Thursday Afternoon Champions
Thursday at noon I played my first scheduled game: the ninth annual Champions tournament. This event is a two-stage tournament that involves a beginning organization of heroes in a world more realistic than the normal four-color comics: the gamemaster describes it as “the villain, instead of putting you in a death trap, will put a bullet through your head.” Two years before, the super team of the Texas Rangers outgrew the tournament and were replaced the previous year by a new group of heroes, the Confederation of Heroes. It included Challenger, a flying “brick” and sometime leader who is also a city cop; Halo, a Hispanic flying light-projecting hero; Diamond, a female five-inch shrinking “brick”; Oak, an alien who resembles a tree; Indigo, a woman of mystery with mind-control powers; Fist, a black martial artist; Necro, the city coroner with spooky death powers; and my character, Dakota, a “high plains drifter” Western character with wind powers. The team was based in Chicago.
Our problem was a series of vigilante killings of drug dealers in the midst of the establishment of a new drug cartel in Chicago. We eventually captured the vigilante, who possessed a pair of deadly energy weapons and the ability to teleport, which allowed him to escape capture before the end of the scenario.
The scenario started with a parade for the head of BLADE, the multi-national force that had just pacified Croatia, through the Croation section of Chicago. The Confederation of Heroes were guests of the city and additional protection, which, of course, was needed. We stationed ourselves around the area of the reviewing stand. A bomb on the El (elevated) train line overhead blew up during the parade, which threatened to tip an El car onto the street as a diversion, while a lone gunman approached the head of BLADE. A couple of the heroes caught the car before it struck a passing vehicle. while the rest protected the victim and caught the gunman. One amusing scene from this was Diamond who took one end of an I‑beam and supported the train car until someone else could help her out: because of her small size, no one could see her holding the beam, and all the people could see was a long steel beam standing upright all by itself in the middle of the street, weaving around and wedging itself under the car.
Later we started tracking the vigilante in a series of killings of drug dealers. There were very few clues to go on, only one or two dead bodies with large holes in them. We had out first confrontation with him when doing a drug bust of our own (which was set up very well by the player doing Challenger, one of the reasons he advanced to the final round.) The vigilante appeared out of nowhere and killed the two leaders of the drug buy, waiting around just long enough afterwards to get a good look at us before teleporting out again. I met him later, when he appeared before my character and talked about the code of the old West, which was his justification for his actions.
We met him again at a arranged shooting at the final confrontation of the round. Since the vigilante used a Western motif, I “called him out”. Since my character had the power to deflect his attacks, I figured I was about as safe as anyone from his, and once he attacked, he wouldn’t be able to teleport away until after everyone had an attack against him. It wasn’t totally successful, but the ploy allowed Diamond to jump into his boot and break his foot. The pain caused a significant delay in his actions and restricted his teleporting away, which allowed us to capture him.
These tournaments generate a great amount of roleplaying. For example, Diamond, who had kept her powers a secret from her husband, had separated from him but he still harassed her. In a one-on-one scene, the GM playing her husband met her at her position as a librarian. The player was very stressed not to reveal her identity, acting very scared when her ‘husband’ pulled out a gun. Instead, she ran and hid in her office until her husband left and the scene ended.
I didn’t advance to the final round, but I played the character sufficiently well that I was one of the three (the other two were the winner Challenger and Diamond as alternate) under consideration for the winner or alternate. The player doing Challenger led the team as he was supposed to, making the right decisions and taking the time to interface with the police in both hero and secret ID (in the same scene, adding to his reputation.)
Diamond had the Southern belle accent down pat and played the character bright and bouncy when in hero ID; it was a very good performance. I didn’t mind losing to either the eventual winner or alternate: they were very good roleplayers that did a lot of effective and essential actions.
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