#rpg-adventure

[jhmcmullen]

(Ex) Sidekicks 3

The adventure takes place in Endurance, Kansas, the small city where Doc Cosmic is to be buried.

The players have rooms rented for them in the city’s nicest hotel, the Five Corners, built at a five-way intersection downtown. Any players who asked for a car have a rental: usually a compact, but there are so many people coming to town, that the rental company had to make mid-size and large cars available, too. (Nothing like a Prius or a Tesla or a Lamborghini is available for rent.)

Rentals happen at the airport, about a twenty minute drive outside of town.

There will be no viewing; mindful of the danger from a last-minute revenge scheme, Doc Cosmic will be interred straight from the funeral. (The body hasn’t been prepared in any way; Doc Cosmic was invulnerable to most weapons, making embalming a chancy proposition.)

Answers about Doc Cosmic in particular are in the Investigation write up, but PCs can have some of that information before the funeral, if they want.

The hotel has a pool, a fitness room, a bar (“Outlaws”) and a restaurant (“The Pentagon”).

Endurance, Kansas

The city has been down on its luck since about 1981. Endurance was much more rural when Doc Cosmic (aka Steve Hubble) was born in the late 1950s. In fact, he was born and raised as a farm boy, but the city swallowed his parents’ farm in the 1970s.

Bars: Bars vastly outnumber cinemas and churches. Some bar names include Spurs (country-and-western bar, with line dancing on Thursdays), Lightning, Outlaws (bar of Five Corners hotel), and Anonymous Rave.

Churches: Endurance Methodist Church is a small church on the outskirts of town with a crypt and an attached graveyard; it’s where Doc Cosmic is buried. Crypt is specially fitted to be hard to enter (but easy to escape, if someone were to come back from the dead). Other churches, synagogues, etc. exist. Endurance does not have a notable Muslim population.

Hotels: Some chain hotels. Best hotel in town is Five Corners, built at a five-way intersection in town, on Main Street. The hotel has a pool, a fitness room, a bar (“Outlaws”) and a restaurant (“The Pentagon”).

Parks: There are a number of small parks, and the Musgrave Memorial Park is probably the best place to talk without probably being overheard. There are picnic stands and the exterior of the park was set up so that shotgun mikes aren’t feasible. Even the park is vulnerable to super-senses.

Restaurants: Usual chain restaurants exist. Locally, in order from low to the city’s single Michelin-starred restaurant: Checkerboard (down home feel), Kelly’s Roost, Hero Station (theme restaurant with lots of hero and villain memorabilia), The Pentagon (Five Corners restaurant), Nouvelle (Michelin star, near hotel).

The Golden Age Retirement Home

Outside the city limits of Endurance is a large walled institute with spacious grounds. Buildings include main retirement home, groundskeeping hut, security building, and maintenance building.

Main retirement home: Two stories, and shaped like a cross, aligned with compass; each arm indicates level of aid required, from “Aid” to “Complete”, with center containing medical, food, and entertainment facilities. Some staff live here.

Security hut: Near gate, cameras, controls invisible force field over grounds. Easier to get into buildings once you’re on the grounds. Tunnel access to underground hangar.

Maintenance hut: Controls for HVAC, access to geothermal tap for electricity, etc.

Groundskeeping hut: Riding mowers and the like, plus tunnel access to underground hangar.

Underground hangar: No vehicles, several entrances/exits, including to medical facilities in main room, groundskeeping shed, security building.

Secret operating theater: Through a secret door in an apartment; door is sized for someone in a wheelchair or on a gurney. Long sloped corridor down leading to locker room; locker room exit leads to large circular room with floor drains, possibly former operating theater, and with mystic sigils painted on floor. The room has braziers and tall candle holders.

Qualities: Spacious grounds, high security, hidden areas, retirement home.

[jhmcmullen]

(Ex) Sidekicks 2

Originally written for the ICONS Assembled role playing game, but should be adaptable to most other superhero RPGs.

Characters

Random roll. But when you’re making it all fit together, remember the following:

You used to be a sidekick. Now, well, maybe you’re a hero, maybe you’re a sporting goods manager in Omaha, maybe you’re a big name on a TV show, maybe you betrayed everyone for reasons and you’re out of prison on parole. Maybe you’re an immortal 12-year-old, forever on the cusp of puberty and you’re still a sidekick.

You’re legal enough to go to the funeral and the reading of the will, at least one of which will see heavy police presence (Police Commissioner Bruce will be there).

You should tell me who you used to be a sidekick for, and what happened. (Short is okay. “I was the sidekick for the Zoom Master, but quit when he lost his battle with the bottle. Knocked around for a bit trying to be a sidekick for others, but now I’m a session musician in New York. No wife, but a steady girlfriend, Lisa.”)

You know the other player characters. Your choice whether you like them or not, or know them well. But you know them, and you have your own reasons to work with them.

If you need help on character creation, see your GM or I can be reached here.

Feel free to create FATE style linkages between your characters: Maybe you always had a crush on the other character. Maybe your new wife is nervous because she’s heard that superheroines are “easy.” Maybe you’re now a ghost, because you got killed in the same fight that killed your mentor but now you fight for the “differently-existing” and you got help from some other character. Even, “Hey, remember how we fought every month because our mentors said it would be good training?”

Background

None of this is canon unless you need it. But if you do…well, here it is.

For convenience’s sake, assume there was/is a loose group of heroes called the Guild of Guardians (or just the Guardians), and that there is an even looser group of villains called Eminences Noir. (There’s a spinoff group of the tech villains called Menlo Barons, and another spinoff– I guess we don’t need to go there.) If you can’t think of the name of the group that your sidekick’s hero belonged to, it was the Guardians.

If you really really want there to be a team of sidekicks (like the Teen Titans or the Young Avengers), uh, there were two notable ones for our purposes (unless no one wants to mention them). The Free Masks were not approved by the older heroes, and the Equity Ensigns were approved. You can probably guess that the Free Masks were cool but made more mistakes, and the Equity Ensigns were considered dorky but learned the Guardian way of doing things and had access to some Guardian stuff.

[jhmcmullen]

(Ex) Sidekicks 1

Originally written for the ICONS Assembled role playing game, but should be adaptable to most other superhero RPGs.

The Man of Photons is dead.

Once, Doc Cosmic, the man of photons, the ray of hope, he was one of the greatest. Every PC met him, at least once, before he retired, years ago. Some of them might know what his identity was; some might not. Some might have known him well enough that they expect to be at the reading of the will; some might be surprised.

You were all sidekicks, back when he was active. Now? Up to you, because that’s a decade ago. Maybe you’re heroes. Maybe you’re former villains. Maybe you’ve retired, and you run a sporting goods store in Omaha. Doesn’t matter. For this long weekend, you’re wearing a mask again (assuming you ever did), and on Saturday you’ll be at the funeral. Sunday, you’ll be at the will reading. Monday, you’ll wrap up.

Expenses are taken care of by the estate. They’re paying for the flights, for the rooms and for room service. (Hey, they had enough money to have him in that fancy-pants old age home for supers…they can pay for you, too.)

[onelastsunsetgame-blog]

We’ve been quiet these past few weeks, eh? Sorry about that. We got caught up reworking some backgrounds, expanding locations and taking on some extra hours at paid gigs here and there to help prepare for the Christmas Vortex. This week we wanted to show you how this stuff comes together in the really early stages. The images attached are our rough notes on two locations - the town of Rust (on the left, written on a train in Vietnam) and The Cliff of Reflection (on the right, drawn atop Bayon temple in Siem Reap). (At this time, Tracey wants to point out that the writing and drawing belong to Dave who, if illegibility is anything to go by, could have been a doctor).

Anyway, with the Cliffs you can see the kind of rough-assed sketches that Ben gets handed to turn into nice looking environments, while the Rust notes show the kind of fast paced and scattered thoughts that slowly intertwine and build up into a place worth investigating. There are all sorts of spoilers hidden in those notes, so read at your own peril. They not only show the framework for Rust, but contain notes on how it ties into other parts of the world.

The next stages, then, are:

Rust needs some location art and these notes to be written up and expanded (on a Com-Put-Or, so they can be read by people who don’t write like 1st graders)

The Cliffs needs their bullet point mess, then grown-up notes

Both then get drawn up by Ben, written up by Dave and turned into something playable by Tracey

Fancy stuff, eh? Anyway this is really just a quick hello and “don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you!” We’ll probably be a bit silent until we get into the new year, but when we talk to you then we’ll have some funky stuff to share.

Until then, have some great holidays and we’ll see you in (a no-doubt) cracking 2016!

[onelastsunsetgame-blog]

Ain‘t nobody ‘round for miles Guess all that‘s left to do is sit here and bleed out

Running out of gas is one of those things that will kill you in a desert. There are others, of course, and between them all and scouring the place for Belt, well, all in all, you’ll end up seeing a lot of different sections of the desert as you play the game. Deserts can be pretty monotonous places, but our hope is to break it up by randomising the little snippets and details of the world you’ll see each time. Hopefully these randomly constructed wide open spaces will keep you entertained throughout your hunt!

[sunnysadventure]

Sorry this took so long to get out. Hopefully the next update will be quicker..

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