Friday afternoon’s event was cancelled because the GM didn’t show up. That gave me a little more time to run through the dealers room again, help out Rex with his Street Scum event, and then get some much needed dinner at the Hyatt before the evening session: I wanted the steak fajitas (a tradition of mine at Hyatt conventions) but I got over there too late to guarantee I’d get served in time, so I chose something else. I was able to make the event in plenty of time, however.
I was originally scheduled to play in a game Friday evening, but instead turned the ticket in to assist Jeff Smith in his event. (There was an announcement at the Hero party Wednesday night that he needed some assistance, and I volunteered.) He needed the assistance as he would also be playing a major NPC, so I handled most of the players’ interaction for the event. I was given a synopsis of the event and a list of characters before hand so I was able to do the job effectively: it also gave me a warmup for GMing my event the next day. It demonstrated to me that my GMing skills, particularly my descriptive skills and my capability of thinking fast on my feet, were still very good, and I could think on my feet. I had been wondering about that since I haven’t been doing much GMing in the past year or so.
The scenario involved a vigilante named Nemesis recruiting a team of superheroes to assist him in his quest against a major local drug dealer, nicknamed “Handy Andy”. He approached the heroes after he had seen them in action; once he even initiated the situation (covertly) in order to draw the heroes out. The heroes were EM (aka Dr. Richard Rockwell) with powers over the electro-magnetic spectrum; Dr. Roberta Hawke (aka Mentat), a government researcher of paranormals who is secretly a paranormal herself; Lynx, a humanoid feline; Kamikaze, with wind powers; Khrystyne Deaver (aka Cyberdragon), a small, cute, perky cyborg with martial arts; and Andrew Sinclair (aka Blackwing), a street-hardened vigilante.
The first involved a hostage situation, involving EM, Hawke, and Sinclair; EM and Hawke were taken hostage by a group of terrorists who had placed explosives in the hotel where they were attending a dinner. Sinclair was called away by a false page while EM and Mentat were led away by one terrorist with a remote-control in hs hand with a “deadman’s” switch. They were led to the basement garage and three other terrorists, all heavily armed, followed by Sinclair and (Secretly) Nemesis. EM and Hawke eventually initiated a confrontation, aided by Nemesis and Sinclair’s covert intervention, which led to the capture of the terrorists and the introduction of Nemesis to the two heroes.
The most fun I had was the second, covert situation: Nemesis used a sniper rifle to blow out the tire of a passing car on a street in a tough neighborhood, hoping the local toughs would start to harass the driver, thus drawing the heroes who patrolled and protected the surrounding areas out. What he didn’t know was that the driver was another superhero, Cyberdragon, who proceeded to mop up the locals almost on her own, although Lynx and Kamikaze arrived shortly thereafter. It was largely a wiping-up operation, started by Cyberdragon suddenly elbowing two toughs; the picture of the petite Cyberdragon knocking the two back with two swift elbow thrusts (in the game, from a sitting position by the player against the GM and his other assistant) was definitely amusing. Lynx and Kamikaze arrived shortly thereafter to clean up, and afterward Nemesis introduced himself and obtained a promise of future assistance from the three.
The last hero, Blackwing, after seeing Nemesis approach the other two heroes while he was in his civilian ID, tried to arrange a meeting himself by leaving word on the street. I created this scenario entirely on the fly, with a small group of toughs, backed by a sniper on a rooftop nearby, who were going to send their own message to Nemesis. The sniper was taken care of by Nemesis, and Blackwing used his swing line to play Tarzan with the toughs on the ground (with a little help from Nemesis, just to speed things up.)
After he had gotten promises of assistance from everyone, he arranged a meeting between himself and “Handy Andy” at a local quarry; of course, he was not expecting “Andy” to arrive himself. He wanted the other heroes to back him up, from surprise, while he confronted the villains, whom he expected to show up in force. They all arrived in plenty of time to arrange an ambush.
One of “Handy Andy“ ‘s lieutenants, Mr. Fu (so named for his distinctive “Fu Manchu” moustache), showed up in a limousine, with three more car loads of thugs with automatic weaponry. They weren’t expecting the other heroes on the scene, and soon after the fight started only a quarter of the thugs were left standing, when second Mr. Fu stepped out of the limo, dragging a woman in a hero costume. He put a heavy pistol into her mouth, said “Hey, Paragon, remember this?”, and pulled the trigger. As I described it, the back of her head disappeared. Nemesis (played by Jeff Smith) formerly Paragon, shrieked and collapsed at the death of his former wife, the paranormal Angel, allowing the rest of the thugs to open fire and hit almost every time; fortunately, his armor prevented him from sustaining heavy injury. The heroes were able to mop up the thugs afterward. That was the end of the first round.
I don’t know what happened in the final round: I wasn’t involved with it and I was probably busy at the time, anyway, but I would like to know what happened. Considering Jeff’s performance in the Champions tournament final, plus the event writeup for the first round, I would expect that it was a very interesting event.
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