With Great Power: Sunday at Origins 2008

I was actually supposed to be in a Call of Cthulhu game called "Tears of the Bluebird". However, one of the two gms running a section of it said that, in his opinion, the scenario had not been sufficiently edited as to be tunable, and he'd rather give us a refund than run a sucky game. The other gm was not yet there, so he did not know if she'd feel the same way. Neither of them had written the scenario, which has an interesting reputation and an interesting history.

It is supposed to be extremely disturbing, which is why it was to be run in the final slot. It was submitted in a blue exam booklet, handwritten, and, apparently, two people who had agreed to type it into a computer returned it, each so disturbed by the material that they did not wish to continue. Indeed, there was some concern that "if we run it, they will stone us in the parking lot". I was going back and forth on whether this were the kind of scenario with which I wanted to end my Origins.

I had another concern as well. This was a Rogue Cthulhu event, and, in my experience, Rogue Cthulhu is very bad about sticking to the four hour slot. I later learned that, last year, one of their disturbing scenarios, AC/DC, ran about 7 hours, and still did not get completed.

And, the gm on the spot did not think that the scenario was runable as it stood. I decided to take his word for it and to accept the refund. I then went to find a game to generic into, figuring that I could perhaps get into Kat Miller's session of With Great Power. I met her husband, Michael, who wrote the game. He was pretty sure that I could get in, and he also knew where the room was. I think it was a Delaware room, one I had never been in before, so I hadn't figured out where the corridor was.

The game was utterly delightful, a wonderful note on which to end my Origins. I'm still dubious about my capability to run it, but superhero games are not my strong point, no matter what Josh says about Cthulhupunk really being a superhero game.

Kat Miller: GM

Michelle: James Patriot, formerly The American, now the city's governor, up for reelection.

Me: Justice Patriot, James's son by his wife, Blaise, the Torch of Liberty. James is trying to protect James by refusing to grant his super hero license.

Carey: Joy, aka Liberty Bell, James's daughter by another woman. He was with this woman on the night that his wife died and his son went into a five year coma.

I think Justice was in his early 20s and Joy was in her late teens.

The villain who caused Justice's coma and killed his mother, James's wife, was Dr. Venom. His goal was to Evolve the City. He himself was "evolved" with his latest biotech. For example, he had a tail that could grow spikes as needed. His minions were the Interns of Venom.

All of the PCs started with four Aspects to their character. An aspect can be anything from "Mary Jane, my girlfriend" to "The Bat Utility Belt" to "Telepath". As these were pregenerated characters, our Aspects were already chosen.

As the game proceeds, players can prime their aspects, which means that their characters can use them in combat. Mechanically, this means that the players can draw cards for their aspects. They can get more cards by endangering their aspects. There are multiple levels of this: Primed, Risked, Threatened, Imperiled, and Devastated. A devastated aspect can be transformed by the GM.

We each picked an aspect to be our character's Strife. This meant that we considered that aspect central to our character and wanted it to feature prominently in the adventure. Players get extra cards for drawing on their Strife aspects.

Strifes:

James: Family
Transformation possibilities: We left those open, iirc.

Joy: The American
Transformation possibilities: Dr. Venom is my real "father". Liberty is The American Spawn.

Justice: Never give up the good fight!
Transformation possibilities: 1. I will make The American pay for killing my mother! 2. I was -born- Justice. Vengeance is better!

Each of our aspects had quotes associated with them. In Justice's case, these were:

1. Telekinesis: "Justice concentrates on Mudslide, trying to lift the wet girth from the ground -- Mudslide roars and Oozes giving Justice a headache."

2. "Never give up the good fight!":
"Your mother didn't have to die! Had she retired, she'd still be alive."

3. James Patriot: The American!:
"You're the American! Why can't you remember that?"
"Why can't you forget that?"

4. Amy "Gadget" Anderson, the woman whose gadgetry saved Justice's live and who has a crush on him which he has yet to realize:
"Why are you dressed like that?" he asked.
"You said we were going out," Gage told him.
"To get new parts for the v-filter."

The adventure opened with James Patriot preparing to hold a press conference. He summoned his children to him, hoping to talk sense into them and / or hoping to look good by showing a united family to the press.

As this was an Enrichment scene, not a Conflict scene, resolution was dependent on a single card flip, which Kat won. The Press Conference went south fast.

Now, here is where the magic comes in. In theory, everyone involved in the Indie movement will agree that, having determined the results, one should now play them out. In other words, the card flip is no substitute for actual roleplaying. Michael Miller, the author of the game, would certainly agree with that.

In practice, this does not always work out, and I'm not sure how to write the game so that the roleplaying happens.

But, in this game, roleplaying happened. Part of this is because Kat is a really good gm. Part of this is that we had a really good group, all of whom had played the game at least once before. So, the post-card flip play was anything but anticlimactic.

First, Justice and Joy had to wait to see James, as he was getting ready for his press conference. Then, James was annoyed that Justice was in his superhero costume and wanted him to take it off. Justice refused, protesting. Joy asked if she could get her superhero license, and James gave a vague answer. This annoyed both Justice because he thought that James would give Joy -her- license, so why couldn't he get his? Did his father not care if Joy lived or died, since James's reason for not giving Justice a license was the danger?

And anyway, if his father objected to his superhero costume, what about Joy's, which showed off her bust line? Joy was annoyed at Justice for the crack about how she dressed.

By now, the press conference people were in the room, snapping pictures and videos of the both the family argument and Joy's bust line. James snapped, and, in a fit of pique, used his superstrength to hurl his desk at people, chasing everyone out of the office

Michelle: Who needs villains when you've got family?

Kat: Headline: Patriot kicks own kids out of office...

In front of the house, Joy tried her best to do damage control, as the press threw questions about James's temper and furniture throwing. This may have been her enrichment scene.

Joy: Well, Daddy's under horrible stress. Normally, he throws chairs... The bruises fade quickly...

James was furious when he saw the newsclip resulting from this fiasco.

James: How could you go behind my back?

Joy: It wasn't behind your back. It was in front of your house.

Justice had his enrichment scene next. He brought Joy to meet Amy, the young scientist who was in love with him. He had no idea of this, of course. He wanted Amy to build a device to protect him from Dr. Venom's gaseous attacks, like the one that put him into a coma. I lost the card flip, so Kat said that Amy created one that everyone thought would work, but which would actually suck the gas in, not out, as I recall.

Again, the roleplaying worked. This was because the contested goal was not actually what the scene was about. No, it was about Justice's social cluelessness, as he introduced Amy and Joy.

Justice: Joy, this is Amy. She's like a sister. Before I had a sister.

As Justice and Amy discussed the technical details of the breathing filter, Carey picked up the Thought Balloon, a lovely way to indicate that one is expressing one's PC's thoughts.

Joy (with thought balloon): Nerds. Bored now.

Somewhere in here was a cut scene of Dr. Venom talking to his interns about his plan to bioevolve the city. And, one of those interns was Amy, working undercover to help Justice!

By now, it was clearly time for some good old-fashioned fighting, aka a Conflict scene. To make the fight more interesting, given the number of heroes, Dr. Venom wasn't the only villain involved. He was actually fighting a supervillain, someone with copying powers. Cars were hurled around indiscriminately.

At this point, Kat walked us through the combat system. It is in process of being modified for a second edition which will take at least a couple of years to get out. If I have this right, each villain gets his own combat chart, and heroes and villains can jump from one to the other, depending on who they are fighting at the moment. The chart gets filled in with cards that determine who has the upper hand at any given time. There are a few key points here.

1. No one wins until either player or GM yields. This means that, after any card is played, the side currently ahead gets to narrate, but cannot narrate "winning".

2. Stakes are set up in advance. This is what has made yielding tricky for me, even though both sides are supposed to agree to the stakes. My problem has not been with the stakes per se, but with descriptions of the scene that are such that it makes no sense for me to yield, even when, in theory, I have no problem with my PC losing the fight. Kat explained that what the GM has to do is to introduce elements that make it plausible for the player to yield.

3. If a villain yields, that villain yields to every hero on the villain's page, shutting them out of the rest of the fight. This is best only done when another villain is about to force one or more heroes to give.

I forget a lot of the details of this fight, but I know that each PC got a splash page. The American arrived late, because he only left when he saw his kids fighting the supervillains on television. He wanted to keep them out of the public eye, I think. Joy wanted her superhero license. I forget what Justice wanted, since he lost the fight.

Joy and James between them took down the duplicator villain, but that meant that when Kat yielded for him, they couldn't help Justice in his fight with Dr. Venom. And, Kat's stakes were that if she won, Justice would wind up leaving with Dr. V. As the fight got more desperate and my cards got crappier, it finally made sense for me to yield.

Justice: My strength gives out and I faint in your tail.

Lisa: I hadn't expected to use that line... in -this- game.

I emailed this quote to the folks in the play by email I run, where Chris's character, S'kei, has a tail, and it's entirely likely that, sooner or later, someone will faint in it. I gave some context for the quote.

Lisa: Dr. V believed in forcing evolution onto people. He himself had scales and a tail.

-- -- --

Chris: What an excellent thoughtful perspicacious forward-looking scientist; and with finely discriminating taste, too. I hope his tail was alright.

As I read this mail I was just joking with a friend about getting pretty scales tatooed on my back XD

-- -- --

Myles: Bags I Chris's skin after he's gone!

I'm nothing if not practical. Sick, but practical.

-- -- --

Chris: Oooo I'd be honoured!(*)

What would you make me into?

(*)Well, if I was alive I would be.

-- -- --

Myles: It would have to be the covers of a hand-made role-playing game book.

-- -- --

Meanwhile, back in the game, Justice was unconscious, and Dr. Venom decided to have the new V-filter that Amy had created copied.

Carey: Right up to the not working!

Kat: It's an -exact- copy!

Amy, meanwhile, went to rescue Justice. But, he was not willing to leave right away, since he had to find some genetic samples that Dr. Venom had taken. IIRC, his father had been infected during the fight, so Justice wanted to find the cure.

Dr. Venom's interns were watching James Patriot on television, and there was a betting pool about when he would finally succumb. After all, he'd had a desk job for five years. But, he was still the American, and still pretty strong. Then again, he didn't have a very healthy lifestyle.

Intern: Have you -seen- the American diet?

Now, what was happening with James and Joy was a little confusing to me, possibly because of my many bathroom breaks (due to heavy water intake due to attempt to flush a kidney stone that might or might not have already been gone). As near as I can remember, James and Joy made a deal: She would get her superhero license in return for letting him take the credit for the fight. This made sense; after all, her stakes were to get her license, and his were to keep his children out of the news on this one.

But, somehow, during Joy's press conference, the truth came out. On the one hand, this made good dramatic sense. On the other, I'm not sure if it undercuts the whole stakes business.

Meanwhile, in Dr. Venom's lair, Justice found a video tape that showed his mother's last moments. Defeated in battle by Dr. Venom, her son dying, her husband in the arms of another woman, she begged Dr. Venom to end it all for her.

Dr. Venom (with surprising kindness, if one sees him as no more than a villain, as opposed to a really misguided mad scientist): Don't worry. I'll take all the pain away.

By now, James and Joy had figured out that Justice was missing, and had also somehow figured out where Dr. Venom's lair was, so they attacked. James came in to see Dr. Venom showing Justice the video of his wife's death.

Kat: She's always been stunning.

Me: Even with tears running down her betrayed face.

Meanwhile, Joy tried to convince Dr. Venom's interns that they were wrong, and they tried to convince her to join them, especially given that she'd been the result of one of Dr. V's experiments.

Kat: The New Experiment: Code Name: Joy

I made another trip to the bathroom, and came back in the middle of one of the strangest arguments I'd ever seen in an rpg. Kat and Carey were locked in a knockdown drag out battle, cards flying, combat going back and forth over whether the interns were or were not using ear plugs to keep from hearing Joy's words.

Michelle explained to me that it was like having all of the writers of the show in a room. Some of them said, "And then the interns pull out ear plugs! It'll be funny, see." That was Kat's position. But, other writers thought that ear plugs were just stupid. That was Carey's position.

Eventually, Kat won the conflict.

Carey: Have your stupid ear plugs! Fine!

Kat: We'll call them audio filters.

Carey: I can live with that.

This wasn't an acrimonious conflict on the meta level, just very, very strange. Carey's a good player, and she gave Kat a run for her money in the conflicts.

Michael (dropping by to kibbitz): You have a worthy opponent here.

Kat: I have a -very- worthy opponent here.

As the debate was raging, James and Justice were fighting Dr. Venom.

James: Forget about being a civilized governor! I don't care about this election! I care about this city!

Kat: Finally, the heroic persona comes out!

Justice, somewhat disgusted with his father, was actually coming around to Joy's idea about there being some good in everyone, even Dr. Venom.

Justice (to Dr. Venom): You wanted to save my mother. You couldn't.

Dr. Venom maintained that she hadn't been evolved enough. If she had been, she would have lived.

By now, we were running short on time, and my cards were crappy. Kat pointed out that she had been setting things up for her stakes, specifically that if she won, Amy would die. There was a lot of toxic gas floating around, and in succeeding rounds of the combat, she consistently described this, and that Amy was getting weaker. So, I yielded, and Justice carried Amy out, only to have her die in his arms.

In mechanical terms, I had drawn on the aspect Amy "Gadget" Anderson: The girl who saved Justice. This aspect had been Devasted, and Kat had gained control of it. It was now Transformed. Kat described the new Aspect.

Kat: The girl who saved me I couldn't save!

And it was but cold comfort that Amy hadn't been forcibly evolved.

I'm not sure where the other PCs left matters. I know that relations between James and his children were pretty strained by now, if not outright devasted. And, what of the city?

Alas, we had to break, as all of us had to head for home. I'm looking forward to the new edition of With Great Power, and I hadn't expected that. I don't mind that it will take a couple of years, especially if it means that the game will have been thoroughly playtested. The tricky bit is not nailing down the rules per se, I think, but teaching readers how to get the feel of the game right. In other words, one has to be able to run the game without packing up the Millers and bringing them home, delightful as that might be.