Rumble in the Rockies - Actual Play Summary

This is the summary of my group's third "With Great Power..." session. Here are parts one and two. We played this session about a month ago. I'll follow this up soon with a post about the overall experience.

After the Correlator's narrow escape, we find him in the Panera Bread on the corner of Powers and Carefree in Colorado Springs. He's lost both his lairs and his mobile command post (camper truck) and he's reduced to using free wifi. Fortunately, all of his programs are backed up on his personal micro-sat. Now that he's learned the true origin of the military controlled supers, he tries to hack all of the alien derived tech simultaneously. Just when is seems to be working, his computer explodes and his implants are hacked by the aliens!

Meanwhile, Jeremy (aka The Jester) meets with Leah at Einstein Brothers on Woodmen and Academy (they've got wifi too, but this pair isn't interested). Jeremy levels with Leah and tries to convince her to help him. Unfortunately, General Norman Lee's executive officer happens to be there and overhears there conversation. He calls in the Jester's location and while they talk a sniper sets up on a nearby overpass. The sniper takes the shot, but hits Leah instead of Jeremy! [This was the result of a tie in the resolution of the Enrichment scene and the subsequent escalation and final resolution.]

Back in the hospital - again - Eric (aka Rockies Draconis), the general, and Senator Barton (Eric's daughter) get the bad news about Eric's test results - he's losing control of his alien armor. The general tries to convince Eric to give up the suit and pass the torch to a new generation.

Trying to prove he's still capable of being a superhero, Rockies Draconis attacks the Correlator at the United States Air Force Academy's B-52 display (under alien control, the Correlator was headed to the Cadet Area for reasons unknown). Caught off-guard, the Correlator is knocked out and captured by the general. [This was a very brief conflict scene where the GM yielded in the first round to prevent the player from yielding and moving to the final act.]

Jeremy goes back to his apartment and finds Jimmy C in a trance. He goes into Jimmy's head expecting to find the Correlator in control. But Jimmy is actually in contact with aliens on Epsilon Eridani 5 - the source of the alien saucer from the Roswell crash and all the super powers including the Jester's psychic abilities. Jimmy is using funk to communicate and it seems to be working! Little does Jeremy know that their apartment is under the general's surveillance. They're both captured while in the psychic trance.


In a secret medical facility beneath Schriever Air Force Base, General Norman Lee has Leah, Jimmy C, the Dragonite Armor, and the Correlator in separate rooms where he and Jeremy can observe them through glass walls from a central room. The general wants to impress upon Jeremy how dangerous these powers are how much Jeremy needs the general's help. Jimmy is still in the trance, Leah is recovering from surgery, and the Correlator appears unconscious.

Technicians are working on the Dragonite armor when suddenly it activates! The armor chooses a new host - Leah! It bursts through the wall, attaches itself to the unconscious cop, and launches through the ceiling. Seeing his chance, the Correlator chooses this time to strike and knocks everyone out with a sonic resonance from his built-in speakers. This sends a psychic blast through Jimmy C to the aliens on Epsilon Eridani 5.

The Correlator escapes and heads to the hospital where Eric is recovering. He tries to convince Eric to reveal the whole program to the world and even asks Eric to be his mentor, but Eric shoots the Correlator! Never terribly stable to begin with, this sends the Correlator over the edge into madness and true super-villainy.

Jeremy used the confusion and his psychic powers to walk right out of Schriever Air Force Base. He and Jimmy C track down Leah in her small hometown in the mountains. She's in a bar run by her aunt when they arrive. Right on their heels is the Correlator in a stolen medical chopper. Right on his heels are Eric and the general in a fully armed blackhawk!

During the epic air and ground battle that ensues, the general is captured by the Correlator's allies (the Wrights), Leah manages to learn to control her new powers, and Eric falls to his death! And then Eric wakes up in Area 51 in a new body. We learn that he isn't an ageless man but a line of clones! Eric, of course, is kept in the dark by the staff and is told he's been in recovery for a while. [This was the result of Tranforming Eric's identity aspect.]

Back in Colorado, Orville and Leslie lead the police on a wild mountain chase. At the end they bail from their call and let it fly over a cliff with the general inside. When the car hits the bottom, General Norman Lees flies into a hundred pieces of metal and wire - he's a robot! The Correlator swoops in to recover the general's hard drive while up above Leslie pushes her husband Orville off the cliff.

At the United States Air Force Academy, Jeremy's sister calls Jeremy for advice on a new program she's been asked to join. Overwhelmed with what's been going on in his life recently, Jeremy makes excuses and says he'll call her later. Little does he know that the program she's starting is one that will expose her to the same alien tech.

We soon discover that Leslie Wright - seemingly innocent wife of deluded Orville - is in fact the "Chairman" and the secret head of the supers program at Area 51 (Can she be in two places at once? Can she teleport?). She decides to give the new Eric Suit Beta - a prototype based on the original Dragonite Armor.

Eric races back to Colorado in his newer, bigger, more-powerful armor. But the Correlator is also resurgent and has modified several vehicles into one monstrous flying contraption. He has also hacked into the original Dragonite Armor again (now knows as Suit A). The clash once again over Leah's hometown. Jeremy manages to make a team out of the motley group and together they stop the Correlator. He escapes, but not before Jeremy refocuses the Correlator's mind on the government rather than the supers.

#WithGreatPower #StoryGames #RPG

Pathfinder is WAY Better as a Card Game

You may have read my post on my recent experience playing a Pathfinder Society (PFS) roleplaying game at local event. Well, my negative feelings towards the Pathfinder RPG (which is really just D&D 3.5 which I used to run/play all the time) do not extend to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. I tried the card game yesterday and I'm actually excited for the next time I'll get to play. It's a really well designed game that lots of folks are raving about - and rightly so.

Now, it would be easy to say that these two games have only the Pathfinder fictional universe to connect them, but I think they have more in common than that. The RPG version has intentionally stripped out the pretense that you can "do anything you want" that helped sell previous generations of D&D. In the Pathfinder RPG, you're expected to buy into the GM's story and go along for the ride (it's just a ride I wanted off). This is also known as "participationism". In the PFS version, that means going from location to location trying to find the big villain of the adventure and then killing said villain. In the card game...you do exactly the same thing - but it's fun! There's no GM, no expectation (even on my part) to be in character or contribute to a story, the combats are quick, and you get to make meaningful choices throughout. Basically, everything that I didn't like about the Pathfinder RPG is absent or fixed in the card game (note: I actually like moving minis on a map, so that activity's absence didn't get mentioned).

There have been many recent games in a similar vein - cooperative adventure board games with character options, leveling, etc. I've played the new Mage Knight board game (very good), Descent, and the Lord of the Rings living card game, all of which are trying to scratch that same itch. But none of those hit on all the cylinders they needed to for me and the Pathfinder card game does.

Traditional RPGs have lost lots of players to video games over the years as the technology has advanced to the point were it can scratch the individual itches of tabletop roleplayers. Some were lost very early on to text based games, then to MUDs, then more to Bioware-type games, and then many, many more to MMOs. Now that board games are doing much the same thing, how many more players will traditional RPGs loose? Not that anyone has to choose, but often they do.

I Should've Done This Sooner

Welcome to my blog page. From now own I'll post my gaming related stuff here and it will show up on G+. So if you are reading this on G+ you're already there. But this will let me keep this stuff in one place for my own reference and yours.

Here's a list of the G+ posts I wish I should have made here if I had only figured this out earlier:

• My group's "With Great Power" game summaries: Part 1, Part 2
• Doomed Pilgrim online game with lots of indie games celebs!
• A rant about truth in advertising your gaming events
• Post about running Doomed Pilgrim as a Parsely style game
• My miserable experience with Pathfinder