terrycloth

So, apparently, I don't feel like giving plot summaries of my D+D games anymore, since I haven't been doing it. Let's just say that the Friday group saved the world and the princess and everybody was happy, except for me, because I have to run the next game and somehow we decided on superheroes. Specifically, Mutants and Masterminds' new edition (3?) which none of us really know.

I wanted to start at power level 3 and do XCom, but by the time I said that everybody had already come up with normal power level 10 character concepts, so whatever. "You'll be secret government agents who think they're superheroes most of the time, then."

So, I figure I'll start out easy with a city of heroes style bank robbery. I was going to use power level 5 or so bank robbers, but I checked the back of the book where they have stats for 'criminals' and... um... 2? Really? All your normal human enemies are power level 2-5, with 5 being reserved for elite spies and things? Fine. 2. BUT THAT'S NOT THE PROBLEM.

The problem is that one of the characters suddenly has x-ray vision. "I need it to target my teleport."

"No you don't. That's what 'accurate' is for. It costs one point per rank."

"Yeah, but this works too, so why not?"

"It's the most annoying superpower ever. It means every time you zone in I have to load everything in the area right away, which is very bad for performance."

"This isn't a computer game."

"That makes it WORSE. I have to do it MANUALLY."

They then proceed to treat the bank robbery as a stealth infiltration mission, murdering all the hapless enemies silently and without raising the alarm. They also split up and go in different rooms. That means that the last scene was supposed to be 'you corner the boss in the vault, but instead of attacking, he says 'Blueberry Muffins' and you suddenly remember your true lives...'

But instead it ended up being his body being puppeted by remote control (since he was killed instantly before being aware of the party) and only getting to activate one character (I passed a note), the others then running away from him and... well, it worked out in the end. That's all I can say.

There's a fourth character who wasn't ready yet -- his player spent all last session and this session building him and he somehow still isn't ready? O.o All I know about his powers is that he can summon mini black holes and fly, and is invisible and intangible and a pure melee character. Oh, and he's also either a guy in a supersuit or a guy with a robot teddybear that fights crime (switching between them).

Friday night we had a session of Mutants and Masterminds. The party fought the law, and the law won. Luckily, it turned out it was on their side all along.

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Oh, and next up is plot 66: On Halloween, zombies and ghosts walk among the living!

That is, we had a session of Mutants and Masterminds Friday.

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Had a Mutants and Masterminds game tonight. Watching the nightly news showed the hidden evil agenda behind CONTROL's sponsorship of the superheroes, and then HAZARD decided to stop being sneaky and give the party a straightforward supervillain plot to foil, like they were supposed to.

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Played some mutants and masterminds last night.

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We had the last session of Mutants and Masterminds yesterday, finishing up the adventure. Tom and I kind of wanted to keep playing M+M, but Eric Josh and Ed all preferred switching to Eberron -- Eric felt more comfortable running an Eberron campaign, Josh wanted to try some new abusive prestige classes from the complete mage, and Ed really hated his M+M character and was sick of the system.

Tom also revealed that the reason Michelle had left was that Eric and I kept arguing about the rules, although from what he said it seemed like the ordinary discussions disgusted her as much as the actual shouting matches (since he brought it up during an ordinary discussion about jumping height and not while we were all growly).

Personally, I've always been disgusted by her complete disregard for the rules -- not 'I want to break them' but 'I'm not going to bother to learn them, I'll just ask what I can do each and every round of combat and have someone explain it every single fucking time'.

So to hell with her.

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Writing this up, I sound really bitter. I wasn't that angry during (most of) the game, don't worry... it's just going over it to record it makes me remember how much Eric's rulings as GM bother me.

He likes to railroad the party. He hates 'using player knowledge' so much that he goes out of his way to make sure no one knows anything about what's going on, even if they would reasonably know in character, unless you can *prove* that they'd know in character (which is often impossible because you don't know the specifics out of character). He cheats with his NPCs and given any excuse will happily rule one way for them and another for the party, on the same issue, in the same combat round.

ARGH.