Graph Paper Games

For Adam.... The Fruit Bat of Frustration (real name unknown) Affiliations: Solo d8, Buddy d4, Team d6 Distinctions: Annoying Little Twat, Relentless, Ambiguous Identity Powers CREATIVE ENERGY VAMPIRE Flight d6 Claws d6 Enhanced Reflexes d8 Emotional Control d10 SFX: Sapping Your Mojo .  When creating a "In a Funk" complication, add a d6 and step up the effect die. SFX: Right Where I Want You .  When the GM is trying to alter an Affiliation status of a PC in an encounter with the Fruit Bat of Frustration, step down the effect die necessary to do so, reflecting either effectively isolating the PC from contact with friends, or putting him in an unsatisfying gaming group. Specialties Covert Expert Menace Expert Psych Master

A Doctor Doom themed dice tray. Currently WIP. More pics as the project progresses. Comments welcome!

How do you say goodbye to the player of Komos (both incarnations), Union Galactic, and Positive Crisis? By have a massive dimension-spanning epic adventure to save the multiverse, culminating with superheroes, fantasy adventurers, and spacefarers battling a tarrasque, a lich, and a demigod on the rolling surface of a Federation starship orbiting Sigil, the City of Doors and center of everything. After starting off fairly typically in our 5E campaign, things went suddenly, terribly awry as the world was shattered and PC's were scattered throughout the multiverse.  At this point I handed each of them a PC from some time in their gaming past, worked out using Marvel Heroic Roleplaying rules (which is a great system for doing something like this.  Since this was a plenary session for the gaming group, there were no less than 11 players present, with PC's or NPC's from every game campaign I have run since I arrived in this state.  In the gaming group itself we had From t...

It's been a long time since I've done a superhero RPG session of any kind, and the kids have been asking me to run something for them during the summer.  Between the upcoming Suicide Squad live action movie and their recently watching Assault on Arkham  (which was excellent), my son and daughter were pressuring me to run a "Suicide Squad" style story featuring characters from the old "Ultimate Posse" campaign (which was my old campaign using Marvel Heroic Roleplaying). So who is part of the crew of villains (and heroes) assembled by UNTIL? The Ferret (in his Deathstriker villain disguise) Bubblegum, disguised as "Black Licorice" Brawl, an NPC who has appeared before in the campaign Thunder, an inexperience "villain" Lightning, Thunder's husband and fellow novice villain Unicorn, a Russian superspy The group had to eliminate an African dictator/supervillain called "The Golden Lion" who had us...

Having vented my spleen about the whole Batgirl/Joker/DC Comics fiasco out of this week, I would now like to return to my regularly scheduled discourse on superhero RPG's. A while back I mentioned that I was interested in learning more about the DC Heroes RPG, if only because it seemed to be this oddly forgotten RPG from days of yore.  I owned a bunch of sourcebooks, but not the game itself, and could only glean some sense of the game's mechanics. Well, over Spring Break with the kids I happened to be traveling out of state to see my parents, and on the visit hit a FLGS in the area which turned out to be the Holy Motherlode of out-of-print RPG's to the point where I could have blown $200 there easily, if I was so inclined. I wasn't, but I did pick up one book: Superman had just died when this edition was published, otherwise I'm sure he would have made his way into the cover.  By the way, nice gratuitous cleavage. I haven't had a chance to work my w...

As I mentioned a while back I was pretty sure that my Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign was drawing to a close, and rather than just suspend it or worse have it peter out I decided to end it in an intentional manner.  I told the group it would likely be the last session, and that I would be tying up a bunch, but not all of the plot strands that had been about in the game.  So thusly warned, we gamed last night, and here's the recap (GM's notes in italics)... Previously... The Ultimate Posse, a superhero team that came together in the years following an alien invasion of Earth, had managed to infiltrate the Zodiac, a supervillain collective and launch an assault on their space station base from within.  Taurus, the leader of the Zodiac, escaped along with Ares (Headstrong) and Cancer (King Crab), and two heroes in disguise--Samkhara who had become "Sagittarius" and the Ferret who was "Libra."  Ares had managed to capture Dr. Mind, who was unconscious. ...

In the last gaming session of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying , the PC hero team "The Ultimate Posse" had raided a Viper base and uncovered the origins of a meta human baby who was returned to his parents. This week had the heroes gathering together for a planning session to strike at the heart of the villainous organization called the Zodiac. After a lengthy discussion a four-fold plan was hatched. First, Samkhara the emotion-manipulating archer would, in her guise as the super villain Trauma apply to the Zodiac as a replacement for Sagittarius, whom Taurus had killed for her failure to acquire the baby. Abrasax the Guardian Garoyle, in his guise as the vampire Baron Von Blood, would then apply to be Scorpio, a seat vacant on the roster. With the Ferret already ensconced as Libra, the three Posse members would then be able (along with Scrapheap, posing as the robotic villain Blackbox) to disable the defenses of the space station used as headquarters for the Zodiac.  Then, ...

So, we finally get the Ultimate Posse back together for a game of Marvel Heroic RPG.  It's the original crew: the Ferret, Abrasax, Dr. Mind, Mr. Eternity, Union Galactic, and Samkhara.  Bubblegum, their newest member, stays for the beginning but eventually leaves because, well, she's ten and got bored. The Ferret is summoned by Taurus to the Zodiac spacestation.  There, in his guise as Libra, he is informed of Sagittarius' failure to get the "weapon of mass destruction," which the Ferret now knows is a baby.  Taurus opens a viewport to show the supervillainess archer drifting by, dead.  On the way out from the meeting, the Ferret is quizzed by Empyrean (known as Capricorn in the Zodiac) who briefly thinks he recognizes him, but the Ferret manages to bluff him into thinking otherwise. Dr. Mind examining the baby the group recovered from VIPER and the Bialyans, but didn't give to Taurus of the Zodiac (having instead swapped out some random and useless techno...

So we finally get to have another session of our homegrown Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign.  In our last episode, the heroes (the Ultimate Posse) discover a supervillain organization called the Zodiac that has been responsible for insuring that villains that are captured are released, provided they are "franchisees" of the Zodiac for a measly 15-20% of their gains.  Members of the Posse adopt supervillain identities in an attempt to become franchise members and discover more about the Zodiac's organization, only to discover  that the Ferret, posing as the superninja Deathstriker, has actually been inducted into the Zodiac proper as Libra! In this episode, the Posse ponder how to take down the Zodiac.  There are several suggestions, including teaming up with the mystical supervillain team the Pact in order to even the odds.  But Control, the director of the superspy organization UNTIL, wants the Posse to learn more about the Zodiac.  There's just one pr...

I haven't bothered writing up the third session, my own, mostly because I felt it was the weakest of the three.  But last night I finally pulled the trigger on one of the bigger meta-plots of my Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign. It began with four members of the Ultimate Posse--Samkhara, Abrasax, Dr. Mind, and novice hero Patchwork--chasing down five villains who had stolen some radioactive isotopes.  The villains were Gale Force, Crowdsource, Feral, Arrowhead, and Headstrong.  Arrowhead and Headstrong had appeared near the beginning of the campaign as a duo, while the other three had previously worked with Empyrean. It turned out to be a tighter fight than anyone expected.  Arrowhead and Crowdsource could hit the PC's with complications, then have their opponents get hammered by the other heroes.  Eventually the Posse turned the tide, although Samkhara had been badly injured by Crowdsource. A few days later, the heroes are coming back from patrol when t...

We're back with Group 1 for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying , although since most of Group 1 showed up last weekend, it really just feels like we are picking it up from there... Scene One We begin with the various PC's going about their business, attending their regular jobs or lounging about the HQ.  Argent, the NPC hero whose secret identity was publicly revealed in the last session, continues to rail against Randall Parker, the TV personality who aired footage of Argent  transforming in a back alley. Returning from a pilates class, Union Galactic witnesses an explosion at the hospital where the three victims of the Project: Sunburst nuclear facility meltdown are being treated.  He rushes over and finds the three are now embued with superhuman abilities.  The former head of the facility is now calling himself Helios, and claims to be sent to return humanity to worshiping the Sun.  With him are Radium and Ray, and the three beat down Union Galactic into unconscio...

Two Fridays ago we tried out the first of the "two parties/one gaming universe" model by having a session for "Group 2."  Unfortunately only two members of Group 2 were able to make it, so five members of Group 1 showed up to round out the anemic team.  Seven is way too many for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, but I hit what will likely be the first of many snags with the 2P/1GU model.  I had posted on Facebook that I had space in Friday's game, and every single person in Group 1 immediately piped up to say they could play.  My son graciously stepped aside, knowing that I would now owe him a favor, but I didn't want to ask any of the other players to do the same.  I may have to go with a first come, first served policy or some kind of "credit" system where if a player has missed a session in his own game he gets first crack at the other team. Anyways, the two new members of the Ultimate Posse are Ghost Raven , my daughter's somewhat lighter-hearte...

After the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying  session, we had a little chat about where we wanted to go with the campaign, which rules we wanted to use, and the possibility of a second team.  As it turns out I have four players teed up for the second team: another couple, a fellow from my church, and my daughter, who is young but the same age my son was when he began. Interestingly enough, despite several of the players being at least familiar, if not having played Mutants & Masterminds , the group was happier with Marvel Heroic Roleplaying .  I had thought, given how much they had played D&D 4E, they would want a "crunchier" game, but the group seemed to agree that the more fluid, imagination-driven rules of MHR.  I suppose it makes sense--there were a couple of moments in the M&M game where a player attempted what would be considered in MHR terms a "stunt" only to be told there would be some sort of penalty.  In addition, as I mentioned previously, there ...

My regular gaming group got back together Friday to once again play the Ultimate Posse with Marvel Heroic Roleplaying .  I'll freely admit I lifted much of the adventure from "The Protean Plot" by Green Ronin Games. The game began with a bit of a transition scene where the team was contacted by the Ferret, who had escaped the demonic invaders.  He was able to tell them that the home dimension of the demons was Stygia, which Abrasax said he would research. Suddenly, the Posse gets a call from the police chief that a group of metahumans is breaking into Genesis Technologies (home of Lancelot, a rival "hero").  The group of metahumans is the Multipower Gang , and the Posse (wondering where Lancelot might be) heads over and mixes it up with the power-shifting thieves.  The Multipower Gang proves to be a bit of a challenge for the group, stressing out Dr. Mind and injuring others, and right before they are overcome one of the Gang attacked the group with an area ...

The Doom Pool at one point: 4d12, 3d10, 2d8, and 1d6 When last we saw our heroes... The Ferret, Abrasax, and Mr. Eternity had successfully stopped Empyrean from obtaining alien DNA from the Celestial, but only because the Celestial had mysteriously returned to life as the Dark Celestial.  Now the Dark Celestial is on the loose, and the three heroes have rounded up most of the Ultimate Posse to help. Scene One The Ferret, Abrasax, Mr. Eternity, Samkhara, and Dr. Mind are approached at the HQ by Gen. Niles MacCauley of the USAF, who reports that the Dark Celestial is heading for the Strategic Air Command base at El Seguro.  There's a nuclear arsenal there, and MacCauley fears the worst.  After some very un-heroic dickering over what kind of future support the USAF would give to the Ultimate Posse, they head out in their new jet, which doesn't yet have a name. The team also sees news footage of Empyrean's trio of clone bodyguards--Crimson, Cobalt, and Viridian-...

Friday we played another game from our Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign.  Here's the recap: Scene One Mr. Eternity, the Ferret, and Abrasax the Guardian Gargoyle were alerted by the authorities to a break-in at a Genesis Technologies facility that manufactures military- and industrial-grade construction vehicles.  Accompanies by the new heroine the Huntress, they rushed over in their new jet (whose name hasn't quite been determined yet) and discover three supervillains--Feral, Gale Force, and Crowdsource--obviously trying to steal something.  The four heroes and three villains ended up fighting a highly destructive battle that left most the facility in ruins.  Shortly after defeating the villainous trio, Lancelot shows up, rebukes the heroes for causing so much damage, and hauls the villains off into custody. The Huntress was being played by my daughter, who wanted to try out MHR and would help flesh out the group.  The players rolled incredibly badly, a...

Part of my ongoing report of my Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign. Scene One The action begins in media res  as the Ultimate Posse (who swears they are going to change their name) respond to a report of two supervillains, Arrowhead and Headstrong, robbing a local bank.  The Posse, short Mr. Eternity who is working on building their new vehicle, mostly concentrate on taking down the gimmicky archer Arrowhead first while their tank Abrasax ties up Headstrong in combat.  Once Arrowhead is down, Headstrong quickly follows. I've decided to open each session with one of these action scenes, rather than a "you're all hanging around the base one day..." Scene Two Outside the bank the heroes are approached by Agent McAdams of the US Secret Service.  Agent McAdams asked them to accompany him to the offices of Senator Pritchard, the political rival of their friend Senator Rybeck (see here ).  High-tech agents attempted to kidnap Pritchard's daughter, Lucy, from her...

I ran another session of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (R.I.P.) Friday night for my gaming group. All six players made the game, and here's the way it went. Scene One The group meets a cowboy who was abducted by aliens in the 1800's and kept in suspended animation until he was rescued by the Wonders in the final battle against the alien invaders. The cowboy, calling himself "Union Galactic," hopes to honor their memory by fighting villains using powers gained from various alien implants. Since Positive Crisis has left the team, the new hero is welcomed aboard. Ed. note: Positive Crisis' player had never really taken a shine to the character, so he comes in with a new one, straight out of "Cowboys and Aliens." Scene Two The heroes hear a broadcasted distress call from a transport ship being attacked by a mysterious Crustacean-like monster. The heroes fly to the ship and battle the strange figure, finally subduing it for questioning. Before they can ...

All right, I can do this.  Back on the "A-to-Z" thing. I just saw some news over at The Other Side blog that Margaret Weis Productions will no longer be making books for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying .  Tim, the blogger at The Other Side, speculated that it was because you needed the right group to make it work.   I've been playing it a few times with my group, and he might be right. I'll also go one further and say that the game's lack of rules for building your own character and advancing that character, both staples of most RPG's, probably didn't help. I own the core rulebook and the Civil War  supplement in hardback. (I'm not a fan of pdf's for reasons I'll go into on another day.)  But I pre-ordered The Initiative through my FLGS, and now they won't be releasing the book.  Here's the news release , by the way. Naturally, not having a game in print doesn't mean you can't play it, and I'll probably continue on with MHR f...

So, we had our second session of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.  The PC's who were present were the Ferret, Mr. Eternity, Samkhara, and Abrasax the Gargoyle. The story begins with the Ferret (in his secret identity as Max Collins) taking a day off for a drive up the coastline.  He's accompanied by Samkhara, who just wanted a chance to get away and have some fun. While stopping to get fuel and a soda, the Ferret and Samkhara notice people running in terror down the street.  Samkhara uses her fear-based telepathy to ascertain that a robot is destroying the center of the small community.  The Ferret drives to the downtown area, only to have a statue crash into his car, destroying it and hurting both him and his companion.  The robot is going berzerk, tearing up everything in the area. The Ferret quickly changes costumes, calls Mr. Eternity on his cell phone, and he and Samkhara engage the robot, who as it turns out as a human brain (albeit one consumed with fear ...