Memory Lane: Renegade for V&V

The final of my three characters from Mike's game set in the 2037 Washington DC Metroplex, This was born of wanting to play a smarter, more detective oriented hero on the nights when no one else was showing up to game. Legerdemain was the noble hero type, Impact was a blunt instrument, and I wanted to play a front and center martial artist vigilante detective. I'm not sure why I decided to make the character at least nominally Jewish - most likely to to do something different from my others - but since the source books Mike was borrowing from had a lot of 1980's next generation Nazi villains in them the character morphed into a Nazi hunter shortly after his creation. 

And there ain't nothing wrong with punching Nazis. 

Today i have no recollection why I wanted to lean so hard into being a terror of the night that I had Heightened Charisma B and Prejudice to insure massive negative reactions from everyone, but I also know we weren't using the charisma rules as written (who did?!) this combo just had him be super scary and intimidating for everyone. I don't think I ever read Spider-Woman but the combination of his superhuman charisma and the prejudice ability are almost like here pheromonal power where everyone was either attracted or terrified by her. (hence the 'to know her is to fear her" tag line) - something about his darkness powers made him scary as hell. 

Renegade (Isaac Pearlman)

Side: Good    Experience level: 5

Affect/Gimmick: Two-fisted detective hero, terror of the night, hunted by the law and the cops both, who turned into a Nazi hunter. Very inspired by Batman Year One, I would even do the narration to my journal hard boiled hero voice over while playing. Since he's a shadow in the darkness there isn't really a visual image the manriki-gusari was inspire by the hero making one in the Guardians of the Flame series. 

Status: Wanted by both local and federal law enforcement for several deaths (he didn't kill them, but people do tend to die around him) and hated by several criminal organizations and feared/despised by the remnants of Nazi power, Renegade is a purely solo hero. 

Powers: 6

1. Heightened Strength A +13 (this is a lot of training but also effects from the injection as his carry cap is superhuman)
2. Heightened Agility A +10
3. Heightened Expertise: +4 to hit with manriki-gusari (+3 to hit +1d4 damage; this has a blunt side to the chain and a curved edge side to the chain, and his current model is SR 22; he carries a spare that is SR 12)
4. Heightened Charisma B: +22
5. Prejudice: Some aspect of the injection that gave him his shadow powers has made him terrifying to both sides as Renegade, and slowly cost Isaac his secret identity. 
6. Darkness Control: can create or control shadows, range is 69", 19" radius. PR 2 to create/reshape and one action to create/maintain
1. Invention: He can modulate the light level in the darkness, making deep shadows with darker shadowy shapes inside them. This counts as Illusions A, but only for black and white images and counts as reshaping 
7. Mutant Power - Shadowwalk: when inside shadow or darkness he can 
1. See as if it were daylight (note that he can't see through shadows he isn't in or isn't controlling. imagine a space of light acting as 'insulation' against this power).
2. Cling to walls/ceilings
3. Teleport 7,600" range, PR 5 per use. 

Weight: 192                Basic Hits: 4    Agi Mod: +0

S: 25         E: 12          HP: 34

A: 24         I:  17          Pow:  76

C: 32                           Move: 61 ground or 7,600 teleport (7.5 miles) 

Accuracy: +4 (+11 total with manriki-guisari) 

Damage Mod: +3

Reactions Mod: -6 vs both good and evil

Carrying Cap: 1615    HTH: 1d10

Inventions: He has one invention with his darkness control, above, and the following permanent inventions. He's usually using an inventing point per level on one shot inventions to defeat individual foes. 

1. Microrecorder/speaker lets him both record conversations and plant them to replay where convenient. This is used both to capture damaging information and confessionals and to set up confusion inside the darkness. 
2. Safecracking Kit: This high tech kit gives him a +4/+20% bonus to open electronic or classic safes and locks without leaving marks. 

Background/Origin:  Isaac Pearlman (American, Research/Technology and Law Enforcement) was a forensic scientist who was assisting the clean up of a V.I.L.E. experimental location (as it happens, the one Impact escaped from) who discovered a vial of an experimental human enhancement drug. Unable to leave well enough alone he continued to research it, and finally injected himself with it. Already a highly skilled martial artist, his human potential was enhanced, letting him become faster and stronger. Something happened to his psyche and personal magnetism, giving him a terrifying intensity that started scaring off people he didn't already know well. And most importantly, it gave him an affinity for shadows and darkness that would make him the ultimate spy... or assassin. 

Using these powers he started spying on, and disrupting, criminal activities across the greater DC metroplex. Originally targeting V.I.L.E., he was instrumental in bringing down B.A.D., and collecting information on FORCE  (not from the module, a NPC vigilante in Mike's campaign) which he ultimately decided to not reveal. Finally stumbling across a new Nazi party in the US, Renegade found his true calling as a Nazi hunter, and has focused specifically on their activities ever since. 

Renegade doesn't kill himself, but he has no issues with maneuvering his opponents into attacking and killing each other, either through fostering a sense of betrayal, shadow plays to mask his activities, pushing groups to attack each other Red Harvest style, or similar methods. This indirect body count plus the unsettling nature of his superhuman charisma means he'll never team up with anyone. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (July 12)

This week's reads

Knave Second Edition: I was in Ben Milton's Kickstarter for this hyper stripped down version of D&D for OSR play. I gotta admit that for what it is designed to do it is pretty sweet. Milton designed the game to run for 5th graders (about 10-11 year olds for those of you not in the states), and honestly with the inclusion of another adult GM at the library I kind of want to start next school year shifting over to Knave and run Tomb of the Serpent King followed by cobbling stuff from the Dyson Logos map set I just Humble Bundled. Lots of the book is random tables to provide inspiration or specificity on magical or weird things at the drop of a hat, and that's great. I'm not 100% sold on the magic systems, but they make sense internally and produce an interesting world, so I'm not gonna kvetch.

Astro City: The Dark Age (which is in two volumes): This was originally meant to be the second volume of Marvels which didn't focus on Phil Sheldon (the sequel that did continue to focus on Sheldon did come out, and it's much less intricate than this), eventually making its way to Astro City. It's a solid read on it's own - a little overlong perhaps - but there's an extra layer of fun in tying each of these back to their birthplace Marvel plotlines. It's obvious that the Blue Knight is the Punisher, for example, but the whole sequence at the end of book 3 I was sure was tied to Serpent Throne stuff from the Avengers originally, through Busiek's redacted notes, was meant to take place in the Hellfire Club during the Dark Phoenix plot. I think it works better here then it would have in Marvels volume 2, because the creative team was able to make up what they needed to move the story forward and not be locked into the continuity (even if playing games with that continuity is it's own sort of fun). 

Astro City is a great resource for anyone trying to follow the V&V mold and build a campaign from scratch. All of the characters are very distinctly their own things while still being recognizable as their comics inspirations. Once they're set, Busiek plays out their stories in a logical way, taking them further from their inspirations, just as your own campaign would do. He locks down hard points in the extensive history early on, and then comes back and builds on them piece by piece as needed. Time passes, characters change and grow. Most game worlds (and independent publishers) have their own Superman, their own Batman, but none of them feel as well realized to me as Samaritan and Confessor. Check these out if you haven't before, if only for game inspiration.

 

Memory Lane: Impact for V&V

Continuing from the other day, here's the second of my three PCs in Mike mid/late 80's V&V game and more old fogey reminiscing 

In my memory we must have started this sooner than 1987 since I graduated in 1989, but it couldn't have been earlier than the September 1986 publication date of this comic, since this was the visual inspiration:

Steve Lightle was the bomb 

Which means for my memories to jibe I had to have played some summers in college (which I know I did) but also that we played a metric ton of games when I was in High School. It's hard to imagine now, especially with my old man schedule and watching my kids struggle to get in game time, but we prioritized gaming so much back in the day. 

In any event, Mike was the one who had Opponents Unlimited, Super Crooks and Criminals, and Most Wanted Vol 3 as source material, which means we had to deal with V.I.L.E. and B.A.D., as well as a lot of Nazi adjacent villains; who thought we would be dealing with those 50 years in the future? I mean really? 

I did a long breakdown of this one across these posts

Mike was a firm believer in what would now be seen as OSR style play - actions had repercussions. Nothing was easy. Mistakes lived with you. Victories were seldom 100%. The monsters want to win. The earth elemental steps on your head to make sure. OK, not that in a supers environment but you get the idea. As a result of some frustrations of how Legerdemain with his classic good guy attitude was unable to score heavy victories against V.I.L.E. (who were very organized and national in Mike's game), I brought in a different character with a different attitude. Plus I really wanted to play with the Armor rules in V&V, which are a great translation of the power from the comics.

I've been torn on this but I'm going to present Impact as I originally played him with notes as to how I would do the design now. 

Impact (Adam Kuriakin)

Side: Good    Experience level: 7

Affect/Gimmick: Thug turned anti-hero out of vengeance against his former employer. He's a but of a loose cannon on a road to redemption. The visual image for the character was the armor on this cover of Creatures on the Loose, a book title so 1970's that it came with its own bell bottoms and giant lapels. 

Surprisingly, it's Adolph Hitler in the armor; Also surprisingly, the armor changes color inside the issue.

Status: Wanted by both V.I.L.E. and the police, Impact is a hero in that he is a villain who targets and disrupts other villains. He funds his activities by raising V.I.L.E. and other villain organization bases for the cash and technology he needs to keep his armor running. 

Powers: 4

1. Mutant Power Device: This reflexes booster partially imbedded in his forearm increases his agility by x1.5 for initiative purposes only. (round down, currently 24) 1 charge/round, 14 charges. (These days I would make this a Bionics so it's fully embedded and have it alter his initiative interval from a 15 down to 10; he wouldn't go first but a 5+ would have him act on 21, 11, and 1, rather than a 7+ for 31, 16 and 1)
2. Armor B (Device) 100 ADR, with 3 inset powers
1. Heightened Strength +20
2. Heightened Senses: Telescopic vision (range penalties are 1/10th normal), Sensory Protection (-4 to be hit by sonic powers or flash attacks), Heuristic Analytics Suite (+20% detections) (why didn't I just triple his detects? gets to the same place...)
3. Screamer Missiles: the spikes on his armband, he carries 6 at a time, range is Ax15 (240"), HTH +4 to hit, 1d8 damage but Sonic Carrier (1d12) damage, 3" radius explosion. 
3. Energy Field Harness (Force Field device modified to mirror Flame Powers + Absorption Device): This torso mounted harness allows him to manipulate kinetic energy for several effects. It has 32 charges total for all uses. Assume a 15 in all basic characteristics
1. Energy Field: one action to create brightly glowing energy field around body; this is needed to use other powers.
2. Energy Blast (as force field): 2d8 damage, 30" range, 1 charge/shot
3. Flight: Move at 45 MPH. 1 charge/3 hours of flight.
1. Invention: Acceleration device lets him kick up to 900 mph. Doing so requires he be in his armor for the heuristic analytics and uses 1 charge per hour from his reflex booster. 
4. Personal Force Field: 1 charge per 8 points of damage repulsed or 4 points that penetrate; this can be considered automatically started with the energy field creation if he chooses to do so, but continued uses requires actions as Force Field
5. Absorption: One action and one charge to convert damage blocked by field to Carrying Capacity (25 lbs. per point) or charges for the energy field harness (1/point done, charges past 32 are lost) (Yes, this means that if he has a saved action and takes a 16 damage hit he can either get +400 lbs carry or (+16-1 for absorption -2 for the force field charge) +13 charges; I felt that was worth the nerfing the carrying capacity baseline on Absorption)
4. Reduced Charisma: -6 , Max Charisma = 9 (the original character didn't have this, but given how I now understand the Charisma modification roles; given his near constant stealing of the enemies gear and money his charisma will never be high, but this does mean he gets bonuses with non-V.I.L.E. Evil characters)

Weight: 204                Basic Hits: 5    Agi Mod: +0

S: 14/34     E: 13        HP: 16/33 in armor

A: 16          I:  12        Pow:  55/75 in armor

C: 6                            Move: 43" or 63" in armor, 198" flight 

Accuracy: +2 

Damage Mod: +1

Reactions Mod: -2 vs good, +2 vs evil

Carrying Cap: 4,142    HTH: 2d8

Inventions: see above 

Background/Origin: Adam was a street thug pulled in as a baseline recruit for V.I.L.E., and he was picked by Sir Lemur as a test subject. Given Lemur's mind control powers it's not like consent was required, and when Adam woke with a bio-mechanical implant in his arm. The biological boost of the reflex booster burned the sedatives out of his system faster than expected and Adam was able to bludgeon the V.I.L.E. medical technicians unconscious and make an escape, stealing several experimental devices on the way out. 

Once free, Adam started venting his aggression against his former employer in ways that caught the attention of other members of the criminal element who V.I.L.E. had been muscling out of the Washington DC metroplex. Adam, now Impact, found some allies he could pay off with stolen funds to keep his armor working and back engineer his screamer missiles. This has given him a small "support gang" to back him up, but he doesn't work with them publicly, A handful of heroes are willing to work with him in his relentless attack on V.I.L.E.'s activities - relations good enough for him to be able to show up at their bases to request help on his attacks as long as it was kept relatively secret. 

This character was really fun to play in the dark hero mold, very different from what Legerdemain was like. And I made good progress in his goals, including beating Prodictor Kapella, stripping off his suit and burying it in a collapsed mine when I couldn't destroy it. Lots of fun stuff.

New Salem: Renaissance - V&V Module Retrospective of Battle Above the Earth and To Tackle the TOTEM

The second to last of my retrospectives on these, I'm covering two modules I owned but never used. Sometimes one doesn't use things because they aren't great fits for your campaign. In this case I didn't use them because... they just don't seem very good.

I'll admit BAtE has an evocative cover
TOTEM is done by comics veteran Don Heck

so they look good enough....

Both of these modules suffer from similar flaws: both are two-part concepts, and both rely on some aspect of the Charisma rules in V&V to place the PCs at the sight of the adventure. BAtE has a page of "here's how you press pressure your PCs into going to rural Wisconsin for this adventure via the charitable contribution and Charisma system" while TOTEM simply states "we open with our heroes as guests at the unveiling of a super-hero history exhibit at this museum, because we know this is V&V and you're all good-guys who would do that." Neither sits well with me, but at least TOTEM just cuts to the action with something reasonable enough. 

Both then have a long swath of player frustration: a completely meaningless investigation sequence in BAtE before the heroes get the right local to lead them to a hidden spaceship (and get ambushed along the way), or an EXTENSIVE bit of NPCs talking to each other where the PCs are strongly urged to not interfere in TOTEM before super-villains attack. 

In both cases the super-villains are designed to get away: there's no way to stop the scout ship's escape fight and all the aliens disintegrate in BAtE; all the villains are equipped with one use for this scenario high speed jet packs in TOTEM. Why did the villains attack? to get a dimensional transporter they don't need (literally, this is a favor for another branch of the organization and it has nothing to do with the module's plot). Why did they do it during the opening? Just because. 

TOTEM then has a bit where a new hero who emerged in the fight lays out where the villains came from/went, to lead the heroes to location/fight two - a TOTEM base in the American Southwest. While BAtE has the heroes contacted by their government liaison about the space station being taken over and loaned a space ship to get up there. No investigative aspects, just here's the path to fight location two. Add a bunch of maps for the locations, the super-villains in each, and away we go. Both have a ticking time bomb to world devastation (Aliens in route to use station as holding spot for their orbital destruction beam! The senator from part 1 is actually Gregg Hartmann from the Wild Cards books and has the Wild Card virus as missel warheads!) that the PCs have to defeat the villains (or lose, once again get put into healing pods, have a chance to wake up, escape, and try again...). 

Some of the villains in BAtE are interesting designs even if none of them have reasons for helping the alien invasion other than "we're jerks". The TOTEM Villains are either fairly generic and have a logical reason to be there or not so generic and don't. I do admit I like that Chillblade is there because TOTEM is showing off and trying to recruit her to get her Canagian criminal organization. That's a neat bit of worldbuilding. I also appreciate that TOTEM are just straight up Nazis. Their thugs are Brown Shirts.

I commented earlier that the villain in this reads as an EXPY of Puppetman from Wild Cards and their plot is the release of the Wild Cards virus, but the module was published in 1985 and Wild Cards was released in 1987. Granted it was based on George R.R. Martin's _Superworld_ Campaign that ran from '83 to '85 in Albuquerque NM - the general area of the TOTEM adventure. But Puppetman was created by Stephen Leigh, who lived in Cincinnati, and wasn't part of that game group. It's all deeply perplexing. Is this just random coincidence? Quantum Entanglement? Let me know!

 

Memory Lane: Legerdemain for V&V

Back in the dark, misty days of the mid-late 80's I was running a lot of games, but thankfully one of the other people in my circle, Mike, was also willing to run things. So while I GMs the preponderance of the time Mike had active V&V and Marvel Super Heroes games, along with his homebrew action hero "Soldier of Fortune" system which was all d30. 

Mike's V&V game world was, interestingly, set 50 years in the future of _my_ V&V world. Mike extrapolated out politics from a mid 80's baseline so of course the USSR was still there, etc. but the future time solved the problem of us playing ourselves when people already had PCs based on them in my game, so we were able to do the comic book thing where, say, Jesse's PC Banner (as in 'star spangled!') was a tech genius millionaire. My main PC, Legerdemain, was an alien warrior monk who became BannerTech's chief of security as his sinecure while he was primarily a crime fighter. 

I can't tell you how much fun I had playing this character. It's likely because of him that "magnetic powers dude" is my fall back PC when I'm about to start a new campaign. He hit all the right notes for both a solo hero and and team player, with the HP needed to solve mysteries by getting he crap kicked out of him Sam Spade style. 

Legerdemain (Bak-Maran-Seng)

Side: Good    Experience level: 8

Affect/Gimmick: Magnetic powers hero who flies by means of a large metal disk, backed up by superhuman endurance and martial arts skills. A 'noble alien with single power', his origin borrowed a lot of Dr. Tachyon from Wild Cards (exile from world where nobility has powers who tries to protect Earth) with the visual being these guys from issue 29 of Legion of Super Heroes. I just loved the image of these guys, and when I got Magnetic Powers and Vehicle I built the PC around that. Given the source material I must have started playing him in early 1987.  

Status: Well established hero, has a 'legal job' at BannerTech which pays him enough to live on while he pursues justice and the defense of his adopted home. He's got OK ties with the government, which are shakier now that he has refused to join the federally sponsored super-term FORCE, run by the head of BannerTech's rival defense organization.  

Powers: 5

1. Heightened Endurance B: his alien metabolism along with extreme martial/monastic training give him +20 Endurance. 
2. Natural Weaponry: +3 to hit, +6 on damage in unarmed combat; he seldom uses this, but it's a great surprise backup. 
3. Magnetic Powers: A gift of his bloodline, he is a Tel-Ren Metal-Mage, able to control both meta and magnetism. Per book, 18" range, 9,000 capacity, PR 5/use, lasts 18 turns.
1. Invention: with a use of magnetic powers he can triple the structural rating of any metal. 
2. Invention: Carries a metal lasso/whip that is 15 lbs, 10' long, +3 to hit, +1d8 damage, SR 11.  
4. Paralysis Ray: a side effect of his magnetic powers, he can tune his blasts to stun people rather than damage them. 66" range, PR 7/shot
5. Vehicle (Item): His magnetic flying disk can reach 67 MPH in a constrained environment, 670 MPH when he has altitude and space to move, or MACH 6.7 in low Earth orbit, has 50/75 HP, and anyone on it has a Magnetic Powers defense. It is SR 14 metal, and can be compressed down to the size of a frisbee for easy carrying. PR 1 per hour of flight. 

Weight: 181                Basic Hits: 4    Agi Mod: +0

S: 18          E: 33        HP: 48

A: 16          I:  12        Pow:  79

C: 16                          Move: 67" ground, 295" on disk

Accuracy: +2, +5 HTH, +3 Magnetics. 

Damage Mod: +1 or +7 HTH

Reactions Mod: +2

Carrying Cap: 825    HTH: 1d8

Inventions: see above 

Background/Origin: He's a lesser nobility warrior-monk from the world of Tel-Ren, where each of the noble bloodlines has a single power, honed through martial training. The nobility of Tel-Ren had been considering Earth as a testing ground for their powers and technology, but Bak-Maran-Seng betrayed his people and raced ahead of them to warn humanity. This has, at least temporarily, forestalled the invasion. 

Since arriving on Earth he has fallen in with a larger group of heroes, with whom he regularly works. One of them, Banner, has arranged for his gainful employment. He has routinely clashed with the unstoppable energy monstrosity Power, secret assassin/vigilante turned government task force head FORCE, the League of Nations led by the telepath Mind Lazer, the Fighting Urban Commando Units (FUC-Us), the cryogenically revived Jim Shooter and his Marvel-Comics-Clones, the mercenary Warpath, and the dream-tulpa Oracle.