Aqualad [MHR]

Aqualad

Team d8 Buddy d10 Solo d6

Distinctions

Calm Under Pressure
Knight of Atlantis
Honorable

Power Sets:

Atlantean Physiology
   Enhanced Durability d8     
   Enhanced Strength d8   
   Enhanced Swimming d8

SFX: Under The Sea. Before you take any action including any Atlantean Physiology power while underwater, you make move your physical stress die to the doom pool and step up the Atlantean Physiology die for this action.

Limit: Easily Dehydrated. Shut down Atlantean Physiology if deprived of water or when exposed to extreme heat (a Complication). Remove the Complication to recover.


Water Bearers
   Electric Shock d8
    Hard Water Weapons d8
    Water Shaping d8

SFX: Constructs. Add d6 and Step Up effect die by +1 when creating assets with Water Bearers.

SFX: Area. Add a d6 and keep an additional effect die for each additional target.

Limit: Water Source. Water Shaping is limited to D6 and cannot use the Area SFX without a source of water such as fire hydrants, sprinkler systems or natural bodies of water.

Limit: Gear. Shutdown Water-Bearers and gain 1 PP. Recover by activating an opportunity or during a Transition Scene


Specialties

Combat Expert
Mystic Expert
Psych Expert

Milestones

The Burden of Leadership

1 XP when: you first aid a teammate during a scene.
3 XP when: you defeat an enemy without a teammate becoming stressed out.
10 XP when: you solidify your role as team leader after a crisis in confidence in your leadership or hand the leadership role over to another teammate.


Land or Sea

 1 XP when: you first mention the differences between Atlantean and surface world cultures.
3 XP when: you are forced to sacrifice Atlantean duties for the Team, or Team duties for Atlantis.
10 XP when: you decide to give 100% of your effort to the Team or quit the team to return to Atlantis.
  
Design Notes: I looked to the writeups of Namor and Namorita (in the Civil War and Civil War: Young Avengers / Runaways) for how to do Aqualad. One of the sticking points for MHR is the low level of granularity of powers. Aqualad is obviously in the "more than human" level of strength, but he's not, at least from what I've seen, all the way up to the Superhuman rank of strength.

Young Justice S1-01 Independence Day

Analysis from a RPG Perspective: Most super-hero campaigns start with a getting the team together. My experience has mostly been adult super-heroes, but the Teen Super Team is a well-loved supers concept. The two main concepts for teen teams I've seen are: the young heroes put together by common cause, origins or foe (the original X-Men, New Mutants, Gen 13, the current incarnation of Teen Titans) or the sidekick team (previous versions of the Teen Titans, Young Avengers and, of course, Young Justice).

From a RPG perspective, the Sidekick Team provides interesting opportunities and obstacles. The opportunity is that players get to make their mentor heroes, but the obstacle is "why aren't the mentors around helping out?" The previous incarnation of the Teen Titans had the team as a sort of
"weekend getaway" for Robin, Superboy, et al. YJ is going with the "sidekick team" as a training opportunity / missions the elder heroes can't get involved in.

But I get ahead of myself. This episode starts off with each of Kid Flash, Speedy, Robin and Aqualad having a short mission with their mentors. From a tabletop perspective, it's possible the GM ran it all simultaneously, with each teen character playing both their primary character and their mentor. Or, the group could run them in sequence, with each player handing their mentor to the player on their left. 

Then we get to the scene at the Hall of Justice, where Our Heroes learn that they aren't getting the all-access experience they were expecting. Then Speedy quits. Maybe Speedy was an NPC all along, and his speech was prepared to seed the idea with the PCs that the teens have reason to rebel against their mentors. Or maybe the GM was encouraging a troupe-style game, and said that Speedy/Red Arrow didn't have to join the team so long as the player came up with more of a team player PC. With Red Arrow's story arc, I'd lean towards Speedy being an NPC. But when we get further along in the story arc, I'll talk more about the Speedy is a PC vs NPC. 

So anyway, the GM pretty much waved the "why don't you go investigate the fire at Cadmus?" plot under the PC's' collective noses. From there, it's a pretty standard "investigate the evil mad science lair" until the reveal of Superboy. But more about him in next episode's info. 

And now the bonus material. Over the next few days, I'll be posting writeups of the characters in the episode using the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying rules. 

This episode's writeups will be:

Player Character Datafiles 
Aqualad
Kid Flash
Robin

Watcher Datafiles
Aquaman
Batman
Captain Cold
Dubbliex
Flash
Green Arrow 
Guardian
Icicle Jr. 
Killer Frost
Mister Freeze 
Project Cadmus (as a setting)
     G-Elves
     G-Nomes
     G-Trolls

Young Justice

I admit, my grand plans for writing up Smallville Season 10 fell apart. I had some freelance work for Vigilance Press come up and Smallville receded in memory. But I've worked ahead on this, so I've got plenty of material.

The inspiration for this comes from Steve Kenson's Blog, where he'd looked at Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Justice League from a gamer's perspective. So, in addition to writeups, I'll be sharing my thoughts on the episode. I should also mention that this would have been a lot harder to do without the fine people at the Young Justice Wiki.

So, stay tuned for Young Justice: Episode One - Independence Day.

Campaigns I'd Like To Run: The Star Harvest

First off, sorry it's been so long since I updated. I've had lots of fun freelance RPG work that's kept me busy. 

So anyway, we're in pitch season again in our Tuesday group. I like to write pitches as movie trailers.

This'd be Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, using a hodgepodge of various RPG stuff for source material. (The ION Guard, some Vigilance Press stuff, and stuff I'd lift from the upcoming Annihilation sourcebooks.)

Cue John Williams Music

EXTERIOR, SPACE: Computer sounding voice over.

VOICE OF ION PRIME: For millions of years, the ION Guard have protected the universe from cosmic threats.

PANS DOWN to see the artificial world ION PRIME. It's the size of a small moon surrounded by an orbiting ring of linked towers. There are small golden dots flying around, members of the ION Guard.

ION PRIME: In that time, they have never been defeated.

Swarming into space are the insectoid ships of The Star Harvest.

A space battle ensues, with the ION Guard flying up to meet the Hive Ships. The sky is full of explosions and beams of golden light.

ION PRIME: Until now.

On the surface of Ion Prime, the once proud citadel of the Ion Guard is in ruins. A handful of Guardsmen are looking around, shell-shocked.

CUT TO Space, the Harvesters on the move, cutting through the defenses of the LOKK Empire's warships. Cut to interior of one of the ships. The LOKK are a cloned race, the bridge crew is made up of 3 "models."

SECOND IN COMMAND: Captain, we must retreat.

CAPTAIN: We leave and those colonists are dead.

SECOND: We stay and they die hours later. The Hive Ships will track them down and... consume them along with us.

The CAPTAIN thinks for a moment. He rubs his chin, Kirk style. "Dammit. Order the-"

THIRD: CAPTAIN, multiple inbound signatures.

CUT TO SPACE: Warping in are a group of heroes, flying in formation around a badass little ship. (Something like the Defiant)

CUT TO LOKK Command Ship. On the view screen is Enkidu, a super-intelligent Gorilla from Savage Titan. Enkidu wears glasses perched on his nose and has a bandolier of tools ending in a big pouch (like Chewbacca's, but his are covered in tools, not clips.)

ENKIDU: Greetings, LOKK Fleet. This is the Excelsior. We are here to assist. Cover the evacuating colonists. We will cover you.

LOKK SECOND: Captain, they are a single ship, with four meta-beings.

LOKK THIRD: Captain, those four signatures are registering more power than half of our fleet.

The Captain smiles.

CAPTAIN: Thank you Excelsior.

Cut to the command deck of the EXCELSIOR. Enkidu is standing at the command post (like where Nick Fury stood on the Helicarrier or where Commander Shepard stands on the Normandy. Other gorillas are manning the other stations. They've got similar bandoliers, but Enkidu's is gold, showing he's the Apex Ape.

ENKIDU: Ladies and gentlemen, you know what to do.

In space, the four fliers are:

TEMPEST SHEPARD, ION GUARDIAN from Earth: She's scarred from battle but going total badass on the ships. She throws spheres of golden energy like a baseball pitcher, and each sphere tears through a ship.

ODYSSEY, a near-human alien with the standard Flight Invulnerability Strength and Speed, but on a cosmic scale . She tears ships in half and beams just bounce off her.

MARAUDER, a battlesuit hero - the battlesuit is big and bulky, like Iron Man's Hulkbuster armor. There's a giant cannon running along his arm, just as long and almost as thick. The cannon glows brightly and a huge energy beam punches through ships. Maneuvering jets have him sliding through screens of Hive fighters like they were in slow motion.

OUTRIDER, the Quantum Magician: He looks like the Babylon 5 Techno-Mages. Robes covered with arcane symbols and circuitry. He is standing on an asteroid and gestures with a staff. As he does, other asteroids accelerate to near light speed and slam into the giant Hive Command Carrier. At first, they bounce off of the ship's shields, but then the shields shatter under the bombardment.

OUTRIDER: I've disabled the shields on the command carrier.

CUT TO the bridge of the Excelsior.

ENKIDU: Team Two, Transit now.

CUT TO the interior of the COMMAND CARRIER. In a flash of blue light, a group appears. There's a squad of Ape Soldiers, each carrying BIG GUNS. At the front of the team are, Shamus Starhawk, Galactic Gumshoe (imagine Tars Tarkas dressed like Sam Spade - he's got blasters in each of his 4 arms) and Pulsar Dragon, a human martial artist wearing a gi made out of the same starfield stuff that Star Boy of the Legion wears. She's holding a staff.

SHAMUS: We're in. Heading for the engine room.

In swarms a bunch of bug-aliens. The apes open fire. Shamus opens fire, targeting different bugs with each blaster. Pulsar Dragon glows with a chi energy aura and wades into the bugs. Whenever she strikes something, there's a flash of green chi energy.

CUT TO: Interior of the Black Harvest's Queenship. A drone is standing next to the Queen (who is eclipsed in shadow). They are watching all this on a holo-monitor.

DRONE: These Guardians may be trouble, my lady.

QUEEN: They will fail. ... They will fall.

The Queen leans forward into the light. She's an HR Giger nightmare.

QUEEN: And the Harvest will continue.