SMAX #173: Panic on Earth-Adrift

I was a GM before I was an writer, which means I occasionally awful affliction that many gamers suffer from where I get all Let me tell you about my game. I’m also a GM who’s had a few recurring items on my to-do lis like run better sessions, do better prep, and test drive rules from the upcoming Cortex Prime set that may do things better than the Marvel Cortex rules.

Since I’ve been running a superhero campaign on Thursdays for…gods, years now…I figure I may as well combine the above with that note on my to-do list that says write regular blog posts and start thinking about ongoing series of posts. 

With that in mind, I’m going to experiment with doing post-game reports here on the blog–giving myself a chance to reflect on what’s worked, and what doesn’t. Think through my thoughts about superhero gaming outside of the every-hundred-sessions-or-so list post (which, weirdly, continue to be the most read posts on this site).

This is something I meant to do years ago,  going by game banner sitting in the blog’s images file–it’s been a long while since two of those characters have been regulars in the game.

PREVIOUSLY, IN SMAX

So, lets get those of you who aren’t my player oriented: we’re in the middle of a story arc where the players are stuck on Earth-Adrift, an alternate dimension I’ve stolen from Mutants & Masterminds Meta-4 setting where there are no native superheroes or easily-accessible routes to other dimension. In their history they’ve only had two visitors from other worlds prior to the PC: a mad scientist named Professor Panic who figured it would be easy to conquer, and the trio of heroes who followed him and put a stop to his scheme.

The heroes went home. Panic stayed on Earth-Adrift, tried by warcrimes and locked in a prison sell since 1986. The Earth-Adrift governments only let him out a year ago, when it became apparent an alien invasion was immanent and Panic was the sole person they had capable of providing weapons that would let them fight back.

The last few sessions have been about those weapons–initially when Panic sent a robot named Damocles back to his home dimension to steal powers, then when the heroes of SMAX transported themselves and 200 meta-humans in cryo-tubes to Earth-Adrift while trying to stop the robot from blowing up.

Session 172 saw them hook up with the Earth-Adrift’s United Earth Military, meet up with Panic and learn about his plans to steal the powers of all 200 metas and install them into a robot army, and ultimately decide that was a bad thing when it was revealed the process would kill the 200 subjects (including some former teammates and friends). 

This meant I went into this session with some specific conflicts and goals, rather than coherent prep:

• The PCs wanted to stop the deaths of 200 meta-humans. The United Earth Military wants those powers–and the ability to put them into robots that can be rebuilt and redeployed–so they can prevent the total destruction of earth at alien hands.
• I wanted to seed the idea of getting back home and what it was going to take. Earth-Adrift was a detour rather than a core storyline–an opportunity provided by some player decisions and uncooperative dice–and it fit neatly with a period where another player was away. 
• Focus on the particular archetype I wanted Professor Panic to fit: he’s never going to stand toe-to-toe with a superhero, but he’s a threat because of the things he invents and the situations he sets up.

This last one was on my mind a lot in this session: we’d ended the previous game on a flat note, when the reveal that his power-stealing device would kill the 200 metas was immediately followed by the Gadgeteer hero Sentinel digging for information about whose decision that was. The thought being, what if he’s reformed? Is he doing this against his will, or is he still the same Professor Panic who will be an even greater threat once all of this is over. 

Unfortunately, it was one of those moments where describing what the PC was doing didn’t make the player’s intent clear, and I wasn’t making it clear that Panic was totally okay with killing people (and, in fact, enjoying the fact that the hero would be going up against the military if he tried to thwart the plan).

THIS WEEKS CAST

• SENTINEL (played by Nic): a rookie gadgeteer with a utility belt full of tricks and some low-key power armour that’s more notable for its sensor array and analytic AI than its weapon systems.
• AZIMUTH (played by Adam): A gravity manipulator who can shape powerful forcefields in much the same way Green Lanterns use a power ring. A reformed criminal whose hiding something.

HOW IT PLAYED OUT

Traditionally a Cortex game is broken down into specific scenes, which is one of those things I’ve never really adapted too as effectively as I should. With that in mind, I’m going to try and break the session down scene-by-scene here to start fixing the technique in my mind (and showcase it for the players who might read this).

SCENE ONE:  SHOWDOWN IN THE LAB. We start the session with the equivalent of a splash-page–Azimuth is trying to disconnect the cables that power Panic’s Power-Stealing machine, Sentinel is trying to talk down the guards who are about to open fire, and Professor Panic is cackling like a madman at the chaos that’s about to be unleashed.

The scene immediately goes to action, which is the type of scene that Marvel Cortex excels at: guards are taken out, the players set up a shutdown complication and start pushing it past a D12 to end the scene, and Professor Panic reveals that his shirt is actually a small swarm of self-replicating nanotech robots that can be used as a kind of omni-tool. He uses it to try keep the machine running despite Azimuth’s efforts, but it just results in him getting knocked unconscious.

This wasn’t a big fights scene–more a chance for the players to show off and push us into action after the flat ending to the last session–but I was also in possession of a doom pool loaded with d12s and D10s, so I spend one to create a complication to start the next scene…the damage caused has stopped the machine, but now it’s going to blow.

SCENE TWO: SHUTDOWN SEQUENCE. The heroes go to work: Sentinel works to vent all the energy and Azimuth creates force-fields to channel it into a place it will cause no damage. It’s a scene that ends up feeling flat because, frankly, I’m starting to realise that the version of Cortex we’re using is Marvel Heroic and it handles fight scenes incredibly well and other dramatic situations…not so well.

The guidelines for stuff like this is minimal: you either treat it like a fight scene, wave it off altogether, or treat it as a single check. None of these have really been satisfying, and a week later it occurs to me that it’s the kind of thing the escalating contest used in other Cortex games would be ideally suited for. 

SCENE THREE: SAVING THE METAS. The focus shifts to holding off the military and freeing the meta-humans in stasis tubes. The conflict here is pretty simple: Azimuth and Sentinel want to save everyone and figure 200 metas should be able to stop the Broan invasion; the military still prefers the robot solution, even with the risk that Panic may take control, and sees the deaths as acceptable casualties.

It’s not, however, a conflict that I gate a lot of focus too. When the heroes go to work it starts with Azimuth holding the military at the control room–a viable tactic when you’re a superhero in possession of nigh indestructible force fields in a world with nothing but conventional weapons–and Sentinel goes to start unhooking the machines.

Instead, I largely use this scene to call back to our impasse from the previous session: Sentinel discovers that the part of the machine that will kill the metas isn’t a core component, but something that’s been put there intentionally. Panic is looking to kill off any powered beings, leaving nothing but the robots he designed, and is entirely the evil genius the heroes suspected him of being.

They use this information to negotiate a solution with the local general, agreeing to repair the machine and deliver the army after the system that would result in 200 deaths are dismantled. It’s not perfect from the military side, but the General they’re negotiating with agrees too it in the interests of getting something rather than nothing. 

Sentinel goes to work rebuilding the necessary systems, while Panic is carted off and returned to a cell where he can do no damage.

SCENE FOUR: FAMILIAR THINGS. The basic narrative rule of “skip to the interesting stuff” comes into effect here as we do some short bridging scene. The first involves Azimuth doing a computer search for her civilian identity on Earth-Adrift and finds nothing; then, she googles a second name…and learns that this person is missing, presumed dead.

It’s a nice bit of foreshadowing for one of Azimuth’s subplots, which Azimuth’s player has been keeping in the mix through scenes like this. 

SCENE FIVE: THIS TECH MIGHT BE BEYOND ME. Meanwhile, Sentinel is trying to repair the machine and get the robots into production. This is done as another bridging scene, which is kind of unfortunately: Nic threw in some nice details about Sentinel working without sleep, getting frustrated by the fact that Professor Panic is a legit super genius, but Sentinel is actually the kind of guy who works as the super genius’s assistant.

As the GM, this is actually one of the most interesting parts of the character: he’s legitimately smart and capable of brilliant things, but he doesn’t innovate on the same level, works considerably slower, and rarely feels like the smartest guy in the room given the company he keeps.

It would have been nice to do repairing the machine as something other than a quick cut scene–something that would have felt like there was a struggle involved, and a sense of achievement at the end.

SCENE SIX: CHECKING IN. We also did a short moment in among all this where the heroes checked in on Xochitl, the teams resident speedster/shadow-magic sorcerer who has been unconscious and in critical care since their arrival on Earth-Adrift.

Neither player is actually worried about this, since Xo’s player hasn’t been able to make the game, and both made jokes about her coming too in time for the next session even after getting a reminder that Xo has regeneration powers and spending this long in critical care is…odd. 

SCENE SEVEN: THE DEAL. With Sentinel on the verge of finishing the machine, we but back to Azimuth as the military lets her know Professor Panic would like to talk.

Panic goes into full super-villain mode, trying to cut a deal: he has a device that should be able to get Azimuth and everyone else back to Earth-Prime, but it would take more power than humanity can generate on this planet. He knows how to make it work, but it’ll will need Azimuth’s help and he wants them to agree to take him back–

Azimuth doesn’t have time for this. She’s not interested, leaves him in his cell, and goes back to bed.

SCENE EIGHT: SUCH WONDERFUL TOYS. That does get Sentinel and Azimuth interested in the some of Panic’s old gear, and they organise to take a look at all the confiscated devices. The tech there is well beyond most of Earth-Adrifts scientists and their conventional approach to physics and such, but Sentinel recognises one as the original portal generator which used a kind of element unknown to earth as a power source.

Fortunately, there’s a bunch of alien ships on the planet, including an alien flagship the size of a city. The heroes start putting together a plan to go steal it as we close the session. 

POST-GAME

I’d been putting off doing anything extensive with the Cortex Prime rules mailed out to Kickstarter backers because it never felt like I had enough time to process a new rules set and figure out the options. There were similarities to the Marvel Cortex rules, but enough differences that it would involve close reading and making a note of significiant changes.

This session (and a few that proceeded it) got me invested in actually setting aside a weekend to figure out what might be useful. Intriguingly, there was an aside on the topic of heroes and villains that really honed in on the frustrations of doing non-combat scenes in a meaningful way:

In a heroes vs villains set-up, action order is crucial for larger set-piece scenes with multiple antagonists and every player character doing something different, sharing a spotlight. Use escalating contests occasionally for one-on-one duels

Cortex Prime Game Handbook (September 2018 Development Draft)

This wide-focus, every-player-gets-a-spotlight approach has been a default assumption of gaming combat for decades, and the idea of including everyone and giving them a chance to shine makes sense in a group game. It also makes perfect sense for the Marvel approach to Cortex, where the focus what meant to be on swapping between characters and showcasing the marvel universe (and particularly the cross-over events) rather than building your own characters and stories.

But the lack of structure around things that aren’t big combat means your focus gets pulled towards that, and the stuff that isn’t the next fight scene lacks the same kind of drama simply because the system goes from “big complex system” to “make a single die roll.”

The escalating contest mechanic Cortex developed for systems Smallville and Leverage, may provide a useful middle ground between those two mechanics. 

And, fortunately, the heroes did just decide they’d like to break into a giant alien command ship in tonight’s session, just in time to give that system a a trial run….