Friday, July 26, 2013

Time? What time...


Another day, another Friday...

We recently found out that we will have another game store opening up in town soon. From what we can tell, the projected opening is happening in about 3-5 weeks, but we have no idea where in town they will be. This will be part of a small chain of stores from the NW suburbs of Chi-Town. According to all accounts, it will be a company store, not a franchise, which means they can pour profits from five going stores into the store located here until it either succeeds or they determine that they are throwing good money after bad. Either way, it should be fun.

I was also supposed to work on game stuff last night, but ended up talking to a cousin I hadn't spoken to in about 15 years or so. It was good catching up, but it will probably be another decade or so before we talk again. We're two very different people with very little in common anymore besides kinship. It is what it is.

That all said, it also meant that I got exactly ZERO prep work done for the Champions game I am running Saturday night. With it being Friday, I will be here until about 3:30AM or so, and am scheduled to open at 11:00AM. So I could either sleep, or work on game stuff. Knowing me, I will probably try to work on game stuff and stay up until late Saturday night for I am stupid like that.

Go me!  =P

-- GopherDave

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Drama Bombs...


Remember when I said last post that no news equals no drama? Yeah? Well, feh... There's another life theory shot all to hell...

Basically, the last few weeks have been filled with all kinds of drama ranging from financial to family, and it looks like more might be on the way. In between it all, I *DID* manage to start a Champions campaign...

The drama, I will not delve deeply into as it involves more than me, and several parties have said they are uncomfortable with me just blurting things out to the net even though I typically change names to protect, well, everybody but me. I understand it, and am trying to comply with it. I will say that the drama did involve Skribl and I making a 1100-mile round trip in about 19 hours to solve one of the issues in question.

As for the Champions campaign, that is fair game to discuss.

The Place

Indianapolis (a.k.a., the Circle City)

The Group


  • The Fro - Smooth-talking 70's-based Black Sampson, except his hair grants him healing powers instead of strength.
  • A.C.E. - The world's first extranormal, the Advanced Combat Entity is a cowboy-themed immortal, energy blaster.
  • Torque - A bike-wrenching gearhead with the ability to be his own hydraulic lift.
  • AKA - A hoodie and hockey mask-wearing mentalist that tries to stay out of direct battle and affect things from the fringes.
  • Fahrenheit - Half-Jewish, half-Japanese temperature-based energy projector.


The Villains


  • Groundpounder - A strongman so imbecilic his stupidity rubs off on those around him.
  • Wraith - A ghostly assassin whose abilities let her affect the living.
  • Slumber - An "energy projector" whose main abilities include draining people to exhaustion.
  • Sledge - Another "energy projector" who flies and and fires chunks of "psionic concrete".
  • Nameless Goons - Six, oddly armed regular goons who were hired for a job.


The Setting

A small pedestrian mall in the Broad Ripple area of town. One that has a coffee house, a comic-book shop, and a bank in it. It has other places as well, but we don't care about those.

Since this was the first run, I figured I'd just throw a basic fight at the group to sort of see what their combined abilities could do. The villains they faced were not very well coordinated, and pretty much operate as "lone gunman" and hired goons much of the time.

As it stood, the Goons tried to rob the bank while The Fro, Fahrenheit, and ACE were off getting coffee and AKA was working in his secret ID at the comic book store. Once alarms start going off, our intrepid heroes (and comic shop worker) go investigate. They find a group of normal, ski-mask wearing guys packing auto-fire "blasters" robbing the bank. As the fight begins, and normal goons begin going down, support arrives in the forms of Wraith, Groundpounder, and Slumber. Meanwhile, some near distance away, Torque spies Sledge going through the air in the direction of the fight (he's running late for his bit (stupid Unluck)). Soon, Sledge and Torque join the battle and it's on kind of like Donkey Kong.

I don't remember a ton of details, but I do remember that Slumber, Groundpounder, and Sledge got captured. All of the goons also got captured, but many more are heading to the hospital than to jail. There was a bit of interrogation with Slumber, who quickly ascertained that the hero group does not possess a detective among them. The heroes came to the conclusion that all of this (including the mix of villains) seemed somewhat random but didn't really understand why. Slumber theorized, and offered up this theory, that if one considered oneself a master villain and there was a new group of vigilantes in town than what better way to see what you are up against than to hire some random thugs to confront them.

That is where left it for the evening. Tonight, I will hopefully have time to plan Saturday's run. I have some ideas in mind and some missives to fire off to various players in the next day or so in order to set some things up.

-- GopherDave