#OverMasks Last week, I ran the second session of my MasksXOverwatch campaign. I know some of you were curious about how it went, so here’s my report. I’m at college and don’t have the paperwork with me, so I can’t get into the nitty-gritty, but I’ll give you what happened in the fiction. josh savoie, Evan Janssen Elliot Baker and Alix Janssen, feel free to chime in with anything I missed or got wrong.
I decided it would be easier to keep the action in one city instead of sending the PCs all over the globe, and I chose New York City for that city because it’s a place where people from anywhere could conceivably cross paths, and yet it hasn’t yet been defined much in Overwatch’s fiction. During the Omnic Crisis, New York accepted a large number of refugees from all over, making it even more multicultural than it already is today. People say that New York is what you get when you try to fit the whole world into one city. Every major faction, good, evil, or somewhere in between, has some presence here. There’s even a closed-down Overwatch base, and the remains of an omnium that was destroyed early in the war.
We have four heroes:
Celino, AKA El Puno de Libertad (The Fist of Liberty), the Janus and unofficial leader of the team (mostly because he’s the oldest). The son of a wealthy Mexican family with close ties to Lumerico, he moved to NY to get away from his family’s stifling traditions. He shares an apartment with his teenage niece Alejandra and his omnic girlfriend Miranda, and splits his time between them, attending a local college, and fighting as a vigilante.
Dova, the Delinquent. She grew up in a town in Azerbaijan, which came under attack when the Siberian omnium reactivated. She joined up with a militia to protect her homeland, since neither the government nor Volskaya Industries came to their defence. But over time the freedom fighters became more like terrorists. They tried to bomb a government building, and Dova lost both her legs in the blast (she got robot legs, don’t worry). After that, she cut her ties to the group and traveled to NY as a refugee.
Magnus, the Transformed. He was originally a student of the Ironclad Guild, until a rogue member kidnapped him and replaced most of his body with cybernetics, including an advanced “portable forge” that allows him to extrude molten metal and magnetically shape it into solid objects, similar to the tech Torbjorn uses. He escaped the mad scientist’s lab, and wandered until he met a Shambali monk in NY, who helped him come to terms with his new body, although he still struggles to find acceptance.
Scraps, the Outsider. One of the few omnics still living in Australia after the omnium exploded, he survived by patching up his body with pieces of other robots. From this, he learned to be very good at building working machines out of junk and spare parts. After getting fed up with constantly getting beaten up by the human locals, he built a boat and sailed to America, eventually settling in NY.
With the “when out team came together” questions, they decided that their team was first formed when they helped a former Overwatch agent thwart one of Talon’s plans. (I forget her name, but she was based off the white-haired woman with swords in this image: http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2014/november/bconOpeningC043.jpg) They PCs mistook each other for Talon agents at first, trashed Viskar’s offices in the battle, and still aren’t quite sure what the agent or Talon were doing, but hey, good enough for a first fight.
Tracer and Winston heard about them from the agent they helped, and as a reward, Tracer traveled to NY to show them an old Blackwatch base hidden in a subway station, which was abandoned when Overwatch got shut down, but remained undiscovered and untouched, and would make a perfect headquarters for the young heroes.
The first session officially began with a security door closing behind the PCs, trapping them inside the base and Tracer outside, and a heavy gun turret dropping from the ceiling. The PCs destroyed the turret, and Tracer called through the door that they would have to find the base’s computer room to shut down its malfunctioning security system. As they ventured farther into the base, they found the barracks and the mess hall, where they met Chum, the omnic cook. After hearing that they were sent by Tracer, who his database listed as “trustworthy,” Chum welcomed the team to Strikepoint New York.
Then Scraps got bored with searching the base and decided to use the remains of the turret to build a bomb and blast the door open, which worked, but it also woke up something inside the base, something that made heavy metallic footsteps. After Tracer said some harsh words to Scraps about endangering his teammates, they split up to find whatever was stomping around, with Tracer going one way and the PCs going the other. In a storage area, the PCs found a omnic spider-tank, which Blackwatch had been storing in their base for some unknown purpose. (http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/overwatch/images/7/70/Spidertank.png/revision/latest?cb=20161117024511)
It was a tough fight, but the PCs won with some clever teamwork. Afterwards, one of the PCs (I think it was Dova) demanded some answers from Tracer and Winston, who was listening through a radio. Winston sheepishly admitted that the turret was a test to see if the kids had what it took to be heroes, but he didn’t know about the spider-tank. Tracer explained that seeing the PCs come together reminded her and Winston of the good old days, and told them “the world could always use more heroes.”
In the second session, Tracer had left, and Scraps had managed to get the base back to a working condition, although it’s still far from fully restored. I told them about several problems that were growing in the city: rising tension between a branch clan of the Shimadas and the local chapter of Los Muertos, tabloids reporting a strange-looking omnic stalking the streets at night and attacking people, Strikepoint NY’s sensors picking up unscheduled departures from one of the piers, and death threats against mayor Carrie Himura that claimed to be from Talon.
After a bit of discussion about Mayor Himura’s policies, El Puno left the base to deal with a personal problem: His niece Alejandra had been skipping school, and lately she’d been coming home with cuts and bruises. The rest of the team decided to follow him home. Dova actually beat them there, because she already knew El Puno/Celino’s secret identity. I assume they were all in their civilian clothes, not combat gear, because Miranda and Alejandra don’t know Celino is El Puno yet.
Scraps and Magnus met Miranda and Alejandra, Celino argued with Alejandra, and Alejandra revealed that she’d been trying to break into the local Lumerico offices because she was convinced they were up to something shady.
Dova and Scraps decided to help her, despite Celino’s protests, although since Alejandra’s arm was injured the PCs convinced her to wait until after she had healed. Alejandra dropped a not-so-subtle hint that she has a crush on Dova. Celino left to blow off steam by beating up gangsters, going to a place where the Shimadas and Los Muertos often fought (a Japanese restaurant right across the street from a Mexican restaurant). What started as a food fight escalated to a brawl, but when El Puno made his appearance, both sides stopped to discuss how crazy someone would have to be to put on a mask and pick fights with criminals. Then El Puno mopped the floor with both sides. Serves them right for making fun of him. When Celino got home, Miranda said she’d been worried about him, and they shooed the rest of the team out. That was where the session ended.
Overall, I think it went well. I’m looking forward to picking it back up again next time we get the chance.
