Breakout
Session Two
We left off in our last session with our three heroes (Black Widow, Spider-Woman and Shadowcat) finally having met up and officially taken on the Team distinction. That transition scene ended with a big mob of escaped super-villains and dangerous criminals coming around the corner, spotting us and charging at us to get to their freedom!
It was a short session, so I'm going to go ahead and include all the crunchy bits in this part of the journal as well, since there wasn't that much to it.
Action: Prison Riot!
The moment we finish narrating how we lock up Carnage, check on the shaken civilian and help Spider-Woman recover…half the darned prisoners in the Raft suddenly come around the corner and spot us.
That’s a 5d6 mob looking to get off the Raft and seize their freedom, just like Count Nefaria did. With our little band of heroes as the only thing standing between them and freedom, it only takes a second for them to get up the nerve to charge at us in force!
Watcher taps Spider-Woman to act first, as she’s the SHIELD agent here. We all agree amongst ourselves to get rid of the SHIELD watcher characters, even though we just got them, since we don’t want to slow things down with extra characters on the scene. Spider-Woman sends them off, escorting the civilians back the way Black Widow and Shadowcat came to the Landing Dock. We, meanwhile, hold the line against the super-villain mob!
Action Order 1)
Spider-Woman immediately turns and zaps the oncoming crowd with a Venom Blast!
Team d10 (10), SHIELD Super-Agent d4 (3), Venom Blast d8 (4), Superhuman Reflexes d10 (2), Combat Expert d8 (5)
15 + d10 effect
Mob reacts: Team 5d6 (6, 6, 1, 3, 4), Dangerous d8 (6), Swarm d8 (2)
12 + d8 effect
Spider-Woman zaps d6 worth of the goons! She also spends the Plot Point she earned (by using a d4 for her Distinction) to activate Watcher’s opportunity and create a resource now. She whips out her SHIELD issue “Crowd Control Sonic Screamer” device that will act as a d8 asset until the end of the action scene.
Shadowcat goes next and decides to dive right into things. She takes on the mob head on!
Team d8 (1), Spirited d8 (4), Intangibility d10 (2), Combat Expert d8 (5)
9 + d10
Mob reacts: Team 4d6 (5, 3, 1, 5), Dangerous d8 (4), Swarm d8 (8)
13 + d8 effect
Shadowcat doesn’t do any damage going hand-to-hand with the mob but she spends a Plot Point to activate Watcher’s opportunity for a Stunt on her next roll. Watcher takes the opportunity Shadowcat rolled to step up a Doom Pool die and gives her a Plot Point.
Black Widow goes next and she hasn’t any Plot Points at all. She uses a reduced Distinction to get one now since I figure she’ll need it soon.
Black Widow: Team d6 (3), Russian Superspy d4 (1), Enhanced Reflexes d8 (5), Electric Blast d8 (7), Combat Expert d8 (5)
12 + d8 effect
Mob reacts: Team 4d6 (3, 5, 1, 2), Dangerous d8 (8), Swarm d8 (8)
13 + d8 effect
Black Widow doesn’t accomplish much firing her Widow’s Sting Bracelets at the mob, but she spends a Plot Point to grab Watcher’s opportunity for a stunt on her next turn.
Now it’s the mob’s turn to get nasty and they’re swarming all over us by now. They attack with an Area Attack trying to beat all three of us up.
Mob attacks: Team 4d6 (1, 2, 4, 1), Dangerous d8 (5), Swarm d8 (1), Area Attack d6x2 (4, 4)
9 + d6, d6, d6 effects
Black Widow reacts: Team d6 (6), Russian Superspy d8 (5), Enhanced Reflexes d8 (3), Acrobatics Expert d8 (5), Combat stunt d10 (4)
11 + d10 effect
Black Widow activates a Watcher opportunity to use her d8 effect die and uses a Combat Stunt (from the Watcher opportunity she activated a moment ago). She turns a few punches and swings against her opponents, knocking some of the villains out! She reduces the mob team die by one.
Shadowcat reacts: Team d8 (2), Spirited d8 (1), Intangibility d10 (3), Combat Expert d8 (3), Combat stunt d8 (3)
6 + d8 effect
Shadowcat takes d8 Physical stress! Watcher takes her opportunity and steps up a d6 in the Doom Pool. Her Stunt from that Watcher opportunity didn’t help her at all.
Spider-Woman reacts: Team d10 (9), SHIELD Super-Agent d8 (4), Flight d6 (1), Superhuman Reflexes d10 (3), Combat Expert d8 (8)
17 + d10 effect
Spider-Woman takes no stress but Watcher uses her opportunity to step up a d6 in the Doom Pool.
Action Order 2)
Watcher gives Shadowcat the nod and she takes the first action for this action order. She spends a Plot Point to gain an extra effect against the mob and spends another to use her Reactive Power SFX on Black Widow (to get that 1xp for her milestone).
Shadowcat: Team d8 (5), Spirited d8 (7), Intangibility d10 (9), Combat Expert d8 (4)
16 + d10, d8 effect
Mob reacts: Team 3d6 (4, 4, 4), Dangerous d8 (6), Swarm d8 (7)
14 + d6 effect
Shadowcat knocks two whole die out of the mob’s team dice!
Black Widow goes next, since Shadowcat wants to claim that xp.
Black Widow: Team d6 (1), Russian Superspy d8 (6), Enhanced Reflexes d8 (8), Electric Blast d8 (4), Combat Expert d8 (8), Shadowcat’s Intangibility d10 (5)
16 + d10 effect
Watcher takes the opportunity to step up a d6 in the Doom Pool.
Mob reacts: Team 1d6 (4), Dangerous d8 (6), Swarm d8 (1)
10 + d4 effect (default)
Black Widow knocks out the last of the mob easily and that’s that. None of us even took a hit. Michelle (Spider-Woman), sadly enough, didn’t even get to use her nifty Crowd Control Sonic Screamer resource she paid a whole Plot Point for.
Transition Scene: The Sentry
Happy to have a Transition Scene, Shadowcat jumps on the opportunity to recover Lockheed (her Fire Blast and Flight power traits). Rolling against the Doom Pool she recovers the whole Power Set.
We immediately run into Bob Reynolds (AKA The Sentry), so Shadowcat’s happy to work on her Liberate the Sentry milestone. Spider-Woman jumps on her coattails with her Blast from the Past milestone, claiming the Sentry as an old flame (and, as it happens, making her one of the few people in the world that remembers the Sentry since his world-wide mind-wipe thing).
Shadowcat gets right to work, going whole hog for all the xp she can get here. She elicits Spider-Woman’s support in both convincing the Sentry to help round up the escaped prisoners and to rejoin society as a superhero. Spider-Woman needs some xp too, though, so she decides to help by inflicting emotional stress on the Sentry so that Shadowcat can benefit from that when she rolls against him.
Spider-Woman launches into a bitter assault on the Sentry (now that she remembers him), cooking up a rather detailed story of how he dumped her to run off with some skank (who would become Bob’s wife, as it happens), etc. Spider-Woman really lets him have it. Watcher rolls pretty well, though, and Spider-Woman has to spend her only Plot Point to add an extra die to her total just to land a little emotional stress on the guy. She claims a d10, though (ouch!), then dismisses the hero with a huff…so that Shadowcat can go at him.
Poor Sentry doesn’t really stand a chance now with a d10 emotional stress for Shadowcat to capitalize off of (though Spider-Woman gets to claim 3xp for socking it to him like that).
Shadowcat goes next, cozying up to the Sentry to offer emotional support after that trying ordeal…and using that to convince him the current situation (and the world for that matter) desperately needs the Sentry! She wins the roll handily and convinces him easily enough that moping around in a cell on the Raft isn’t doing anyone any good. Whatever the danger of using his powers, he can still make a difference in the world that, in the end, will be for the greater good.
Convinced, though still reluctant and unsure, Sentry steps out of his cell. Boldly squaring his shoulders, he heads out into the dark to put things right around here. Shadowcat then nabs that nice 3xp for the milestone.
Transition Scene: Wrap-up
With this final Transition Scene we decide to end this Act of the Breakout Event. We could have tussled with a couple more villains and whatnot but we’d largely met the minimum required bit of adventure to call this a full Act, so that was good enough. Following this Transition Scene SHIELD agents start pouring into the Raft, more and more as time goes by, and we’re more or less just picking up the pieces. Especially with the Sentry cutting a swatch through the bad guys ahead of us (before disappearing altogether).
Shadowcat still has that d8 Physical stress from the last fight, so she recovers from that now. However, we don’t have a single Plot Point between the lot of us to spend on resources (or anything else). Consequently investigating what exactly happened around here to cause this whole mess turns into a few action rolls on our part as we do things the hard way. Interrogating prisoners and agents here and there until we get a picture of what went on.
During the course of that Spider-Woman and Black Widow manage to nab a Plot Point each so we both buy d8 Covert resources to fill in the blanks (and use until the next Transition Scene). With that we discover some weird discrepancies in the Raft prisoner files, connected somehow to a SHIELD outpost in Antarctica. As it happens the only missing inmate (besides Count Nefaria, darn it) is Sauron, who supposedly operates out of that area. It seems likely then that this is the guy Electro made off with and that Electro orchestrated this whole thing in order to break him out.
Armed with that we figure we’d better track down Electro and put the screws to him. After a little poking around, though, we’re forced to admit we haven’t the first clue how to track him down. No one on the Raft seems to know anything (that we can get out of them anyway), so we’re left with heading out to the SHIELD outpost to see what we can find out there.
Interestingly, the Watcher tells us that the SHIELD file on Sauron is locked and restricted, so we can’t get a look at it. The SHIELD officials we talk to aren’t inclined to unlock that file either. On top of that the outpost in Antarctica is “offline”, so now we have reason to think there’s trouble out there already too.
Attempting to commandeer some kind of transport out to the outpost gets the SHIELD Director on our case, ordering us to drop the whole thing and basically butt out (she apparently isn‘t a big fan of super-heroes). Spider-Woman argues that and the discussion gets a little heated before she finally convinces the Director to let us go poke around a bit. She reluctantly gives us the nod to commandeer a SHIELD transport jet and we’ve got our ride out to the outpost now.
We end the Act there, on the transport heading to Antarctica to find and capture Sauron.
Session Two
We left off in our last session with our three heroes (Black Widow, Spider-Woman and Shadowcat) finally having met up and officially taken on the Team distinction. That transition scene ended with a big mob of escaped super-villains and dangerous criminals coming around the corner, spotting us and charging at us to get to their freedom!
It was a short session, so I'm going to go ahead and include all the crunchy bits in this part of the journal as well, since there wasn't that much to it.
Action: Prison Riot!
The moment we finish narrating how we lock up Carnage, check on the shaken civilian and help Spider-Woman recover…half the darned prisoners in the Raft suddenly come around the corner and spot us.
That’s a 5d6 mob looking to get off the Raft and seize their freedom, just like Count Nefaria did. With our little band of heroes as the only thing standing between them and freedom, it only takes a second for them to get up the nerve to charge at us in force!
Watcher taps Spider-Woman to act first, as she’s the SHIELD agent here. We all agree amongst ourselves to get rid of the SHIELD watcher characters, even though we just got them, since we don’t want to slow things down with extra characters on the scene. Spider-Woman sends them off, escorting the civilians back the way Black Widow and Shadowcat came to the Landing Dock. We, meanwhile, hold the line against the super-villain mob!
Action Order 1)
Spider-Woman immediately turns and zaps the oncoming crowd with a Venom Blast!
Team d10 (10), SHIELD Super-Agent d4 (3), Venom Blast d8 (4), Superhuman Reflexes d10 (2), Combat Expert d8 (5)
15 + d10 effect
Mob reacts: Team 5d6 (6, 6, 1, 3, 4), Dangerous d8 (6), Swarm d8 (2)
12 + d8 effect
Spider-Woman zaps d6 worth of the goons! She also spends the Plot Point she earned (by using a d4 for her Distinction) to activate Watcher’s opportunity and create a resource now. She whips out her SHIELD issue “Crowd Control Sonic Screamer” device that will act as a d8 asset until the end of the action scene.
Shadowcat goes next and decides to dive right into things. She takes on the mob head on!
Team d8 (1), Spirited d8 (4), Intangibility d10 (2), Combat Expert d8 (5)
9 + d10
Mob reacts: Team 4d6 (5, 3, 1, 5), Dangerous d8 (4), Swarm d8 (8)
13 + d8 effect
Shadowcat doesn’t do any damage going hand-to-hand with the mob but she spends a Plot Point to activate Watcher’s opportunity for a Stunt on her next roll. Watcher takes the opportunity Shadowcat rolled to step up a Doom Pool die and gives her a Plot Point.
Black Widow goes next and she hasn’t any Plot Points at all. She uses a reduced Distinction to get one now since I figure she’ll need it soon.
Black Widow: Team d6 (3), Russian Superspy d4 (1), Enhanced Reflexes d8 (5), Electric Blast d8 (7), Combat Expert d8 (5)
12 + d8 effect
Mob reacts: Team 4d6 (3, 5, 1, 2), Dangerous d8 (8), Swarm d8 (8)
13 + d8 effect
Black Widow doesn’t accomplish much firing her Widow’s Sting Bracelets at the mob, but she spends a Plot Point to grab Watcher’s opportunity for a stunt on her next turn.
Now it’s the mob’s turn to get nasty and they’re swarming all over us by now. They attack with an Area Attack trying to beat all three of us up.
Mob attacks: Team 4d6 (1, 2, 4, 1), Dangerous d8 (5), Swarm d8 (1), Area Attack d6x2 (4, 4)
9 + d6, d6, d6 effects
Black Widow reacts: Team d6 (6), Russian Superspy d8 (5), Enhanced Reflexes d8 (3), Acrobatics Expert d8 (5), Combat stunt d10 (4)
11 + d10 effect
Black Widow activates a Watcher opportunity to use her d8 effect die and uses a Combat Stunt (from the Watcher opportunity she activated a moment ago). She turns a few punches and swings against her opponents, knocking some of the villains out! She reduces the mob team die by one.
Shadowcat reacts: Team d8 (2), Spirited d8 (1), Intangibility d10 (3), Combat Expert d8 (3), Combat stunt d8 (3)
6 + d8 effect
Shadowcat takes d8 Physical stress! Watcher takes her opportunity and steps up a d6 in the Doom Pool. Her Stunt from that Watcher opportunity didn’t help her at all.
Spider-Woman reacts: Team d10 (9), SHIELD Super-Agent d8 (4), Flight d6 (1), Superhuman Reflexes d10 (3), Combat Expert d8 (8)
17 + d10 effect
Spider-Woman takes no stress but Watcher uses her opportunity to step up a d6 in the Doom Pool.
Action Order 2)
Watcher gives Shadowcat the nod and she takes the first action for this action order. She spends a Plot Point to gain an extra effect against the mob and spends another to use her Reactive Power SFX on Black Widow (to get that 1xp for her milestone).
Shadowcat: Team d8 (5), Spirited d8 (7), Intangibility d10 (9), Combat Expert d8 (4)
16 + d10, d8 effect
Mob reacts: Team 3d6 (4, 4, 4), Dangerous d8 (6), Swarm d8 (7)
14 + d6 effect
Shadowcat knocks two whole die out of the mob’s team dice!
Black Widow goes next, since Shadowcat wants to claim that xp.
Black Widow: Team d6 (1), Russian Superspy d8 (6), Enhanced Reflexes d8 (8), Electric Blast d8 (4), Combat Expert d8 (8), Shadowcat’s Intangibility d10 (5)
16 + d10 effect
Watcher takes the opportunity to step up a d6 in the Doom Pool.
Mob reacts: Team 1d6 (4), Dangerous d8 (6), Swarm d8 (1)
10 + d4 effect (default)
Black Widow knocks out the last of the mob easily and that’s that. None of us even took a hit. Michelle (Spider-Woman), sadly enough, didn’t even get to use her nifty Crowd Control Sonic Screamer resource she paid a whole Plot Point for.
Transition Scene: The Sentry
Happy to have a Transition Scene, Shadowcat jumps on the opportunity to recover Lockheed (her Fire Blast and Flight power traits). Rolling against the Doom Pool she recovers the whole Power Set.
We immediately run into Bob Reynolds (AKA The Sentry), so Shadowcat’s happy to work on her Liberate the Sentry milestone. Spider-Woman jumps on her coattails with her Blast from the Past milestone, claiming the Sentry as an old flame (and, as it happens, making her one of the few people in the world that remembers the Sentry since his world-wide mind-wipe thing).
Shadowcat gets right to work, going whole hog for all the xp she can get here. She elicits Spider-Woman’s support in both convincing the Sentry to help round up the escaped prisoners and to rejoin society as a superhero. Spider-Woman needs some xp too, though, so she decides to help by inflicting emotional stress on the Sentry so that Shadowcat can benefit from that when she rolls against him.
Spider-Woman launches into a bitter assault on the Sentry (now that she remembers him), cooking up a rather detailed story of how he dumped her to run off with some skank (who would become Bob’s wife, as it happens), etc. Spider-Woman really lets him have it. Watcher rolls pretty well, though, and Spider-Woman has to spend her only Plot Point to add an extra die to her total just to land a little emotional stress on the guy. She claims a d10, though (ouch!), then dismisses the hero with a huff…so that Shadowcat can go at him.
Poor Sentry doesn’t really stand a chance now with a d10 emotional stress for Shadowcat to capitalize off of (though Spider-Woman gets to claim 3xp for socking it to him like that).
Shadowcat goes next, cozying up to the Sentry to offer emotional support after that trying ordeal…and using that to convince him the current situation (and the world for that matter) desperately needs the Sentry! She wins the roll handily and convinces him easily enough that moping around in a cell on the Raft isn’t doing anyone any good. Whatever the danger of using his powers, he can still make a difference in the world that, in the end, will be for the greater good.
Convinced, though still reluctant and unsure, Sentry steps out of his cell. Boldly squaring his shoulders, he heads out into the dark to put things right around here. Shadowcat then nabs that nice 3xp for the milestone.
Transition Scene: Wrap-up
With this final Transition Scene we decide to end this Act of the Breakout Event. We could have tussled with a couple more villains and whatnot but we’d largely met the minimum required bit of adventure to call this a full Act, so that was good enough. Following this Transition Scene SHIELD agents start pouring into the Raft, more and more as time goes by, and we’re more or less just picking up the pieces. Especially with the Sentry cutting a swatch through the bad guys ahead of us (before disappearing altogether).
Shadowcat still has that d8 Physical stress from the last fight, so she recovers from that now. However, we don’t have a single Plot Point between the lot of us to spend on resources (or anything else). Consequently investigating what exactly happened around here to cause this whole mess turns into a few action rolls on our part as we do things the hard way. Interrogating prisoners and agents here and there until we get a picture of what went on.
During the course of that Spider-Woman and Black Widow manage to nab a Plot Point each so we both buy d8 Covert resources to fill in the blanks (and use until the next Transition Scene). With that we discover some weird discrepancies in the Raft prisoner files, connected somehow to a SHIELD outpost in Antarctica. As it happens the only missing inmate (besides Count Nefaria, darn it) is Sauron, who supposedly operates out of that area. It seems likely then that this is the guy Electro made off with and that Electro orchestrated this whole thing in order to break him out.
Armed with that we figure we’d better track down Electro and put the screws to him. After a little poking around, though, we’re forced to admit we haven’t the first clue how to track him down. No one on the Raft seems to know anything (that we can get out of them anyway), so we’re left with heading out to the SHIELD outpost to see what we can find out there.
Interestingly, the Watcher tells us that the SHIELD file on Sauron is locked and restricted, so we can’t get a look at it. The SHIELD officials we talk to aren’t inclined to unlock that file either. On top of that the outpost in Antarctica is “offline”, so now we have reason to think there’s trouble out there already too.
Attempting to commandeer some kind of transport out to the outpost gets the SHIELD Director on our case, ordering us to drop the whole thing and basically butt out (she apparently isn‘t a big fan of super-heroes). Spider-Woman argues that and the discussion gets a little heated before she finally convinces the Director to let us go poke around a bit. She reluctantly gives us the nod to commandeer a SHIELD transport jet and we’ve got our ride out to the outpost now.
We end the Act there, on the transport heading to Antarctica to find and capture Sauron.