My He-man game took place ten years after a massive war between He-man and Skeletor. Skeletor had pulled out all the stops and it truly looked like he would win. Orko, in an attempt to turn the tide of the war, cast a massive spell to open a door to Trolla to summon more magicians from his dimension. Of course, Orko always makes mistakes and his spell resulted in the destruction of most technology, but it did bring all of the Trollans to Eternia. In the end, both He-man and Skeletor had presumably died.
Now, the royal family is completely in shambles and Skeletor's second in command, Evil-Lyn, has become the Empress of the land. The campaign began with the players in Empress Lyn's Death Knight army as they search for and execute the last few Eternia loyalists.
I would like to note at this time that I know how boring "evil" campaigns can be, but I allowed them to be evil because Jessica and Jared were both so shitty at playing lawful good (they were a paladin and cleric respectively in my old campaign and they were both terrible at it). One last thing of note, Andy had the WOW books, so we used character classes from Warcraft as well just so we could have some diversity.
The players were:
Andy Potter (or, as I love to call him, Andy Fucking Potter) who played a wizard of some sort named Kahloon.
Jared played an assassin type character named Riggins who would cut off someone’s ear and put it on a string of barbed wire that he kept around his arm. He cut off their ears because they “never heard me coming.” Also, his character’s big twist was that he was colorblind. Yes, you heard right. He thought this made his character cool and edgy because he was colorblind. Let’s face it, if Marvel comics has taught us anything, it’s that morons think that disabilities make characters more rounded (I’m looking at you, Daredevil).
Tim played a halfling thief named Swiggins who was partners with Riggins. He would never speak except to Swiggins which made character development difficult and also, since Tim is a pretty intelligent guy, it sort of put him out of group planning sessions unless he was whispering to Jared.
My friend, Rich, only played the first session with us, but he played a werewolf named Chaney Silverbane and Rich was totally badass about it. He was an excellent role-player and I regret that he moved away because he would have made the campaign great.
I feel like I’m forgetting someone. Someone important. Who am I forgetting? Oh yes . . . Jessica. Jessica played an assassin of some sort named Nightshade that was supposed to be well informed, but she never wanted to roleplay for it. She always wanted me to just tell her whatever secret was eluding the team. It was annoying.
The first session itself: This was Rich’s first game and I wanted to ease everyone into the world because no one knew this was a He-man game. I wanted to surprise the hell out of them, so I just kept dropping little hints here and there as to what was going on. The party was clearing out an old rebel base when they were attacked by a monk with metal fists. Of course, this is Fisto who looks like this:
But I imagined him to look like this:
The players promptly killed Fisto. then Jared and Tim cut off his hands and kept them. Inside the base, a group of Trollans were performing a summoning ritual which the players interrupted and slaughtered them. None of the players had any clue as to what the setting was until they left the base and came to Castle Greyskull. The sorceress (who is now, Teela) allowed them to enter her Castle and the players threatened to murder her, of course. She informed them of a prophecy that said the world would be restored by them. She claimed that each one would do something but I don’t remember what any of those prophetic words actually were anymore. In the end, she offered to give them power if they would serve her and everyone promptly refused except for Rich who decided to become the apprentice of the sorceress.
Players were lukewarm to the idea of being in the He-man universe at first, but I assured them that I wouldn’t just focus on that and that their characters mattered more to me and they were pretty cool after that. Well, as cool as some of them could be.
To be continued . . .
