I GMed Marvel Heroic RP for the first time on Sunday. This was for my usual 4e group, less one (overseas on holidays) - we initially thought we would be two short, hence the agreement to play a different system.
Session summary
The characters in play were Iceman, Invisible Woman, War Machine and Wolverine (who seemed perhaps a little overpowered). I started with the Congressional Hearing scene from Civil War, but folded in a bit of Dr Doom action. Two of the heroes were appearing as witnesses - Bobby Drake and James Rhodes - while two others - Sue Storm and Wolvie - were incognito in the gallery.
This played out rather well - the witnesses ran arguments in front of the Committee drawing on their specialties and distinctions (Hopeless Romantic for Bobby; both Semper Fi and A Little Bit of Coexistence for Rhodes), and both received stress (Bobby was embarassed when one Senator ridiculed his argument) and delivered it.
I had indicated as Scene Distinctions Nosy Reporters, Hallowed Halls and Opportunistic Politicians, and the two observers in the gallery played off these: Sue Storm briefed a reporter on the offending Senator, suggesting that there might be more to his arguments in favour of registration than meets the eye, and thus built up a d10 journalistic asset which she was then able to use to help stress out the Committee (having that Senator leave the hearing after receiving a note from his press secretary about penetrating questions).
Meanwhile, Wolvie - who has a Mysterious Past and earns XP by remeeting old allies or old foes - tried to recollect where he had encountered that Senator before, or what he knew about his connections. He also noticed a shadowy (NPC) figure hanging out in the gallery, who started to leave at the same time as the Senator. He built himself a d12 corrupt politician asset before snooping off after the shadowy figure, followed by the invisible Sue Storm.
I had decided that in a one-shot game I needed to go for broke, and so of course the shadowy figure was none other than Dr Doom - whom Wolvie and Sue Storm confronted and defeated (as Doom tried to call down Congressional security upon them - as a complication - but repeatedly rolled low totals and multiple ones), only to discover that it was really just a Doombot (after I spent 2d8 from the Doom Pool to establish that They Were Not Worthy of Doom). As the witnesses turned the tables on the Committee, Wolvie and Sue then tracked down the corrupt Senator and found him taking calls on two phones at once - in English talking to Sue's journalist friend, and in Russian with someone else. Wolvie succeeded in inflicting d12+ emotional stress and so the Senator fainted; and he picked up the phone, could hear that that person at the other end sounded like s/he was flying in an open-cockpit plane, or perhaps driving very fast on a bike or in an open car, and spoke something down the phone in Russian causing d10 mental stress as the listener got very confused about what was going on. The two heroes then skedaddled taking the phones and the Doombot head with them, and rendezvoused with the two witnesses back at Rhodes' hotel room.
This was then the transition scene for the session. Bobby and War Machine recovered some stress, while Wolvie's player spent a point to establish the head and the phones as a Covert resource (War Machine's player didn't have any points to spend for a tech resource, which the group would have preferred). With the resource they were able to establish that the Russian phone had last received a call from the biology wing of the Smithsonian, so they headed off there for a night-time investigation - all suited up, this time.
This was the second action scene. Due to real-life issues of people having to go home we didn't get to finish it entirely satisfactorily.
The heroes came to the Smithsonian and noticed a Power Outage making the whole place dark; and found a loading bay open with some sort of sophisticated-looking shipping container inside it. Bobby tried to break it open by chilling it down to the point where its lock and hinges would be brittle, but in the test against the Doom Pool + Hi Tech Container d10 he lost, and so the container proved resistant, while the intruders in the Smithsonian came to see what was going on.
For these mooks I pulled four NPCs from The Raft mini-module: Armadillo, Chemistro, Constrictor and Vermin. Three of them seemed suitably biological, and I wanted Chemistro to do something special. At the same time, Titanium man showed up, having stepped down his mental stress from d10 to d8 and finally having made it to the party. War Machine flew off to tackle him in what was the more exciting combat of the session - War Machine trying to push Titanium Man more and more out of control (escalating complications, using weapons at first and then, when they were shutdown, Strength and Flight) while Titanium Man tried to trap War Machine in force rings. This conflict lasted through three (maybe four? with actions and reactions it's easy to lose track) cycles.
Back in the Smithsonian Invisble Girl created a Force Cage (d12 asset) and Iceman then used an ice slide (Heroic Prankster, plus Ice Mastery) to slide Vermin into it. Wolverine beat up on Armadillo, but found Armadillo does a good job at resisting physical stress (spend a doom die to ignore it). I was low on doom dice, though, so his first plan was to take the sole dome die into his pool (via Berserker Fury) so that I didn't have it to spend, but in the end (as I was never down to one die) he took out Aramdillo with fear, and then Iceman trapped him in an ice cage which Invisible Woman reinforced with a force cage. Constrictor did a good job of grappling Invisible Woman, but got trapped to in the end.
What I had hoped would be the highlight of the Smithsonian melee was a T-Rex, animated by Chemistro using his alchemy gun, but it was a bit of a disappointment (I wasn't sure on the best resolution for the animation - in the end I used Chemistro's turn in the action sequence to spend d8 from the Doom Pool to animate the T-Rex, who then came in next). It did some stress against Iceman, and it did break up the first Force Cage, freeing Vermin before Iceman retrapped him; and there was a nice moment as Sue Storm used her Science speciality to try and lure the T-Rex into tripping in the Hole in the Ground that Armadillo had left behind when he burrowed in; but in the end it only took Wolvie one reaction and one action to take the T-Rex down.
The session ended with me spending 2d12 from the doom pool to end the scene after Titanium Man finally won in the battle with War Machine - so War Machine went plunging back to earth while Titanium Man escaped to a secret base in Khazakstan. Of course, I didn't do this until Titanium Man won - and the heroes didn't pass the action to Titanium man until they had cleaned up the mooks with their cages, which dragged out a bit even when the end was inevitable. I wasn't 100% sure what the game expected in a situation in which one group of heroes wins their bit (in the Smithsonian) while another hero (War Machine) loses his bit, but it seems that unless I spend the 2d12 the other heroes are probably entitled to somehow have a go at Titanium Man (probably via the phone); and anyway, in a one-shot it seemed to produce a nice finality for an otherwise somewhat rushed finish.
Thoughts
Unsurprisingly, the game played quite differently from D&D. People tended to spend quite a bit of time building their dice pools, which slowed play down, but I imagine over time this would speed up. Two of the players very much got into their distinctions - Iceman and War Machine - and this brought out some of their personality in play, though probably not as much as I would have hoped. Again, more play would probably improve this.
I've already commented that Wolvie seemed perhaps a bit good. The player of Iceman commented that he feld underpowered compared to the others, but in fact he had a lot of impact on the game, including using area attack to make the final ice cage that took out the Smithsonian mooks.
Not enough plot points circulated - in part beacuse my players didn't roll enough 1s, in part because none of use was really using the Limit rules enough (first session and all), in part because they were two hesitant to call d4 Distinctions.
I found the Doom Pool quite hard to manage - it fluctuated quite a bit in size and didn't seem to be reliably building up enough. At the end of the session, after spending my 2d12, the pool was empty.
On the whole the abstract mechanics worked well, as did the non-physical stress and complications. Assets and complications proved pretty effective in play, and reasonably intuitive; though I wasn't 100% clear on the rules for stepping up complications - I let the Invisible Woman used her force field to step up the ice cage that Iceman had created - but while easy enough to grasp in the fiction, I'm not 100% sure if the rules permit this.
We didn't see any stunts, so I can't comment on them; and the Covert resource dice never came into play. But the melee combat seemed very abstract by D&D standards, and (with the exception of the aerial battle between the two flying suits) less interesting than the Congressional hearing. In the future I wuold need to find some way to address this.
Session summary
The characters in play were Iceman, Invisible Woman, War Machine and Wolverine (who seemed perhaps a little overpowered). I started with the Congressional Hearing scene from Civil War, but folded in a bit of Dr Doom action. Two of the heroes were appearing as witnesses - Bobby Drake and James Rhodes - while two others - Sue Storm and Wolvie - were incognito in the gallery.
This played out rather well - the witnesses ran arguments in front of the Committee drawing on their specialties and distinctions (Hopeless Romantic for Bobby; both Semper Fi and A Little Bit of Coexistence for Rhodes), and both received stress (Bobby was embarassed when one Senator ridiculed his argument) and delivered it.
I had indicated as Scene Distinctions Nosy Reporters, Hallowed Halls and Opportunistic Politicians, and the two observers in the gallery played off these: Sue Storm briefed a reporter on the offending Senator, suggesting that there might be more to his arguments in favour of registration than meets the eye, and thus built up a d10 journalistic asset which she was then able to use to help stress out the Committee (having that Senator leave the hearing after receiving a note from his press secretary about penetrating questions).
Meanwhile, Wolvie - who has a Mysterious Past and earns XP by remeeting old allies or old foes - tried to recollect where he had encountered that Senator before, or what he knew about his connections. He also noticed a shadowy (NPC) figure hanging out in the gallery, who started to leave at the same time as the Senator. He built himself a d12 corrupt politician asset before snooping off after the shadowy figure, followed by the invisible Sue Storm.
I had decided that in a one-shot game I needed to go for broke, and so of course the shadowy figure was none other than Dr Doom - whom Wolvie and Sue Storm confronted and defeated (as Doom tried to call down Congressional security upon them - as a complication - but repeatedly rolled low totals and multiple ones), only to discover that it was really just a Doombot (after I spent 2d8 from the Doom Pool to establish that They Were Not Worthy of Doom). As the witnesses turned the tables on the Committee, Wolvie and Sue then tracked down the corrupt Senator and found him taking calls on two phones at once - in English talking to Sue's journalist friend, and in Russian with someone else. Wolvie succeeded in inflicting d12+ emotional stress and so the Senator fainted; and he picked up the phone, could hear that that person at the other end sounded like s/he was flying in an open-cockpit plane, or perhaps driving very fast on a bike or in an open car, and spoke something down the phone in Russian causing d10 mental stress as the listener got very confused about what was going on. The two heroes then skedaddled taking the phones and the Doombot head with them, and rendezvoused with the two witnesses back at Rhodes' hotel room.
This was then the transition scene for the session. Bobby and War Machine recovered some stress, while Wolvie's player spent a point to establish the head and the phones as a Covert resource (War Machine's player didn't have any points to spend for a tech resource, which the group would have preferred). With the resource they were able to establish that the Russian phone had last received a call from the biology wing of the Smithsonian, so they headed off there for a night-time investigation - all suited up, this time.
This was the second action scene. Due to real-life issues of people having to go home we didn't get to finish it entirely satisfactorily.
The heroes came to the Smithsonian and noticed a Power Outage making the whole place dark; and found a loading bay open with some sort of sophisticated-looking shipping container inside it. Bobby tried to break it open by chilling it down to the point where its lock and hinges would be brittle, but in the test against the Doom Pool + Hi Tech Container d10 he lost, and so the container proved resistant, while the intruders in the Smithsonian came to see what was going on.
For these mooks I pulled four NPCs from The Raft mini-module: Armadillo, Chemistro, Constrictor and Vermin. Three of them seemed suitably biological, and I wanted Chemistro to do something special. At the same time, Titanium man showed up, having stepped down his mental stress from d10 to d8 and finally having made it to the party. War Machine flew off to tackle him in what was the more exciting combat of the session - War Machine trying to push Titanium Man more and more out of control (escalating complications, using weapons at first and then, when they were shutdown, Strength and Flight) while Titanium Man tried to trap War Machine in force rings. This conflict lasted through three (maybe four? with actions and reactions it's easy to lose track) cycles.
Back in the Smithsonian Invisble Girl created a Force Cage (d12 asset) and Iceman then used an ice slide (Heroic Prankster, plus Ice Mastery) to slide Vermin into it. Wolverine beat up on Armadillo, but found Armadillo does a good job at resisting physical stress (spend a doom die to ignore it). I was low on doom dice, though, so his first plan was to take the sole dome die into his pool (via Berserker Fury) so that I didn't have it to spend, but in the end (as I was never down to one die) he took out Aramdillo with fear, and then Iceman trapped him in an ice cage which Invisible Woman reinforced with a force cage. Constrictor did a good job of grappling Invisible Woman, but got trapped to in the end.
What I had hoped would be the highlight of the Smithsonian melee was a T-Rex, animated by Chemistro using his alchemy gun, but it was a bit of a disappointment (I wasn't sure on the best resolution for the animation - in the end I used Chemistro's turn in the action sequence to spend d8 from the Doom Pool to animate the T-Rex, who then came in next). It did some stress against Iceman, and it did break up the first Force Cage, freeing Vermin before Iceman retrapped him; and there was a nice moment as Sue Storm used her Science speciality to try and lure the T-Rex into tripping in the Hole in the Ground that Armadillo had left behind when he burrowed in; but in the end it only took Wolvie one reaction and one action to take the T-Rex down.
The session ended with me spending 2d12 from the doom pool to end the scene after Titanium Man finally won in the battle with War Machine - so War Machine went plunging back to earth while Titanium Man escaped to a secret base in Khazakstan. Of course, I didn't do this until Titanium Man won - and the heroes didn't pass the action to Titanium man until they had cleaned up the mooks with their cages, which dragged out a bit even when the end was inevitable. I wasn't 100% sure what the game expected in a situation in which one group of heroes wins their bit (in the Smithsonian) while another hero (War Machine) loses his bit, but it seems that unless I spend the 2d12 the other heroes are probably entitled to somehow have a go at Titanium Man (probably via the phone); and anyway, in a one-shot it seemed to produce a nice finality for an otherwise somewhat rushed finish.
Thoughts
Unsurprisingly, the game played quite differently from D&D. People tended to spend quite a bit of time building their dice pools, which slowed play down, but I imagine over time this would speed up. Two of the players very much got into their distinctions - Iceman and War Machine - and this brought out some of their personality in play, though probably not as much as I would have hoped. Again, more play would probably improve this.
I've already commented that Wolvie seemed perhaps a bit good. The player of Iceman commented that he feld underpowered compared to the others, but in fact he had a lot of impact on the game, including using area attack to make the final ice cage that took out the Smithsonian mooks.
Not enough plot points circulated - in part beacuse my players didn't roll enough 1s, in part because none of use was really using the Limit rules enough (first session and all), in part because they were two hesitant to call d4 Distinctions.
I found the Doom Pool quite hard to manage - it fluctuated quite a bit in size and didn't seem to be reliably building up enough. At the end of the session, after spending my 2d12, the pool was empty.
On the whole the abstract mechanics worked well, as did the non-physical stress and complications. Assets and complications proved pretty effective in play, and reasonably intuitive; though I wasn't 100% clear on the rules for stepping up complications - I let the Invisible Woman used her force field to step up the ice cage that Iceman had created - but while easy enough to grasp in the fiction, I'm not 100% sure if the rules permit this.
We didn't see any stunts, so I can't comment on them; and the Covert resource dice never came into play. But the melee combat seemed very abstract by D&D standards, and (with the exception of the aerial battle between the two flying suits) less interesting than the Congressional hearing. In the future I wuold need to find some way to address this.
