Had my session 1 GMing masks this weekend.
My team: Tsunami
Loto Manuia / The Duke (Beacon) – Big Hawaiian football offensive lineman who is friends with everyone.
“Kelly” Min Sun Yoon / Blink (Janus) – Korean girl with anti-mutant tiger-mom who has x-rary vision, superhearing, and can teleport short distances.
Jo Nakamura /Samurai (Soldier) – Japanese genderfluid AEGIS foster, being raised by the Smiths
Yuliu “Jane” Chu / Lightshow (Newborn) – AI/Android living with the woman who created the AI, has solid light manipulation powers.
Started off with the Smiths informing Jo over breakfast that they were going to be away on assignment, not sure how long. When Jo got home from school, “Auntie Jessie” was there. She was super-cool, and gave Jo access to all kinds of AEGIS stuff, weapons, technology, and information, that the official channels had been denying.
She gave orders to find out more about the girl at school who just developed powers and determine how to proceed. It took a while before the Smiths got the text Jo sent asking them about Auntie Jessica and responded with “WHO?” When the AEGIS agents suspected Carbine was in their house, we ended with a cliffhanger scene for Jo as the Smiths texted “GET OUT NOW!”
Liam Lyans, the school’s most popular boy, football quarterback, Student Council president, etc., is screwing up everything. He fails a math test and his GPA drops so low that he’s off the team and prohibited from participating in any extracurricular activities. Cheerleader Willa Weston can’t date someone who’s not on the football team, so she publicly breaks up with him. She immediately marches up to Loto and declares “It appears I need a date for Homecoming.” He strong-arms her. “That’s my boy, Liam, I gotta have his back. Good luck getting a date.” She’s furious and humiliated by this and declares him blacklisted.
Jane, being an AI, had no trouble scoring 100% on her math test, but on the custom move, she rolled a 6, so that meant that Christy Price cheated off her test – badly – and also scored 100%. They were both called to remain after class and explain. Jane had no idea what was going on. Christy tried to throw her under the bus, but it backfired. As punishment, because the world isn’t fair, Jane was forced to tutor Christy (and Liam, as it turned out). She was made from educational software, originally, so she’s really good at it, but the students she’s working with are difficult.
Jane found an angsty love-note in her locker. She didn’t try to figure out who wrote it or show it to anyone except her mom. She did prevent the school bully from picking on the class butt-monkey, and got him to hospitalize himself trying to kick her ass. He punched where her face had been, hit the wall instead, then cracked his nose trying to headbutt her. Her guess is that the note might be from the kid she helped, but the line about not knowing he exists confuses her.
During Social Studies, Jennifer Stone cries out and suddenly everyone and everything in the class is pushed away from her and pinned to the walls and windows (which are cracking). Loto tries to fight his way toward her – this is what offensive lineman do, after all. Plus he has experience withstanding Hawaii waves. Kelly is pinned against the window. She could teleport and be fine, but that would expose her, so she simply pushes against the gravity and climbs off the window, helping other kids off in the most mundane way, saving them just before Jennifer’s powers lash out again flinging Loto to the ceiling and exploding the windows. The team take turns getting their friends safe and trying to comfort and support Jennifer, calming her enough to stop her power flare. Most of the class is rushed off to the nurse. Loto volunteers to stay with Jennifer (bringing her with the crowd could be bad). She dismisses him and asks Kelly to talk, saying she’s not sure the power came from her, and asking the girl to go with her to a health clinic.
Kelly’s parents find out she skipped the last few classes to go to Planned Parenthood, and subject her to an awkward discussion about sex, STDs. She’s grounded, and forced to back goodies for her mom to give out at her anti-mutant hate-group meetings. She considers mischief, but doesn’t want anything that could be traced back to her, so no laxatives in the brownies.
They try to support Liam and help him get over whatever’s making him spiral, and discover that he’s Wildcat, sidekick to the White Lion (his older brother Logan, the perfect all-American boy he’s trying to live up to). He’s come to the conclusion that his after-school hero activities are more important than math tests, football, or Willa because he found something. He leads Tsunami to his own house under which is the lair of what looks like Dr. Wrath. His dad might just be a notorious supervillain. What is he supposed to do with that?
The team tried to follow-up on La Espada at AEGIS HQ. Agents were keen to get their report on Dr. Wrath’s lair and what they found there, but blew off their questions about seeing Daniela Santana or her sister. They insisted it was being taken care of. Loto wrote a note that they assured him they would get to Daniela to tell her that her sick sister was being taken care of. He didn’t leave with a feeling that she would actually get it.
Loto’s final scene for the night was waking up to a light in his bedroom from a portal La Espada cut through reality. She looked at him and asked, “You ready to help me fix what you screwed up?”
wow. That was an action packed session 1! Was there a session zero to set up all this amazingness?
Really great stuff! Sounds like an amazing first session!
Yeah, Session 0 had me a nervous wreck. I kept wanting to prepare and having to hold myself back and let them come in and build their characters and make choices about what the world is. Their team coming together was rescuing Lightshow and her mom – They were being transported somewhere and Jane activated as the truck lost control and the people inside were gasses unconscious. While they made sure no one got hurt, they still have no idea who was behind all that.
After that, I gave them a classic bank robbery. I pulled three villains from the Deck of Villainy. Seismic Prime was outside the bank tearing up the road and throwing it at people. La Espada was inside the bank, using the chaos and distraction as an opportunity to make little portals into the vault and grab some cash and gems. Solace was hanging around nearby feeding on the fear.
Blink and La Espada had a teleport fight that was spectacular to look at but hard for anyone to hurt the other. Eventually, La Espada tried to be clever and screwed it up, so Blink used the success from her directly engaged move to pluck the sword from La Espada’s hands. Blink put all the stolen stuff back, and The Duke joined them to hold La Espada upside down and try to convince one another they were bad people.
Lightshow grabbed Seismic Prime in a giant fist of solid light. He crumbled to dust and a new body formed from the rubble all around and threw a volkswagon-sized chunk of road at her and Samurai. Then Seismic Prime ripped a volcano open under Jane’s feet, launching her hundreds of feet in the air with lava beneath her.
La Espada, seeing this, begged The Duke to give her her sword to let her save his friend. Without even having a clue what her situation was, he dismissed this. As the Beacon, he’s sure his super-powered friends can handle anything and don’t really need his help, much less some thief’s. She called him a heartless monster, but he shrugged off her attempt to shift his labels.
Lightshow made a light-slide to save herself, and ended up using it to propel herself at high speed through Seismic Prime. Turns out the Duke was right, she was fine.
AEGIS showed up and took over, bringing La Espada and Seismic Prime into custody.