Free RPG Day Adventure

[Crakkerjakk]

So I'm running a GURPS Lite game for Free RPG Day this Saturday.

I've decided to Supers, since no one else is running a supers campaign.

I'm borrowing heavily from Action, Supers, and Land Out of Time:

Here's the premise. The PCs are a group of young super-heroes just starting up in New York City. They are all hanging out at their "group headquarters" (a loft apartment in Manhattan) when the police scanner goes off. Apparently there is a bank heist in progress, only two blocks away!

So, we proceed to bank heist where heavily armed robbers led by a mook with a gold amulet that lets him shoot flame jets from his hands attempt to get into the safe deposit boxes but are foiled by the heroes.

The cops thank the heroes for helping out (if they don't botch it too badly) and the heroes try to track down the source of the amulet. They bounce around some contacts, giving the opportunity for reaction rolls and social skills. They find out that it's a Mayan piece recently acquired by the Museum of Natural History. At the museum they find out that it is indeed part of a recent acquisition but seems to be missing, along with several other pieces. All the pieces that are missing seem to have been checked out by a Columbian grad student who didn't show up for work that day.

Just as they finish at the museum they get a call from a police contact. The 24th Precinct evidence locker is being robbed by a group of heavily armed men led by a man in heavy green robes and lots of heavy gold jewelry. They manage to get there just as several cars leave the precinct, in time for a rousing chase scene through Central Park. The chase scene ends with a bunch of wrecked cars, and the robed grad student in full monologue mode while he brandishes a foot-tall statuette.

A dimensional rift opens, and out comes a pack of velociraptors. Once the heroes have finished off those, the gate begins to close, but before it seals fully, a tyrannosaurus pushes it's way through, devouring the grad student (if the heroes haven't already defeated him) and serving as a "final boss" of the session.

Thoughts? It's supposed to be for about a 3 hour game session, I'm going to hand out pre-gens, standard super-types. Brick, speedster, blaster, controller, etc. Too railroad-y? Too combat centered?

Basically, my thoughts were letting them take out the bank mooks as an intro to the combat system, the investigation as an intro to the skills/social part, and then a final chase scene + climactic battle with dinosaurs, to bring the awesome. I couldn't really figure out how to fit in ninjas too.

[Crakkerjakk]

Here's the enemies. I gave the velociraptors armor divisors because otherwise I think the supers may be too tough. I still need to do The Curator. He's going to be the Columbian grad student. I'm thinking mind control magic with some limited defensive capability.

Bank Mooks
These men are wearing ballistic vests, ski masks, and are heavily armed. They radiate an aura of obvious menace.
ST 12 HP 12 Speed 5.5
DX 11 Will 9 Move 5
IQ 9 Per 9
HT 11 FP 11 SM 0

Dodge 8 Parry 9 DR 8

Punch (12): 1d-1 cr.
Glock (12): 2d+2 pi, Acc 2, Range 150/1,900, RoF 20(+4), Shots 30+1(3).
M16A4 (12): 5d pi, Acc 5, Range 500/3,500, RoF 12(+2), Shots 30+1(3).

Bank Lieutenant
This man seems to be in charge. He’s dressed like the others, but has no rifle and a heavy gold amulet displayed prominently outside his vest. The air around his hands shimmers and wavers.
ST 12 HP 12 Speed 6
DX 11 Will 11 Move 6
IQ 11 Per 11
HT 13 FP 12 SM 0

Dodge 9 Parry DR 8

Punch (12): 1d-1 cr.
Glock (12): 2d+2 pi, Acc 2, Range 150/1,900, RoF 20(+4), Shots 30+1(3).
Flame Jet (12): 5d burning, Range 50/100.

Velociraptor
This man-sized predator moves with an avian grace.
ST 15 HP 15 Speed 7
DX 15 Will 11 Move 18
IQ 4 Per 14
HT 13 FP 13 SM 0

Dodge 10 Parry DR 1 (3 on skull)

Bite (13): 1d+1 impaling(2)
Tail Smash (12): 1d+1 crushing(2)
Pounce (17): 2d cutting(2). Jumps 12 yards and attacks with its claws. Successful skill roll vs. Jumping (15) leaves the Velociraptor on its feet. Standard slam rules apply.


Tyrannosaurus Rex
Muscles ripple underneath the dappled scales of this gigantic predator.
ST 34 HP 34 Speed 7
DX 13 Will 12 Move 17
IQ 2 Per 14
HT 14 FP 14 SM +5

Dodge 10 Parry DR 2 (4 on skull)

Bite (13): 3d+1 impaling. If a bite is successful against a SM 0 or less creature, the creature is held within the T-Rex’s mouth and is subject to 3d+1 imp each turn, until it wins a contest of ST.
Pin (11): 3d+1 cutting. The T-Rex stomps on its target and pins them to the ground.
Tail Smash (12): 3d+2 crushing. One yard of knockback per ST-2 damage done.
Slam (13): 6d crushing. DX roll to avoid being knocked prone if damage exceeds that of target. One yard of knockback per ST-2 damage done.

[GoodGame]

Sounds kind of like the Freedom Force computer game campaign.

On the char-gen, it does sound a little railroaded. I think part of the fun of powers/supers is the character design. Maybe come up with some mini-lenses and let the players combine them how they want. Like pre-gen the lenses to be equal, and let them pick 2 or 3.

Your adventure pacing sounds ok, but maybe let some more non-combat skill use at the climax. Maybe have a few alternate endings to getting through the climax. Like: 1. Fight and pummel all, 2. Figure out (intelligence, non-comat skills) the basis of The Curator's artifacts' power and defeat those and then pummel Curator (puts Curator in weakened state, or, send his allies back in time, or free his allies, etc..), 3. Seduce/reason with The Curator (meet his demands, trick him?). Give the adventure some obvious hooks so the players see that pummeling creatures and taking their loot isn't the only option.

Also I think keep the pacing to the climax a little free-form, though you have good demo ideas. I think if the players show certain tendacies (fight, social, etc..) then give them what they want. E.g. If they seem to just like fighting, then give them ambushes that lead them to the climax. If they prefer the softer stuff, then let them exploit that to get a tactical advantage before a fight starts/evade ambushes etc...

Ninjas? Have The Curator mind-control the raptors a little, so they set up so good, ninja-like ambushes. (Out of the dark, using distractions, attacks from weird angles, whatever).


Using that BAD stuff from Actions 2?

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by GoodGame

Sounds kind of like the Freedom Force computer game campaign.

That is exactly where I stole the T-Rex idea from.

Originally Posted by GoodGame

On the char-gen, it does sound a little railroaded. I think part of the fun of powers/supers is the character design. Maybe come up with some mini-lenses and let the players combine them how they want. Like pre-gen the lenses to be equal, and let them pick 2 or 3.

I'm pretty much taking the templates from Supers and letting them pick an archetype and a lens for the ones that have choices (like Biomorph or Blaster.) They've all been tweaked to about 500 points. There should be roughly 33 different choices, including all the lenses. Unfortunately, this way means the there's only one version of speedster, but I suppose I could add the motivation lenses from after the templates which would allow "dark and brooding speedster" and "patriotic optimist speedster."

Originally Posted by GoodGame

Your adventure pacing sounds ok, but maybe let some more non-combat skill use at the climax. Maybe have a few alternate endings to getting through the climax. Like: 1. Fight and pummel all, 2. Figure out (intelligence, non-comat skills) the basis of The Curator's artifacts' power and defeat those and then pummel Curator (puts Curator in weakened state, or, send his allies back in time, or free his allies, etc..), 3. Seduce/reason with The Curator (meet his demands, trick him?). Give the adventure some obvious hooks so the players see that pummeling creatures and taking their loot isn't the only option.

Thanks, I tend to run more combat focused games and assume that's what others want on a demo-game, so I really appreciate the reminder to allow for other options.

For non-combat intelligence options, I'm thinking

• The exhibit makes reference to the Mayan treasures being cursed, and perhaps has some heavily stylized dinosaurs in some of the stonework.
• The associate director in charge of the grad student can go into greater detail on the magical rituals of the Mayans, enough to give the heroes the ability to enact a ritual that will give The Curator Fickle on all his abilites.
• The grad student's work station has a bunch of his notes hidden on his computer, detailing his disaffection with western society and his plan to summon an ancient Mayan god to smite the "invaders."

Originally Posted by GoodGame

Also I think keep the pacing to the climax a little free-form, though you have good demo ideas. I think if the players show certain tendacies (fight, social, etc..) then give them what they want. E.g. If they seem to just like fighting, then give them ambushes that lead them to the climax. If they prefer the softer stuff, then let them exploit that to get a tactical advantage before a fight starts/evade ambushes etc...

Thanks, this is good advice. I'm trying to keep it free-form, my only concern is the game running too long. I mean, it's just a demo, I don't want to do a full adventure and not get to the climax, you know? Right now I'm thinking I can leave the middle loosey goosey and improv, and when we get down to an hour and a half left on the time slot throw in the call from the precinct about the evidence locker heist.

Originally Posted by GoodGame

Ninjas? Have The Curator mind-control the raptors a little, so they set up so good, ninja-like ambushes. (Out of the dark, using distractions, attacks from weird angles, whatever).

That's a good idea. I hadn't thought to make the Central Park encounter at night, but that'll really let the more stealth-focused PCs do their thing.

Originally Posted by GoodGame

Using that BAD stuff from Actions 2?

I was planning on it, yeah.

[Captain-Captain]

Add a sub plot: A small amount of radioactive Thalium dust is found in the museum, exactly where the anonymous tipster said it would be found. His next call is a ransom demand. He got in once and can do it again. The exhibit will be contaminated unless he is paid $10,000,000 in gold. The PCs have to figure out how he can get in the guarded museum and how he expects to get out with that much gold, and stop the guy.

How? He's got Invisibility and Warp with the Tunnel enhancement and Selectivity. He got in via teleportation and plans to Open a 'gate' under the gold and let it drop through to his destination. The gold will take some falling damage. As if that mattered.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

Add a sub plot: A small amount of radioactive Thalium dust is found in the museum, exactly where the anonymous tipster said it would be found. His next call is a ransom demand. He got in once and can do it again. The exhibit will be contaminated unless he is paid $10,000,000 in gold. The PCs have to figure out how he can get in the guarded museum and how he expects to get out with that much gold, and stop the guy.

How? He's got Invisibility and Warp with the Tunnel enhancement and Selectivity. He got in via teleportation and plans to Open a 'gate' under the gold and let it drop through to his destination. The gold will take some falling damage. As if that mattered.

For a four-hour demo game? This seems like more something a full-length adventure might have.

[dcarson]

Sounds good. If you want to give the players more ability to customize the PCs give them civilian lenses for the nonsuper side of the characters to pick from. It sounds like it has enough for a 3 hour slot.

If you want ninjas have one show up at the end and steal one of the artifacts while they are fighting the T-Rex. For bonus weirdness have it be a mayan ninja. This gives you a hook for the next adventure.

[Crakkerjakk]

After Action Report:

The Free PRG Day adventure was a rousing success!

For character creation what I ended up doing was using all of the 500 point templates from Supers, as well as a few 1000 point templates that were scaled down and a few 250 point templates that were scaled up or combined. I stripped out all references to points, and anywhere the template had them "pick one of" or "any to of" I just separated the options into three columns so that they were visually distinct from the rest of the template. The idea was that they could just use a highlighter to pick the options that they wanted in a few minutes.

I also took the Motivation templates from Supers and did the same thing with them.

Come the day of the event, I showed up a couple hours early and participated in a homebrew "Red Dawn" style game, with the PCs playing guerrilla insurgents against the occupying red army.

Once that had concluded, I invited the three guys I had played with if they'd like to try a GURPS Supers game. Character creation took about half an hour, because I had them transfer the templates over to a character sheet, on the assumption that if they put it on the character sheet themselves, then they would know where it was when I asked them to roll for something. Plus they kept the character sheets and I took the highlighted template sheets, so I had a copy of what they were capable of as well.

We ended up with two guys playing superstength bricks and one guy playing a teleportation nightstalker/infiltrator. One brick was tougher than the other, but the second brick had Super Throwing.

The adventure went sideways within the first few minutes. The junior heroes went to foil the bank robbery, but the teleporter managed to get a full-auto glock pistol off the getaway driver out front and teleported behind the leader in the first second of combat. The second second of combat the leader caught a full-auto burst to the back of his skull.

The players mopped up the rest of the mooks with copious slams into granite pillars by the 32 ST bricks. The teleporter caught an M4 burst and almost died (made his health roll exactly.) The cops showed up, thanked the heroes for helping out, and patched up the teleporter (since I didn't want to deal with having him out of the game, I figured the point of the lethality of firearms to the unarmored had been made.)

The super throwing brick (who had decided he was a catholic priest) had a contact who ran an occult bookshop that they went to to find out stuff about the amulet. They went and talked to him, with the Teleporter being very reluctant to give up the amulet. I had decided the amulet, in addition to letting the wearer shoot jets of flames from his hands, lowered the self-control numbers on all their mental disadvantages and in general made the wearer feel very, very, very high.

The "Father's" contact pointed them to the museum, where they found out about the grad student and the missing jewelry, as well as the fact that legends said that the jewelry had a variety of powers, including mind control.

The teleporter then got a call from the cop who had first showed up on the scene of the bank robbery that the station was under assault and the evidence locker was being robbed.

They ran the two blocks to the station, managed to get into the last van and gave chase to the other two vans.

The teleporter had the Drive! skill and rapidly gained on the rear van. The bricks, loaded in the back, ripped the roof off so that they could throw things at the van. After several rounds, the teleporter got them next to the rear van, the tough brick(known as "Tank") tore a hole in the side of the van, and Father dropped a frag grenade he had found in the rear of their van into the rear van.

The teleporter passed the rear van and managed to gain on the lead van. Father threw a weapons locker into the back of the van, pushing the rear doors inward and crushing the guys back there. As the teleporter closed the distance to about ten yards, Father threw Tank at the other van, unfortunately missing by a few points.

I let Tank make a DX roll to catch the other van's roof as he sailed over, which he missed. He hit the pavement in front of the van, but took no damage thanks to his impressive damage reduction and DR. I then let him make a DX roll to end up on his feet facing the van so that he could attempt to catch it as it hurdled towards him. He failed this one two. Then I let the driver of the van make a driving roll to avoid Tank, which he failed. So the van plowed into Tank as he was skidding to a stop upside down. He served as a fulcrum, as the van pinwheeled over him and came to a screeching halt upside down with the front facing the hero's oncoming van.

The teleporter decided to pull a bootlegger turn, whipping the van around and throwing Father out the back into the other van's driver compartment, himself teleporting out of the van onto the sidewalk before the van had come to a stop.

Father sailed through the air, and hit the driver in the chest, ending his involvement in the fight. Meanwhile, The Curator crawled out of the van and started monologing while waving the statuette, with a dimensional portal opening behind him. Tank tried to slam him, but the Curator dodged. He did not, however, dodge the unconscious body of the driver which Father threw at him, and was carried backwards into the portal.

They then tried to plug the portal with the totaled van, but that didn't do anything. Then, velociraptors emerged to attack the heroes. The raptors were much more agile than the other enemies that the heroes had faced so far, but couldn't really damage either of the bricks. Tank ended up grappling one and then pulling it's jaws apart, while the teleporter made effective use of his hand to hand skills, parrying several attacks and kicking one of the raptors in the throat.

Finally, with all of the raptors down, the heroes saw the statuette discarded on the ground and smashed it. As the portal began to shrink, however, the van partially in the portal was kicked back out, nailing Tank. The van was followed by a tyrannosaurus with The Curator riding on it's back.

The curator began monologuing again, but Father threw the van door he had defeated the last raptor with at him, nailing him and knocking him off the T-Rex and disrupting the mind control he had on it. The T-Rex confused but with what looked like a tasty meal in front of it, promptly ate The Curator.

The players, realizing that an uncontrolled T-Rex in Central Park was probably just about as bad as a mind-controlled T-Rex in Central Park, rushed valiantly to battle. Tank attempted to grapple it's leg, failing in taking it down by a few points. Father threw one of the vans at the T-Rex, injuring it slightly. The teleporter ran to the other van and liberated one of the bad guy's M4s. Tank again failed in taking down the T-Rex by a few points, so the T-Rex ate him. Unfortunately for the T-Rex, he couldn't really get through Tank's armor with any large amount of damage, so Tank was still very much alive and fighting, just inside the T-Rex's mouth.

Father picked up the other van and tossed it into the T-Rex's leg, crippling it. The dinosaur fell to the ground on it's side, at which point the teleporter popped over to the top of it's head, unloading half a mag into it's eye. Finally, Tank used Power Blow inside it's mouth to shove a first through it's cranial cavity and out the top of it's head. The heroes, triumphant, limped off into the sunset.

The guys playing decided that Supers + Dinosaurs + GURPS was pretty much the most awesome thing ever, which was pretty much my thought processes designing this adventure as well. The guy who was running the home-brew Red Dawn game, Father's player, said he was planning on checking out GURPS because it seemed to be a better fit than the rules he was trying to make. Apparently he's familiar with HERO, but he said he thought the combat was a lot more streamlined in GURPS (which I agree with from what I've read of HERO, but to be fair I was running combat VERY fast and loose in the demo.) The two other guys also liked the system quite a bit. One of them kept repeating how much "better" it was than the Red Dawn game (which made me wince, but the Father's player took it pretty well.)

They asked if I was looking for a group for more GURPS, to which I replied that I was moving to New Mexico in two weeks, but got their e-mails and promised them that I would contact them for another session if I had the time before I left.

I gave the Red Dawn GM all the adventure notes I had drawn up for the session to illustrate how you didn't need complete stat blocks for NPCs, as well as the templates as a guideline of how to prepackage things to make it easier on the players to get a game rolling. I also told him about these forums and told him to swing by if he wanted to ask for any advice or pointers for converting his campaign over to GURPS.

All in all, it was very satisfying and a lot of fun to show others a system that I enjoy very much, and have them emphatically agree with me.