***Attention - spoilers of the Diamante's playset ahead***







So we played V&V on Saturday, as we do every other week.  And this week's session borrowed heavily from all of the hard work that Dave Woodrum (and Stacy Smith and FGU) have done over the last year or so (as well as Alabaster Knight, Jeff Dee, and some others).

First I dropped lots of hints of a number of adventures that will be rolling down the pipeline in the near future:

- I hinted at an undersea adventure down the road (as it looks like one is coming from FGU)
- They saw underground images of mud men (foreshadowing Into the Depths)
- They saw The Secret Land for the first time (I used the original art I purchesed of Jeff Dee's work as shown in the 2.1 rulebook where we see Psimon and Cheetah checking out this "Savage Land" like environment)

After that the heroes busted up a drug shipment to The Darlings, along with a representative from C.R.I.M.E. (which has been muscling in on the D.C. area for the last few years while the heroes have been away).  They found out that Diamante's is the place where some high-ranking fellows from C.R.I.M.E. hang out, so they went there in their superhero guises (full costumes).  They got a table, then started wandering around.  They soon figured out that there are stairs going down, and the strongest PC buffaloed his way past security; soon they were all wandering around down in the casino and even in the main bad guy's quarters!  They were a bit shocked to find cells and a torture room, and - though they felt that the message they were delivering to C.R.I.M.E. had already been successful - they pushed on towards the heart of the underground facility.  Only one of the four was dropped by a Paralysis beam trap, but they seemed momentarily stymied by a massive metal door that barred their way into the control center.  My 15th Level Magnetics character (Compass) has never had a problem with any door, so he took a stab at ripping it off it's hinges.  And nothing happened.  [I have a chart that shows the weights of all metals per cubic foot, and I figured this door was two feet thick tungsten (plus 7 feet tall and 3 feet wide).  That made it over 50,000 lbs. - around double what Compass can deal with!]  So another PC switched forms and ripped the whole thing off it's hinges as if it were a tin can.  This got the attention of the bad guys big time, and - though the characters made no arrests (they knew they were there without warrants), they sent a very strong message to the villains that they were back in town, and that their recent shenanigans would not be tolerated!

It was a great session.  A big thanks to Dave and crew for the fantastic setting!  We had a brand new player who was really impressed with the level of detail and the great work that went into the restaurant/casino/lair and really enjoyed his experience!   

You're welcome! Thank you for playing it and taking my ideas to the next (and a much greater)level!

Say, can you post Issues 1-317?  With illustrations?

Yes.

Sounds like a fun game. Have a couple questions if you don't mind.

1) Are the characters deputized law officers? If so, do they "special" powers to bypass the legal rights of suspects?

2) I take it a covert operation, information gathering operation was out of the question Just curious, because strong arm tactics like that normally end up in the death of innocents in most campaigns I use to run or play in.

PS: I loved the Insurance Agent bit (that guys got to be a deep cover villain)

mw - Good looking out, dawg (as Randy Jackson would say).   

I was going to point to the same thing, as this is how I view it too.  We didn't really have it well articulated before Jeff wrote that, but it does a great job of summarizing a fair way of handling registration and the "law enforcement" authority that superheroes would have.

So for #1, to summarize, our heroes work as standard superheroes in the U.S.  Because they are part of the premiere superhero team in the country (think JLA or Avengers), they're granted a lot of discretionary power.  Some on the team have powerful contacts in the government and among C.H.E.S.S., and the past two Kings of C.H.E.S.S. are former Guardians.

#2) A covert op is often what ends up happening.  In this case, they decided that they wanted to send a more direct (and public) message to C.R.I.M.E.  The main PC in this endeavor (Scion) uses his great Charisma, sometimes to shmooze and interact with players on Capitol Hill, and other times to intimidate criminals (as he did here).  In the intimidation he's done, he's been careful not to cross the line.

p.s. - That character can be found in Citizen Report, which came out recently from FGU.   

I too really loved Civil War and the way Marvel explored registration.

Display Name wrote on Sep 4^th, 2010 at 1:56pm:


It seems like last week, but it was probably two years ago?  It was a mega-event crossover for Marvel (like the companies do so often), but you could follow the whole story simply be getting the trade paperback.  Well worth it, IMHO.

The basic story is that the Government decides to enact registration for all supers.  Tony Stark is the head of SHIELD (he's the Homer Grimsby of their universe), and he heads up the "pro-registration" forces.  Others, like Reed Richards and Spider-Man (who is a protege of Stark at this point) embrace this viewpoint as well.

Then a bunch of heroes completely rebel against the idea!  Wolverine, Sue Storm (which makes big-time tension in her marriage), and many others, led by Captain America, clash with the others.

It gets to the point where the "good" attempt to arrest the rebels, and Spider-Man even publically unmasks, revealing his secret identity to the world!

I won't ruin how it shakes out for you, but it leads into the death of Captain America and sets the groundwork for some other cool stuff down the road (villains taking over and running things, a full-on Skrull invasion, etc.).