The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents

[Teapot]

I don't think Daze works like that unless you jump someone before they activate a duration/endless power. But it's a hell of a way to bushwhack someone who attached all their powers to a low dice transform power.

[unitomega]

I'm actually with Tim B on this one. If Daze effects Duration/Endless/Permanent like that (without the Daze power having a comparable extra), this means that you can technically shoot a player with a tazer or flash bang him, and somehow reduce the effectiveness of his hardened bones or body armor, or suddenly make people who are intrinsically impervious to like, toxins or fire not immune. Duration I'm less caught up in, but Endless and Permanent are a big deal. And as much as I love WT for how it lets you mechanically model just about anything as a miracle, I'm not a huge fan of letting the crunch automatically triumph over the fluff of a game, especially if it makes no inherent sense.

An elemental with 2hd in (Immune to Fire) shouldn't suddenly become flammable just because I poked it with a stun gun or shot it with a sleep dart.

[Flawless P]

I'm actually with Tim B on this one. If Daze effects Duration/Endless/Permanent like that (without the Daze power having a comparable extra), this means that you can technically shoot a player with a tazer or flash bang him, and somehow reduce the effectiveness of his hardened bones or body armor, or suddenly make people who are intrinsically impervious to like, toxins or fire not immune. Duration I'm less caught up in, but Endless and Permanent are a big deal. And as much as I love WT for how it lets you mechanically model just about anything as a miracle, I'm not a huge fan of letting the crunch automatically triumph over the fluff of a game, especially if it makes no inherent sense.

An elemental with 2hd in (Immune to Fire) shouldn't suddenly become flammable just because I poked it with a stun gun or shot it with a sleep dart.

That is true. It's a seldom pointed out rule that doesn't have to be used if it doesn't make sense. Also an elemental should persumably have the Native extra meaning the power cannot be negated by (nearly)any means.

Either way one of the reasons I like WT is that it lets you apply rules when they make sense, and only if.

[unitomega]

That is true. It's a seldom pointed out rule that doesn't have to be used if it doesn't make sense. Also an elemental should presumably have the Native extra meaning the power cannot be negated by (nearly)any means.

Either way one of the reasons I like WT is that it lets you apply rules when they make sense, and only if.

Well, you've got a point about Native Power (A handy little extra that takes care of nullify) which does balance a cost for Daze, but I would still probably lean more toward not letting just regular Daze reduce Endless or Permanent pools unless it was also Endless/Permanent or made sense. Bending the rules to suit the fiction is sometimes for the better, and y'know Ross does it in HNA from time to time. Other times he bends rules because he's a horrible (lazy) monster.

[Flawless P]

Ross, I remember you saying that Wayfarer's suit gave him 1wd on skills.

Was this just mind skills or any skill?

If it was any skill did you just have a 1wd power with Augment and Focus? Seems like a nifty and not too expensive way to always succeed on skill checks.

[clockworkjoe]

Ross, I remember you saying that Wayfarer's suit gave him 1wd on skills.

Was this just mind skills or any skill?

If it was any skill did you just have a 1wd power with Augment and Focus? Seems like a nifty and not too expensive way to always succeed on skill checks.

yeah, that's pretty much what I did - picture it like an augmented reality interface/eclipse phase entopics - added in a few if/thens to limit to skills that would make sense and that kind of thing.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Quick update on my version of the New Arcadia setting since we're approaching our own end game:

The players have managed to reach, and secure, a moon base though it is of limited use to them. They keep discovering new details that Overwatch (their version of the Ideal) was even harsher than they had previously thought and, at the same time, perhaps not as powerful and in control. For example, they recently discovered that there was a treaty with the Lootians which allowed them to build a colony on Europa (and rights to outer system expansion) while the rest of the world believes that the Lootians simply left in defeat.

Currently they are trying to gain control of the Overwatch network of bases, systems, and equipment left on Earth for... well I don't think they even know what they want to do with it when they get hold of it. So they actived the AI on the moon (the highest clearance AI they've found so far) to help them and go told that they needed to form a collective of operatives to be recognised by Overwatch guidelines and given clearance for higher level status. They also found out that other people have gotten into Overwatch bases and gotten powers.

They gathered up a bunch of these others and held a conference on the moon and managed to get all of them to agree to at rough alliance and got the voted leader of their group cleared for B-Level access. What he was told by the AI after being cleared forced him to make a Stability roll. Next session they rest of the players might found out what it was.

[clockworkjoe]

Sounds like a fun campaign! I'm curious as to what knowledge forced a stability roll on the PC leader. Genocide of henchmen? Superhero orgies with dead celebrities? Undead celebrities? Project Liefeld?

[Tadanori Oyama]

In my instance of the New Arcadia concept Avalon wasn't a public element of Overwatch. The PCs only started hearing the name recently, after they got to the moon base. Only members with B-level clearance or higher get briefed on what Avalon is and what it represents, which ties closely into the rest of Overwatch as it existed in the 'present' day.

That's the main thing but there's about a hundred lesser afronts to normal morality mixed in that were done to preserve the status quo of the Earth. After the Lootian invasion was resolved, Overwatch cracked down on advancing technology among humans. This is where the Lovecraftian themes begin to mix in alot more in the game, with the heroes beginning to realize what is out there in the stars beyond the comfort of Earth.

Most fo the PCs are nominally in favor of keeping Overwatch, in some form, and of wanting to be part of the 'new generation' of it. They want to see Overwatch become a moral entity that's more transparent with the people of the world and what the lucky leader was the first is discover is how unlikely that vision of the future is, given what Overwatch's (and Avalon's) real goals are.

For the end game of this campaign, I envision a major conflict between the PCs Vs. any returning members of Overwatch.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Bunch of new plots for the PCs last night.

They are trying to figure out how they want to handle things, if they want to reform Overwatch or try something different. They also need to work out if they want to try to protect the world or focus on their own city.

The city has a number of minor ongoing wars:

Axiom University, the super science school, is bringing in new staff members for consideration. They are actually being "considered" for inclusion into the telepathic senior staff of Axiom who are working to advance super science to the levels of Overwatch members like IT. However, these newly brought in candidates are beginning to turn up dead. The police have ruled them suicides and found no evidence of foul play but the PCs (and Axiom) know them to be the work of Cobra Sentai, the martial arts assassin.

The drug trade, having been chased out of the lowest levels of society, has migrated up into the growing middle class and is now hidden among the downtown offices instead of being on street corners or old buildings in the poor part of town.

An FBI agent who knows one of the PCs from their army days has figured out he's a secret Talent and is offering him the chance to be part of a special program designed to show Americans that Talents aren't weapons of terror, that the US Government and law enforcement can make up of them and control them. It's basically everything his character wants to do but the deal is only for him, not for the other PCs.

Finally, there's a gang war about to break out between the factions of the Arcane Underground in the city over the death of the leader of the demon faction. The demons were implimenting a plan for build what they called "Neo Hell", a place outside of the city were damned souls could be used for manual labor or minial services while working off an established debt instead of being endlessly and pointlessly tortured in normal Hell. Unknown to everyone the PCs are actually the ones who killed the demon. They met with him to learn more about Neo Hell and part way through his explaination one of the PCs attacked him so the others joined in and wiped him out in a single round. But the murder happened in the middle of nowhere so no one knows who did it. That means the demons are blaming the angels, the angels think the demons did it to themselves, and the ogres see an excuse to bash some heads and do some looting.

Next session, unless the PCs are really good, at least some of the stuff they've been putting off and putting off is going to explode.

[clockworkjoe]

Why did the PCs kill the demon? Are they just being reactionaries to the plan for neo hell?

[Tadanori Oyama]

Reactionaries, basically. All of the players thought the demon was bad and weren't interested in the details of Neo Hell beyond poking holes in his plan (which the demon was happy to explain at great length and justify his reasoning; even told them the plan wasn't popular with Hell and he was basically rebelling against the Devil to do it). The reason they jumped in, specifically, is that one of the players is a martial artist who learned his abilities in the faerie realm. He has a sixth sense that allows him to detect "corruption". Note, not 'evil', corruption according to his martial philosophy.

The demon registered as corrupt (not because it was a demon, specifically, but because it was partly an entity from another plane inhabiting the same physical body as a mortal which is considered a corruption in the martial artist's teachings) so he attacked him. When he attacked he got off a surprise attack (which mostly destroyed the demon's right arm and lit him on fire to boot). The demon then tried to flee (3hd to teleport anywhere on the planet) but one of the other PCs attacked the demon as well in the first declared round of combat (knowing full well, since he declared after the demon, that the demon intended to flee and not try to fight them). So one PC shot the demon (5x6) which dropped his teleport (3hd lost 1w to become 2hd) at which point the PC who started the slaughter hit with his 4x9, doing enough damage to fill the body with killing damage. And then the body burned up, leaving just a head. Which the 1st PC burnt. And then they scattered the ashes to the wind and had the moon base computer teleport them away.

Some of the PCs were mad at the martial artist, not because he killed the demon, but because they said he'd killed the mortal host too and the demon was just going to come back again.

One PC, the one with B-Level clearance, has a mortal objection to the whole thing (he tried to stop the murder but failed) and the only reason he hasn't revealed the identity of the murderer to the Arcane Underground is because he has a Loyalty to "Family" and the PC who murdered the demon is his cousin (in game).

Thing is, I actually applaude the murderer in this case because he, as a PC, has picked a morality and is actually following through on his choices and is fully accepting of the fall out of his actions. Most of the other PCs just sort of wander around, trying to avoid making choices whenever possible or trying to find the "best" solution when one doesn't really exist.

[Review Cultist]

I dunno if this ever came up either in game or on the forum, but how much of Norm's arms were Lutean tech arms? Up to the forearms? Or the entire arm up to the shoulders like Jax from Mortal Kombat?

[Tadanori Oyama]

My understanding was it was his entire arm, up to the shoulder joint, and that the metal had basically sealed tight around his skin so there wasn't a seam or a depression to try and get a wedge into.

[Review Cultist]

Was listening to the first games up to the big fight with Paragon and the Syndicate, God damn! Had to do some fan art.
Cheers Caleb! 

Hope it's OK to post this here...