Category: GM

Converting some WatchTower characters to Wild Talents.

Codename: Warhead AKA David Bruce Brandon
Appearance: Warhead is an 8 ft tall humanoid suit of armour. Brandon is a slighty overweight man with unkempt brown hair and bushy eyebrows.
Background: Dr David Brandon is a robotics engineer. He discovered his electrical generation powers as a teen and quickly started to use it to power small devices. The Warhead armour was the culmination of a series of inventions which, while they seemed revolutionary, could only be used by him. Along with the armour, he has a motorcyle and an electric car; neither of which have batteries. David loves the thrill of adventure when in the suit.
Known Talent Abilities: David can generate electrical energy. It’s of a sufficiently low level that it cannot be used to create dangerous attacks but it has been use to power the warhead armour removing the need for bulky power supplies.

  • Harm (AU) – Shock only

The Warhead Armour provides the following advantages

  • Armour (Heavy Armour)
  • Strength (HyperBody)
  • Protection from cold, heat, pressure, oxygen (Immunity)

Sparkle AKA Helen Louise Ross
Appearance: Sparkle is a blonde caucasian woman in her mid-thirties. She’s attractive but her demeanour is very downtrodden. She is surrounded by sparkling motes in the air around her.
Background: Helen was a normal working mum with 2 kids, a busy husband and a dog. She was driving her children home from school when a car ran a red light and was about to hit her car when it was enveloped in sparkling light. The car was hefted over her car and into oncoming traffic causing a 7-car pile-up. Thankfully no-one died. She drove home, shaken more by the Sparkles which still surrounded her, than the accident. Her husband was not understanding, however, and within a matter of weeks she was homeless, presented with a restraining order preventing her from contacting her children and facing charges for criminal damages to 7 cars and 13 personal injury claims. These days, bankrupt and with a 2 year probationary sentence, she work on a construction site as a Lifter and has fallen in with a Talent support group.
Known Talent Abilities:
Sparkle can generate a visible telekinetic field within a short range of her body. The area effect of her ability is indicated by the movement of sparkling motes in the air which affect her ability to remain concealed. She calls this her “Sparkle Effect”.

  • Telekinesis (ADU) – Obvious
  • Flight (U) attached to Telekinesis – Booster, Multiple Targets

Inferno AKA Brad Nelson
Appearance: A well-built caucasian man in his twenties with blond hair
and grey eyes. When using his power, his hair and eyes are usually ‘leaking’ flames.
Background: Brad Nelson was always spoiled. He was tall, good looking, excellent at sports and graduated valedictorian of his class. He had it all and he was a Talent. But, like all spoiled brats, he was greedy. Brad debuted as a supervillain known as Phlogiston in New York. On his first outing, a bank robbery, he was utterly defeated and catapulted into the Hudson. It was desperately humbling. His resolution: become a hero. He took acting lessons, spent more time in the gym and at the dojo, moved across the continent and got himself a PR Agent. He’s not rich, not yet…
Known Talent Abilities:
Inferno can release flame from any part of his body. The shape and intensity of the flame can vary in intensity and he is immune to it’s effects. He cannot lessen ambient flame nor can he shape it into anything other than a burst, though he can reduce the effects.

  • Harm (ARU) – Burn, Killing Only, Engulf, Spray, Obvious
  • Immunity to Flame/Heat – Endless

Hemlock AKA Robert Gage
Appearance: Hemlock is a powerfully built human male who usually wears a close fitting impermeable black garment underneath his normal clothes. His gloves and mask are removable.
Background: Robert Gage developed his toxin producing abilities during gestation and as a result his mother died during an emergency procedure. As he was being delivered, his poisons killed two nurses and incapacitated his doctor. His father fled and refused to have anything to do with him and he was given to an orphanage. He spent his entire youth in isolation, limbs wrapped in plastic, terrified that his touch would kill. Always studious, he was awarded several scholarships, none of which he could accept. After his 16th birthday, he left the orphanage and attempted to make his own way in the world – not an easy task considering his isolationbut he muddled through gaining many useful contacts. Three years later, he was contacted by a lawyer as the sole inheritor of his father’s estate. No longer with any need to work or interact with others for money, he is free to do as his heart desires.
Known Talent Abilities:
Hemlock’s body exudes a powerful toxin which renders a target into an intoxicated delirium and, in very high doses, will kill. He has no control over this effect and therefore gauges the dose as best he can. (Using his poison skill to try to reduce damage).

  • Skill: Poison (to gobble Harm dice)
  • Harm (A, R) – Always On, Touch Only

Portion control

One of the hardest things to manage when GMing a game is portion control.

Traditionally we game in the evenings starting at around 7 pm and finishing up around 10 pm or 11 pm. It’s long enough to get something done and relax and make it a social affair. When I gamed in school it was gaming during the 40 minute lunchtimes and for 80 minutes on a Friday evening after school. On the weekend when we were young we might meet up around noon, start a game at 2, finish much later and at times, stay over so we could game more the next day. We had few responsibilties so it worked out well. These days, a 3 hour session is lucky to have because we have these responsibilities to family, spouse, work, other hobbies and being social. We have to therefore tailor our games to these times. Finding the right amount of material for a 3 hour session is not as simple as it sounds. Preparing too much material (or if your players are being a little dense or distracted) is not a major issue as you can pick up next time. Preparing too little is a pain because when the session ends and there’s still a good hour to go, you can feel somewhat disappointed. The time we have for gaming is precious and we want to use it in the right fashion as much as possible.

Enough of a challenge or are they swamped?

When playing an investigative game, it’s important to force feed a lot of players with clues and leads. Why? Because just because the players have characters who are investigative reporters, private detectives, research scientists and other smart professions, it doesn’t follow that the player is any good at looking at the evidence and deducing what happens before the Great Old Ones rise and the world ends. At the same time, don’t make it a railroad where the clues may lead somewhere but it doesn’t matter what they do because they’ll be drawn into the final struggle anyway.

The same extends to ‘combat-oriented’ games. Deduce the appropriate level of challenge and don’t have the half dozen player characters swamped with hundreds of enemies who can’t pose any real threat (due to armour or magic on the part of the PCs) but they do just carry you away from the goal. Once it’s novel, twice it’s amusing, three times and you’re an ass.

Be especially careful of the challenge level you present if there’s real possibility of player character death. Players don’t generally like it when their characters die. Sometimes it’s thematically appropriate and yet, at other times you have the annoyance and boredom of going through the numbers and generating another character.

Ma’ Johnston’s Dinner Recipe

My mum has always cooked extra. It comes from me and my siblings having big appetites and there usually being an extra head at the table to feed because one or more of us brought a friend. As we’ve gotten older, the portions got larger and now I know she actually cooks two dinners when she knows we’re calling over for dinner. This is why you can end up with a plate of spagetti, bolognaise sauce, a pork chop and some broccoli bake on the same plate. It’s because she loves feeding people and making sure everyone gets enough.

Apply the same thought to gaming. Overprepare on the materials but don’t get frustrated if the PCs seem to be getting through it slowly. I’d also recommend having a side order of something left of field just in case they get distracted or they do manage to resolve the issues very quickly.

Also…it is okay to just close the book and say “That’s all for tonight” and not game for the last hour or so. Most players these days have also worked as GMs and there’s a spread of ability. Some people work from published adventures, some from their copious notes and other still from their fevered imagination. Good players will understand.

Wild Talents / ORE

I’ve finally finished reading the system bits of Wild Talents and I do wish I’d read it earlier as it is a pretty solid action system with a lot of crunch and grit.

It’s honestly the first time since reading Marvel Super Heroes by TSR that I felt like I could reliably model any power. MSH will always have a special place in my heart because it modelled things so well (in truth, it did no modelling, it was all narrative).

Essentially Wild Talents uses a system where you buy dice in ‘stats’, ‘powers’ and ‘skills’.

Powers are, ironically. the cheapest thing to buy (which I suppose is fair enough in a superhero game.). The base cost of every power is 1 point for 1 dice. It’s when you add qualities to it that the cost increases.

e.g. We want to create a power called “Fire Generation” which will model the power in the MSH Ultimate Powers Book. To keep the Math simple we’re going to guy one normal dice in it which is the logical equivalent of getting the power at Feeble (2) rank.

1 point spent in Fire Generation allows you to generate a plume of flame. It’s a showy effect but not useful for much else.

Each quality added increases the dice cost by 1 per die.

  • Adding the Attacks quality adds a single point cost but it means that the fire can be directed into an attack. Of course, with 1 dice in it, it’s actually useless but bear with me here.
  • Adding the Defends quality means that the fire can be used to defend against attacks by, burning attackers, destroying missiles and the like. Again, with one die it’s useless but you get the drift.
  • Normally, if you get hurt or otherwise distracted, the power cuts out, and in this case, the flame plume would just stop. The Robust quality means that it keeps working even if you are hurt or distracted but it still stops if you’re knocked out.
  • Fire Generation is a ‘fighting’ power but the ability to generate fire has other uses outside of roasting bank robbers. To be able to cook with it without turning the food to cinders, or light a cigarette without roasting someone alive or even just use it to light a room in the absence of a torch means you have to take the quality “Useful Outside of Combat”.

This means there’s an incredible range of Fire Generating Powers available.

It’s possible to buy Fire Generation with only the Useful Outside of Combat quality. Your character could have a career being a human barbeque, being able to perfectly create a Souffle or warm a room with his presence.

It’s also possible only to buy it with the Attacks quality so that it can only be used to blow things up.

This means a somewhat useless Fire Generation power costs 1 point per die, but a Fire Generation that allows you to attack, will defend you from attacks, will continue to defend you even if you get hurt and can be used to toast marshmallows and keep your coffee warm will cost 5 points per die (because we’ve added all four qualities). That’s quite expensive in points so how do we reduce it? By adding Flaws which reduce the cost per point. More on that later.

Very flexible.

In the next WT post, I’ll talk about the dice conventions, the names of which were a major reason for me to have ignored Godlike and Wild Talents for so long.

More on Godlike

I’ve finished reading the book itself and found it quite enjoyable. I do have some issues with the quick proliferation of Talents and would be seeking to limit them myself. I don’t mind them being very powerful (though there seem to be a lot of indestructable ‘mad’ talents out there.

The money is still on the table on whether it’ll be North Africa or Pacific. Africa would be my preference.

Jim’s background goes into heaps of detail and allowed me to build the Talent power he wanted (I think) using a combination of two powers. It turns him from a simple one-sided Talent into something a little more exciting.

Michael provided two options – the mundane and the spectacular. I much prefer the “mundane” but have a lot of questions about what happens and how.

I’ve not got much detail from Graham yet but that’s probably more to do with my lack of information provision which I’ll remedy this week.

I’m also not sure whether Paul or Aidan will be able to participate. Paul has an awkward schedule and Aidan is in the wrong country (so we’re considering RP via Skype Video).

My next post will be going through the character generation process to make a couple of Talents for the game.

The usual fare

I don’t remember where I got this but it always made me think about the perfect stag do. It’s originally from the first edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and really proves that, to a degree, roleplayers of the day were ugly virgins.

random_harlot_table.jpg

I listened to an early episode of feartheboot on the way into work this morning (Episode 7 if anyone is interested) and they criticised the use of tables in some circumstances (roll for mental derangements, roll for plot points in a new town, roll for orgasm) while defending them in others (roll for Battlemech enemies, roll for random treasure/loot). I find that dichotomy to be really odd and illustrates a real liking for Monty Haul style campaigns. It doesn’t matter who the baddies are, they’re just random encounters and after we kill them we’ll take their #35 on the random treasure table. I know I’m taking that a little out of context and it was an early episode from about 2 years ago but I’m working through them and sometimes I really want to say “Hey, no, I don’t think that’s right” but, jeez, it’s two years ago so who would care.

Look at the assumptions in the table (getting back to the point). Didn’t this table tell you some things? Firstly, the players were likely to be all male, as were their characters. Secondly, all harlots were female (arguably a pimp or panderer can be either). That’s kind of shocking in of itself with modern sensibilities though unsurprising considering my gaming group consists of 4 blokes and this game was aimed at teenage dorks who weren’t great at sports.

If only I hadn’t watched Fear of Girls on Google Video (and the Wikipedia link) recently.

Makes me cringe.

That said, we may have been adolescents at one point and perhaps some of us fantasised about characters such as “Bathsheba Fullbubs” or “Calime Halfelven” but then that’s why this kind of material was in the books in the first place. We weren’t sexists when we were 12 years old, we were just confused and horny. RPG books catered to what we wanted to see and we didn’t see anything different between tough looking girls in chainmail thongs and the feeble representation of wet-blanket men in Barbie commercials.

I’m glad we can laugh about this.

‘Culture Games’

Back last year we wrote a ‘popular’ post about the top 10 roleplaying games of all time. In the post, I did explain my preference for culture games but also lacked to really talk about the concept. In thinking about it on the way to work this morning (driving is relative downtime), I figured it would be good to examine it due to some things that were said last night over iChat. Some of this discussion may end up contradicting myself even within the relative safety of this post.

By a ‘culture game’, I mean a game where there’s a component of learning about the culture as well as the opportunity to play non-combatant characters. It’s a game where people might talk about the richness of the setting or the feelings it evokes when they play. Part of this will be the game materials itself, part of it will be the player imaginations and part of it will be the style of the GM.

Just to muddy the waters, I’m going to discuss this in terms of the amount of culture I perceive the game to have. It doesn’t matter if the game is mainstream or indie, that’s not invquestion here and indeed, many indie games which are popular I would not describe as culture games specifically.

It’s also important not to fall into the trap of thinking that Low-Culture = Bad and High-Culture = Good. That’s not the case at all. Most of the difference is that I can probably get a Low-Culture game running very easily and find players for it without much issue. In comparison, finding players for a High-Culture game can often be impossible.

Low-Culture
The first gut reaction here is any game where Combat is the main thing. I’d hazard Cyberpunk, SLA Industries, Marvel Super Heroes (in any incarnation), Mutants and Masterminds and pretty much any incarnation of games from White Wolf or any of the D&D settings (yes, there are exceptions but they’re outliers to the rule). Most of the d20 line in fact has ‘genericised’ the settings so much that it’s hard not to feel like a fighter or magic user that’s rolled off a production line. Some of the games have such strong archetypes that it’s somewhat fruitless to soften them up because you end up playing an archetype or something that feels deliberately unlike an archetype (which is a cliche). I include Marvel Super Heroes here because, unless you’ve been reading comics for the last 50 years or so, you’re not going to get a real feel for Marvel (and to a degree this counts for most settings based on licensed material).

My worst experience with this was with D&D. To a degree this feeling of being a ‘generic adventurer’ is the fault of the GM who introduced us to the campaign world by giving us a blank character sheet and the Players Handbook. No real notes on the world, the culture, the towns and cities, how society feels about wandering mobs of ruffians armed with weapons and magic (the player characters). In short, the stuff we should know from living in a world for a score years or more.

I consider Call of Cthulhu to be low culture but find that the players who play it tend to refer high culture. I am lucky to be in a gaming group with Cthulhu experts – they spend a lot time on Yog-Sothoth forums, they have played pretty much every module and read pretty much every scenario and background. They order the monograms. In this way the players and GMs bring culture to the game and you’ll find there are games which may be, on the face of it, low culture but which have broken free of that definition due to a particular setting, a particularly good GM or a set of players who want a certain type of play. The conclusion there is that it’s possible for players and GM to bring culture to a game.

High Culture
I’d be rightfully accused as a Culture-Snob in truth. These are games where the game is designed with a copious amount of information and great depth within. There’s a difference, of course, in these games. Some, like Tekumel and Glorantha, have vast amounts of content provided for them. Some, like Skyrealms of Jorune, have relatively little. But the feel of the game is to embody a rich and diverse background where just wandering down the street provides inspiration and adventure. Where you can have as much fun roleplaying buying your new uniform as you can hunting down a rogue Ahoggya.

In fact, in these games it’s my experience that it’s hard to have a ‘bad game’ because the opportunities for the players to direct the story are so much greater. This isn’t an ‘indie’ thing where we have to outline our confrontations and desired outcomes and bend the story, through shared participation of multiple GM-like figures to a crescendo of story and personality. No. This is just that the background is so interesting that there’s absolutely no need to think of a plot because the players tell you what they want to do. Ars Magica is perhaps one of the best examples of this as it gets to a point where running a game is just fielding questions and playing roles rather than providing plot. The players run with the plot themselves. The Magi want Vis so they get their grogs and companions to find it. They drive the plot forwards. Likewise in Tekumel, there’s so much to do and see (including trying not to get impaled), that you want to experience it all. I find this with Glorantha (though the source materials are harder to get) that there’s a hundred rich cultures and very few of them are Western European Mediaeval (which Ars Magica covers very well, thanks).

So if I prefer High-Culture, why have I been playing Delta Green, Cthulhu by Gaslight and why am I intend to run Godlike for them?

Firstly because there’s a large component of ‘fun’ made up of having the right players and the right GM. If everyone wants to play the game then it’s fun, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s a D&D dungeon crawl with inexplicably large monsters behind small doors, if you’re having fun then it’s all good. And that’s why we’re doing this.

Secondly, many culture games are not particularly accessible. They’ve not done well in the market and therefore tend to go out of print. It’s no wrong things that the vast majority of gamers want to play something with a little less depth. Being handed a large folder of source material for your culture alone and seeing another player getting a similar folder for a different culture can be daunting.

Lastly, it can be very hard to match the expectations of players. Some Low-Culture games have copious amounts of source material (Witness the amount I’m massing for running this Godlike game) and some of the players you have might have read a lot around the subject. Ask them about the pitch of the game. Do they want it to be authentic or ‘four colour’. Ask them if they have recommendations on source materials. Being loaned books from your players to help you get a feel for the type of game they are interested in is a big help.

For example, with this Godlike game. Do they want to play a “Saving Private Ryan” game? A “Band of Brothers” game? “A Bridge Too Far”? “Where Eagles Dare”? Using these ‘popular culture’ references we can meet their expectations and provide a lot of background and setting material to what would otherwise be possibly a very dry game.

My group are also fond of copious handouts. That’s a new challenge.

Prepping for a game

I’m a little intimidated by running a new game. I’d like to run (and by all accounts the guys would like me to run) Godlike. Something about giving it to the Boche really motivates them and it’s be nice to play a game where we have an easily defined baddie.

Among other things this will mean not running a game in my ‘Watchtower’ universe which Gavin and Aidan have played in the past. Watchtower is the amalgam of superhero gaming from a long time ago. In this world, the Horror has been defeated under the sea in the Eagles base three times, the Holy Grail has been quested for twice, a giant robot has been stopped from trashing downtown Miami by the Zombie Squad who also led a nameless horror from a million light years away, a million years ago to Earth, a UK government team called Zenith was massacred by an assassin about two years before the strip in 2000AD started, a team based in Colorado nearly lost half their team fighting a weather-controlling teenager and in San Francisco and New York, members of the Watchtower fought valiantly against their own hubris and some vampires as well as the formation of the first superhuman incarceration directive.

So, this goes before all of that.

We’re planning to play Godlike.

I don’t know much about World War 2 so this week I’ve been tracking down movies and books which will hopefully fill me in before the guys I game with (all arts grads with a lot more time to read books during their formative years and a lot more interest in non-fiction) lambast me for being relatively ignorant. I do feel a little intimidated because especially in recent years I have become progressively less well-read as I just don’t have the time. That must change.

I’m going to survive on a diet of WW2 films for a while to whet my appetite and then grab some Osprey books on the period and place for the setting. It will, of course, horrify me how much I don’t know in comparison to my peers.

But we have to start somewhere.

Episode Seven: 28th October 2000

“This is Kitty Thoreau for LCI News Dakota in a prefab cabin built by the newly inaugurated WatchTower New York. What are they doing in Dakota? Good question and something we’ll answer after the break.”

RASA Fashion, the leading bespoke tailors are now touring the Dakotas. Call 1-80-555-5555 to find your nearest store.

melissastark.png

“We’re back with more news on the WatchTower. We’re not in Dakota which is one reason – we’re suspended a mile above the Atlantic coast while WatchTower New York takes steps to clean the terrible environmental disaster caused by an unidentified superpowered terrorist. To pull this herculean effot together, they’ve pulled in technical staff from Torus Research, a leading edge technology corporation and using technology licensed from the UK-based Prodigy Corporation.

The amazing thing is that this building was created from the air by Balance, the leader of WatchTower New York. We’re currently being held aloft by Yellow Fist, the superhumanly strong scrapper who provides WatchTower with much-needed muscle. I’ve been talking with Indigo, the wearer of the Torus Research prototype “Rescue Suit” designed to help locate and rescue people in danger and two senior technicians from Torus; Mikey and Pete. I’m told we also owe some thanks to SkyCrane who is acting as a forward observer ten miles up.”

[She pauses and walks around the prefab, pointing at the individuals and the equipment]

“This device, dubbed the VacScoop, is removing all of the pollutants collected on our nations beaches and removing them, dumping them into deep space. The process of cleaning all the world’s oceans of 90% of pollutants is apparently going to take less than 12 hours. The question this journalist has is: Why hasn’t anyone done this before?

[she pauses and the sound goes out]

“I’ve just been told we’re going to teleport to the Indian Ocean, on the other side of the planet, to continue this work. I can really see this being a viable alternative to aircraft flights with instantaneous travel, no risk of deep-vein thrombosis. Yes, it can send you to the Bahamas but you have to purchase your ticket 30 days in advance.”

[she grins an award winning smile]

“Just joking folks, this advanced tech is still in testing which does make me a little nervous but it seems to be working fine.

Just so we’re clear: we’re saving the world here….on live TV….”

Episode Six – 28th October 2000

The team was immediately dispatched to intercept the intruder who seemed to be a humanoid waterspout, heading towards the land. Debate ended fruitlessly with the humanoid who called itself “Ocean” and a short battle ensued – Yellowfist, Balance and SkyCrane providing the muscle, Psiren and INDIGO the recon. Eventually a psychic targetting from Psiren enabled Yellowfist to strike at the source of the ocean manipulation, knocking him out.

The episode ends with the team holding onto Ocean and wondering what to do with him. If they turn him over they know for sure he’ll disappear into the depths of Fortress, never to be seen again. And what’s to be done about the several thousand miles of pollutants along the shores of North America?

Episode Five – 28th October 2000

“Any other business?” was the last words of the meeting spoken before the polished teak of the conference table began to dribble onto the floor into a congealing mess. The wood grain, melting and flowing like and oily slick. The assembled team, everyone minus Balance, had the same word on their lips “Balance”…the marble floor of the conference room began to sag and spill into the basement below and even the walls of the room seemed to curve inwards as if the massive weight of the building was pushing down upon itself.

The effect began to fade as soon as it appeared with only two notable clues. Both, impressions of some of the Ten Commandments, appearing on solid surfaces.

Balance returned to the WatchTower to find the place in disarray and assisted the technical teams in reshaping the walls and surfaces back to what they should have been. He had to endure some interrogation as he was not only the solution but the prime suspect. It was apparent however, that the WatchTower was under attack.

And it was not over, either.

As soon as the last block of marble was fixed, there was another attack. This time a series of bursts of psychokinetic energy which caused a constant 1 mm/sec movement of nearly everything within WatchTower. There was more prperty damage as fixed objects tore free from their housings and every few minutes there was a massive burst which smashed wood and bent steel.

Still under attack, there was a more pressing concern. Reports of sewage and pollutants washing up on shores across the eastern and western seaboards had been a minor news story earlier and Red Shift had investigated. Now it was the most important thing as a humanoid figure was spotted at the edge of the pollution belt, heading for the Eastern Coast of the US. As the most capable team on the East coast, WatchTower NY was deployed….

Look out of genre for ideas.

This thread on TheRPGSite looks for some ideas about how to populate a story based on the theme “Traveller: it came from jumpspace!. Some of the ideas are very good while some of them are little more than a re-telling of Alien.

Look outside of the genre. Watch some movies which are not typically sci-fi. I’m sitting watching The Great Escape as I write this. It’s filled with great scenes. What about Hidalgo? What about The Chronicles of Narnia? Misjump creates breach and characters are forced into a world where time moves differently. And where there are strange alien creatures. And a war.

I could even make a plot out of this.

So, some examples from the horror genre.

Watch “HP Lovecraft’s From Beyond”.
With the jump drive as “the machine”. The jump drive malfunctions and everyone feels ill, on edge, skin sensitive to touch. If you have psychics on board they start to broadcast their nightmares. The creatures which exist in jump space are finally able to catch up with this static ship which is trapped half in and half out of jump space. These creatures can be seen as ghosts and are able to flow through the solid walls of the ship. Close to the drive however they are not only visible but solid and attack. Anyone who spends too much time in the presence of the jump drive starts to be affected…and THEY become the monster prowling the ship…

Watch Carpenters’ Prince of Darkness.
Jump drive fails and people start dying – one kills himself by drinking sealant fluid, another kills herselfby bathing in a technobabble energy vortex. There isn’t anything evil here but the flailing jump drive has attracted the attention of something unspeakably alien which is sending it’s base desires. It can drink sealant fluid, it bathes in energy vortices. We pick up on it’s base desires and emulate them. It possesses a couple of NPC crewmembers and uses their minds and eyes to explore the ship, taking time to dismantle equipment and people just to see how they work. Eventually it will become bored and move on or perhaps it will take a liking to this brave new universe and try to cross with the help of it’s possessed souls.

Watch 28 Days Later
Take the example given about low berths being used to transport animals. Think how dangerous an angry chimp or even the ships mascot could be. Give the mascot psychic powers and heightened intelligence and watch it save those who were nice to it and murder those who were nasty to it. Watch how it takes some people and reduces them from being thinking feeling individuals and lobotomises them into becoming animals fueled only by hunger and fear….

Episode Four – 27th October 2000, PM

Skycrane and Psiren arrived safely on the rooftop of WatchTower and were greeted by a concerned INDIGO and the team Paramedic, Robert. Nothing could be done about Skycrane’s smouldering flesh and Robert quipped that it might “clear up in a day or so”. With them, of course, was a bundle wrapped in a red fore blanket which was revealed to be Stephanie Butler, a marketing Exec from Manhattan. She claimed to have been snatched from the street by this red blanket and that left INDIGO looking puzzled at Skycrane. Psiren, at this point, was still unconscious and could add no testimony. Stephanie Butler was detained under the Dangerous Superhuman Felons Act for 24 hours of observation.

Meanwhile, across town, Balance and Yellowfist were flitting over the rooftops and touched down on a busy backstreet. While attracting a lot of attention, they slipped over to the building they were interested in and noticed that the padlock was missing. Entering the warehouse they found boxes, racks of more boxes and a lift shaft leading down…they investigate the lift and Yellowfirst takes a liking to a mini-forklift and starts to wonde rout loud about whether he should have large heavy, forklift-sized , bladed weapons. Forklift in one hand and superpowered priest in the other, Yellowfist starts to descend the lift shaft into darkness.

Meanwhile across town Skycrane and INDIGO set off for the building, eager to provide backup to their companions. They arrive in a split second due to the T-Jump capabilities of INDIGO’s AMP suit and quickly start to descend into the darkness after Yellowfist and Balance.

At the bottom of the shaft, they find and start to explore the tunnel with a special shield composed of steel, made from the very air by Balance’s unearthly abilities. Along that tunnel they find a passage, smooth surfaced, made by man’s hand which leads them deeper into the ground. INDIGO scouting ahead finds that the tunnel opens into a roughly hewn chamber and inside are four superhumans and nearly thirty of these rag-tag denizens of the darkness.

Yellowfist and Skycrane enter quickly and begin to subdue the superhumans who they identify as Sewer, Killerwatt, Gridlock and Asphalt. These superhumans are subdued easily but the denizens start to attack and only stopped by the quick judgement of Balance who steps in and burns them with his searing, invisible Penance Blessing. The team then set about securing the supervillains. Gridlock was slain by the denizens and Sewer escaped by they have KillerWatt and Asphalt in custody. Not a bad innings!

Once this is done, the team start to investigate the remaining roughly carved tunnels. There’s something else out there, an oppressive psychic presence, but try as they might, they cannot track it down…

The scene ends with the team returning to WatchTower with much to think about and some new captives. They’ll have to put them somewhere….

[Above is a true and accurate recollection of everything that you remember.]