Bank Heist
For our first session of our campaign I decided to skip starting the first Event entirely. Instead I snatched David Thomas’ (aka Grimmshade) “Bank Heist” action scene and used it right out of the box. I kept Doctor Octopus and everything, just like it was and we ran only a single action scene for game night (before we spent the rest of the evening chatting over coffee).
The main reason for this essentially “throw-away” action scene, standing entirely apart of the upcoming Event(s), was to give something without consequence for the players to test their Heroes against. After running this with them I figured they’d have a better handle on how their character concepts fit into the game and they’d have the opportunity to tweak them a bit if they wanted.
Hence a simple, single action scene “Bank Heist” kicking off our campaign. We've got a long standing tradition of starting off with a “throw-away” session when first playing with any new game system, so I suppose this is our version of that.
Since we were already starting off so loosely we decided to get right to it, the players declaring they were already a team and out on patrol when they spot/hear/notice…well, whatever it is I was going to throw at them. So they could dive right in, you see. When the action scene actually started they quickly realized Jack's enhanced speed wasn't necessarily quite as fast as subsonic flight. So rather than try to tweak things just now in order to justify everyone traveling together they decided Gadget Girl and Psyclone would run into Jack at the action scene itself and just recruit her there. Not to mention that Jack's character and how Rachel intended to play her would probably make that pretty fun and interesting.
Consequently it’s decided Jack is already in the area and on the scene, so she gets to take the first action in the action order.
Action Order 1)
Jack takes in the situation, seeing one tough guy in a suit and four goons with him threatening hostages inside the bank while they keep a close eye on the cops outside. Since the police have only just arrived and haven’t actually gotten around to doing anything about all this yet, Jack naturally springs into action with the first thing that comes to mind.
She walks right past the police and through the front doors of the bank to challenge the goons. She’s pretty sure she can whoop all their butts before they kill any hostages after all, so why not? Being overconfident and impulsive, she doesn’t go straight for physical stress. Instead she tries to intimidate the goons (rather than the obvious leader of the little group). Because that’d be funny.
She hasn’t any Menace skill at all and (we’re kinda stretching it letting her use Superhuman Strength in the pool) but she actually manages to pull it off (even having taken a Distinction at d4 for a Plot Point), dropping d10 emotional stress on the goons and knocking them down to 3d8 (since I’m playing them as a 4d8 team rather than individual specialty characters). One of the goons freaks out and runs away from the weird red-skinned crazy chick that just waltzed through the front door to threaten them. Police are one thing but mutant freak superheroes…that’s another thing altogether!
Jack passes the action to Gadget Girl since she’s supposed to be the leader of their soon-to-be group of superheroes. Gadget Girl then swoops down from the skies with Psyclone right behind her, arriving through the bank doors in a flash to see what’s what. She’s immediately very unhappy to find another apparent hero has come on the scene to steal her thunder, but she focuses on the goons for now.
She drops her starting Plot Point to seize the opportunity that I have on the board for a stunt, describing her taking advantage of the goons' astonishment with Jack to fire a shot off at them before they can react. With that she drops one of the goons’ other team die, putting them at 2d8 now, though she rolls an opportunity of her own for me to add to the Doom Pool.
Psyclone is right behind, tossing out an Telekinetic Discharge Area Effect SFX (with a d4 distinction to pick up a Plot Point). She rolls a couple more opportunities but drops another goon team die herself.
Now it’s my turn to pick who gets to act next, so I hand that action over to Doctor Octopus (who none of the Heroes have even seen yet). He rushes out of the vault at all the commotion, spots the Heroes knocking his goons out and wastes no time scaling right up the wall to break through the ceiling with money bags swinging from his tentacles, intent on making his escape!
The last goon (the lone d8 in the goon team now) tosses his highest die (d8) into the Doom Pool, threatening the hostages (grandstanding). Jimmy the Nose follows suit, since his intent now is to hold the Heroes off until Doctor Octopus can get out of the building…then make a run for it himself! That adds a total of two d8’s to the Doom Pool, which is already looking pretty Doom-ful!
Action Order 2)
Outside the bank Doctor Octopus crashes through the ceiling and climbs down the outside wall to the getaway van waiting there.
Inside Jimmy the Nose starts inching toward the rear door with one of the hostages (seizing the scene distinction as an asset until he gets to the door). The last thug follows suit with a hostage of his own.
Figuring Jack is going to give me some nice opportunities to add to my growing Doom Pool, I tap her for the next action in the order. She doesn’t disappoint.
Jack spends both her two Plot Points to buy a stunt and an extra effect die (with her Crazy Reckless Distinction at d4 to get one Plot Point back). She rips up the wooden stand in the middle of the room, tosses it at the wall behind the two men and bounces into them from behind (to avoid hitting the hostages directly). She also uses her Cuttin’ Loose SFX to step her Superhuman Strength up to Godlike (d12). Because she’s throwing that thing really, really hard. You know…so it’ll bounce.
She ends up giving me two more die for the Doom Pool, which I take at a d8. She does manage to hit them for d10 and d4 (having no other dice to spare for that second effect die after those opportunities). She knocks Jimmy the Nose out cold though, and bruises the remaining goon a bit as well.
Psyclone goes next since Gadget Girl wants to wait until the end of the action order to act. She fires off a plain old Telekinetic Trajectile, nothing fancy, and KO’s the last goon easily. All the hostages are safe (although very probably going to be angry later at being caught in the middle of all that violence) so Psyclone taps Doctor Octopus to go.
Doctor Octopus is already outside at the getaway van, so he hops in and prepares to make his getaway. But since he’s expecting at least one or two of this goons to come running he waits for them (for one action order at least). That passes the next action over to Gadget Girl.
She flies straight out the hole in the ceiling that Doctor Octopus escaped through to find him sitting in the getaway van in the alley behind the bank. Taking that in quickly she asks if the van constitutes an asset for Doctor Octopus. Since it is she fires off a quick Sonic Pistol shot at the van, to remove it as an asset before he can make use of it to escape.
Doctor Octopus has dropped some Sleeping Gas capsules behind him as he made his escape from the bank though, so I toss a d8 from the Doom Pool to add that distinction to the scene as a “Groggy” complication on Gadget Girl (since she followed directly in Doctor Octopus’ path). Consequently she fails to effect the van at all with that sonic shot and adds another die to the Doom Pool instead.
Action Order 3)
Psyclone starts the next action order off and flies out the back door (avoiding the sleeping gas that Gadget Girl got caught up in). She fires off a Telekinetic Trajectile at the van too, spending her two Plot Points on a stunt and an extra specialty die for her pool, as well as firing that Trajectile with her Unleashed SFX. She describes ‘phasing’ her Telekinetic Trajectile directly into the van’s engine before it does its damage, landing a whopping 16 with a d10 effect. Even though she’s rolling against a pretty intimidating Doom Pool now, she still wins the dice comparison and blasts the van’s engine to pieces. Doc’s not going anywhere just yet!
Jack comes barreling out the back door next to grab the shattered remains of that Van Distinction and whoop Doctor Octopus with it. She has to spend her only Plot Point for a stunt, since Psyclone kinda killed the actual Van Distinction. Still, she describes literally grabbing the broken remains of the van, raising it up high and smashing into the ground with Doctor Octopus still in it! She scores an Extraordinary Success against Doctor Octopus’ reaction and smacks him with a solid d12 physical stress!
[And....I only just now realized Jack used her Cuttin' Loose SFX to step up her Superhuman Strength to d12 already. So that Extraordinary Success should have stressed out Doctor Octopus immediately. Sadly, I missed that and no one else caught it either. It was already a super cool stunt that Jack pulled off, but that would have made it epic. Sad face.]
Jack gives Gadget Girl the next go but she again decides to wait and go last, so Jack taps Doctor Octopus instead. Now it’s Doctor Octopus’ turn and he’s in serious trouble already.
He’s goes all out, focusing on Jack and attacking with his tentacles. I drop a d8 into his dice pool for an extra die (handing Jack a Plot Point so I can put it back in the Doom Pool afterward), buy an extra die for his total with another d8 from the Doom Pool and use his Ambidextrous Tentacles SFX to split his Superhuman Strength into 2d8 rather than d10. Finally, I use his Focused SFX to combine two d10’s into one d12. With that I have a potential d12 effect and a fair chance at a high total. Doctor Octopus then wallops Jack with that hit, but she rolls d10 effect to his d8 (the best I could do), so that steps down to d6 physical stress for her.
Gadget Girl goes last in this action order again, so she uses her Distinction at d4 and activates her Exhaustion limit on Enhanced Stamina to gain two Plot Points for later (which it turns out she wouldn‘t be needing). Firing off a Sonic Pistol shot, she hits Doctor Octopus for d6 physical stress. That’s enough to push his d12 physical stress over the top and stress him out (despite my desperately dropping two dice from the Doom Pool to add to his total).
With that the trio of do-gooders put the nix on Doctor Octopus’ attempted bank robbery, while merely endangering a couple of civilians and totaling whoever’s van that was (since we figure Doctor Octopus probably stole it). Pretty good day for our super heroines!
For our first session of our campaign I decided to skip starting the first Event entirely. Instead I snatched David Thomas’ (aka Grimmshade) “Bank Heist” action scene and used it right out of the box. I kept Doctor Octopus and everything, just like it was and we ran only a single action scene for game night (before we spent the rest of the evening chatting over coffee).
The main reason for this essentially “throw-away” action scene, standing entirely apart of the upcoming Event(s), was to give something without consequence for the players to test their Heroes against. After running this with them I figured they’d have a better handle on how their character concepts fit into the game and they’d have the opportunity to tweak them a bit if they wanted.
Hence a simple, single action scene “Bank Heist” kicking off our campaign. We've got a long standing tradition of starting off with a “throw-away” session when first playing with any new game system, so I suppose this is our version of that.
Since we were already starting off so loosely we decided to get right to it, the players declaring they were already a team and out on patrol when they spot/hear/notice…well, whatever it is I was going to throw at them. So they could dive right in, you see. When the action scene actually started they quickly realized Jack's enhanced speed wasn't necessarily quite as fast as subsonic flight. So rather than try to tweak things just now in order to justify everyone traveling together they decided Gadget Girl and Psyclone would run into Jack at the action scene itself and just recruit her there. Not to mention that Jack's character and how Rachel intended to play her would probably make that pretty fun and interesting.
Consequently it’s decided Jack is already in the area and on the scene, so she gets to take the first action in the action order.
Action Order 1)
Jack takes in the situation, seeing one tough guy in a suit and four goons with him threatening hostages inside the bank while they keep a close eye on the cops outside. Since the police have only just arrived and haven’t actually gotten around to doing anything about all this yet, Jack naturally springs into action with the first thing that comes to mind.
She walks right past the police and through the front doors of the bank to challenge the goons. She’s pretty sure she can whoop all their butts before they kill any hostages after all, so why not? Being overconfident and impulsive, she doesn’t go straight for physical stress. Instead she tries to intimidate the goons (rather than the obvious leader of the little group). Because that’d be funny.
She hasn’t any Menace skill at all and (we’re kinda stretching it letting her use Superhuman Strength in the pool) but she actually manages to pull it off (even having taken a Distinction at d4 for a Plot Point), dropping d10 emotional stress on the goons and knocking them down to 3d8 (since I’m playing them as a 4d8 team rather than individual specialty characters). One of the goons freaks out and runs away from the weird red-skinned crazy chick that just waltzed through the front door to threaten them. Police are one thing but mutant freak superheroes…that’s another thing altogether!
Jack passes the action to Gadget Girl since she’s supposed to be the leader of their soon-to-be group of superheroes. Gadget Girl then swoops down from the skies with Psyclone right behind her, arriving through the bank doors in a flash to see what’s what. She’s immediately very unhappy to find another apparent hero has come on the scene to steal her thunder, but she focuses on the goons for now.
She drops her starting Plot Point to seize the opportunity that I have on the board for a stunt, describing her taking advantage of the goons' astonishment with Jack to fire a shot off at them before they can react. With that she drops one of the goons’ other team die, putting them at 2d8 now, though she rolls an opportunity of her own for me to add to the Doom Pool.
Psyclone is right behind, tossing out an Telekinetic Discharge Area Effect SFX (with a d4 distinction to pick up a Plot Point). She rolls a couple more opportunities but drops another goon team die herself.
Now it’s my turn to pick who gets to act next, so I hand that action over to Doctor Octopus (who none of the Heroes have even seen yet). He rushes out of the vault at all the commotion, spots the Heroes knocking his goons out and wastes no time scaling right up the wall to break through the ceiling with money bags swinging from his tentacles, intent on making his escape!
The last goon (the lone d8 in the goon team now) tosses his highest die (d8) into the Doom Pool, threatening the hostages (grandstanding). Jimmy the Nose follows suit, since his intent now is to hold the Heroes off until Doctor Octopus can get out of the building…then make a run for it himself! That adds a total of two d8’s to the Doom Pool, which is already looking pretty Doom-ful!
Action Order 2)
Outside the bank Doctor Octopus crashes through the ceiling and climbs down the outside wall to the getaway van waiting there.
Inside Jimmy the Nose starts inching toward the rear door with one of the hostages (seizing the scene distinction as an asset until he gets to the door). The last thug follows suit with a hostage of his own.
Figuring Jack is going to give me some nice opportunities to add to my growing Doom Pool, I tap her for the next action in the order. She doesn’t disappoint.
Jack spends both her two Plot Points to buy a stunt and an extra effect die (with her Crazy Reckless Distinction at d4 to get one Plot Point back). She rips up the wooden stand in the middle of the room, tosses it at the wall behind the two men and bounces into them from behind (to avoid hitting the hostages directly). She also uses her Cuttin’ Loose SFX to step her Superhuman Strength up to Godlike (d12). Because she’s throwing that thing really, really hard. You know…so it’ll bounce.
She ends up giving me two more die for the Doom Pool, which I take at a d8. She does manage to hit them for d10 and d4 (having no other dice to spare for that second effect die after those opportunities). She knocks Jimmy the Nose out cold though, and bruises the remaining goon a bit as well.
Psyclone goes next since Gadget Girl wants to wait until the end of the action order to act. She fires off a plain old Telekinetic Trajectile, nothing fancy, and KO’s the last goon easily. All the hostages are safe (although very probably going to be angry later at being caught in the middle of all that violence) so Psyclone taps Doctor Octopus to go.
Doctor Octopus is already outside at the getaway van, so he hops in and prepares to make his getaway. But since he’s expecting at least one or two of this goons to come running he waits for them (for one action order at least). That passes the next action over to Gadget Girl.
She flies straight out the hole in the ceiling that Doctor Octopus escaped through to find him sitting in the getaway van in the alley behind the bank. Taking that in quickly she asks if the van constitutes an asset for Doctor Octopus. Since it is she fires off a quick Sonic Pistol shot at the van, to remove it as an asset before he can make use of it to escape.
Doctor Octopus has dropped some Sleeping Gas capsules behind him as he made his escape from the bank though, so I toss a d8 from the Doom Pool to add that distinction to the scene as a “Groggy” complication on Gadget Girl (since she followed directly in Doctor Octopus’ path). Consequently she fails to effect the van at all with that sonic shot and adds another die to the Doom Pool instead.
Action Order 3)
Psyclone starts the next action order off and flies out the back door (avoiding the sleeping gas that Gadget Girl got caught up in). She fires off a Telekinetic Trajectile at the van too, spending her two Plot Points on a stunt and an extra specialty die for her pool, as well as firing that Trajectile with her Unleashed SFX. She describes ‘phasing’ her Telekinetic Trajectile directly into the van’s engine before it does its damage, landing a whopping 16 with a d10 effect. Even though she’s rolling against a pretty intimidating Doom Pool now, she still wins the dice comparison and blasts the van’s engine to pieces. Doc’s not going anywhere just yet!
Jack comes barreling out the back door next to grab the shattered remains of that Van Distinction and whoop Doctor Octopus with it. She has to spend her only Plot Point for a stunt, since Psyclone kinda killed the actual Van Distinction. Still, she describes literally grabbing the broken remains of the van, raising it up high and smashing into the ground with Doctor Octopus still in it! She scores an Extraordinary Success against Doctor Octopus’ reaction and smacks him with a solid d12 physical stress!
[And....I only just now realized Jack used her Cuttin' Loose SFX to step up her Superhuman Strength to d12 already. So that Extraordinary Success should have stressed out Doctor Octopus immediately. Sadly, I missed that and no one else caught it either. It was already a super cool stunt that Jack pulled off, but that would have made it epic. Sad face.]
Jack gives Gadget Girl the next go but she again decides to wait and go last, so Jack taps Doctor Octopus instead. Now it’s Doctor Octopus’ turn and he’s in serious trouble already.
He’s goes all out, focusing on Jack and attacking with his tentacles. I drop a d8 into his dice pool for an extra die (handing Jack a Plot Point so I can put it back in the Doom Pool afterward), buy an extra die for his total with another d8 from the Doom Pool and use his Ambidextrous Tentacles SFX to split his Superhuman Strength into 2d8 rather than d10. Finally, I use his Focused SFX to combine two d10’s into one d12. With that I have a potential d12 effect and a fair chance at a high total. Doctor Octopus then wallops Jack with that hit, but she rolls d10 effect to his d8 (the best I could do), so that steps down to d6 physical stress for her.
Gadget Girl goes last in this action order again, so she uses her Distinction at d4 and activates her Exhaustion limit on Enhanced Stamina to gain two Plot Points for later (which it turns out she wouldn‘t be needing). Firing off a Sonic Pistol shot, she hits Doctor Octopus for d6 physical stress. That’s enough to push his d12 physical stress over the top and stress him out (despite my desperately dropping two dice from the Doom Pool to add to his total).
With that the trio of do-gooders put the nix on Doctor Octopus’ attempted bank robbery, while merely endangering a couple of civilians and totaling whoever’s van that was (since we figure Doctor Octopus probably stole it). Pretty good day for our super heroines!