their trail, with little success. He spent some
time trying to get acquainted with how difficult it would be to move
around down here. Importantly, he tracked down various maps and layouts
and added them to his data device, giving him a better sense of his
location via GPS. Unable to track down the mutants, he decided to
contact the Mole Man. The under-earth master had worked with them during
the Starro incident. Mole Man agreed to help and sent some of his
people to take Nightcrawler to a location which might be tied to these
mutant “Morlocks.” There he found what had clearly been a long-term
underground campsite. However, it had been vacated some days before.
Strikingly, Nightcrawler found evidence that someone had been supplying
the Morlocks with food and other resources recently.
Game wiki can be found here: http://superheroesyearone.wikispaces.com/
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