I'll try to write up a decent summary of last nights game, it was lots of fun. Well I enjoyed it anyway. Lessons I learnt from it.

Metagame
If you have a system to promote story telling don't use to try to resolve out and out contests. I have said it before in regard to car guided sotry telling, it doesn't really work as a conflict resolution mechanic. Yet I am still hugely tempted to try and use it this way. It almost seems arbitrary to me to simply say "You succeed or you fail".

The silly thing is that I have actually embedded a conflict resolution system in the character design that I always forget to use.

Essentially skills/talents/attributes have two qualities, level and specificity. If a person enters into a contest with another person compare the level of the skill each have and the higher wins, end of story.

If it is a tie, then compare the specificity of the skill, the more specific, hence narrower skill/talent/attribute wins.

in the event of an absolute tie, have both people draw cards and use them to tell the story.

Example

Bob the hunter has firearms skill at experience amatuer, Gi Jane the spec ops person has fire arms skill at experience professional. Bob gets mown down, end of story.

GI Jane goes up against Quick Draw McGraw, who has pistol skill at experienced professional. The skills are the same however QDM's is more specific (being just pistols and not all fire arms) QDM gets the drop on GI Jane and she is taken down.

QDM goes up against The Black Bart who also has pistol skill at experience professional. They both draw cards. The Black Bart draws Grace and QDM draws Anagnorisis (the most feared card in the deck), they both draw, QDM is quicker, smiles cruelly and pulls the trigger. It clicks...he didn't reload after wasting GI Jane, his look of triumph turns to horror as he realises he is the author of his own doom and there is nothing he can do about it as The Black Bart draws, shoots perfectly, spins the pistols and blows the smoke off...

Note to Matt...remember the system properly

In Game.

Normal people don't stand a chance against supers, even well trained paramilitary mercenaries. No matter how well trained you are, you cannot account for people who can phase through walls, make themselves invisible and completely silent, walk up to you and super punch you out before you can react.

4 Heroes took out 20 highly trained mercenaries in about half an hour of in game time.

This comes as no surprise to me, and it is suitably heroic at this stage for this to happen. But if I am going to increase the level fo challenge for the group I will need to look to super foes. There is plenty of scope in the game for them, and in fact they have met some, and others have been foreshadowed.

What we got last night was exactly the desired effect. Normal people who are unawares just don't really stand a chance against these guys.

But then they are Super Heroes, not just your average everyday heroes.

Finally, the cards make all the difference. There were some brilliant draws, like Christian (Jono's character) planning a maneuver that used a bunch of powers, essentially a superjump and then a wall run to drop onto the baddies as they tried to hose him with their SMGs. He drew the card Dan had made just that night, "Impossible is Nothing". Perfect. The scene played out in perfect Matrix style slow mo with the baddies guns tracking behind him kicking up dust. Beautiful.

Like I said, last night was sufficiently fun that I'll try to write up a session log.

Next week we'll be looking more at some of the soap opera elements of the genre :)

Maybe

Some examples of play, as I remember them (so likely distorted). The system we use basically uses a deck of specially made cards as prompts for how to tell the story of a scene.

The PCs
Alex, primarily a telepath, also does metabolic control and a little TK, played by Dagger.
Elisa, Primarily a Kinetic (TK and Photokinesis (light control)) and Metabolic control user, with a little telepathy, by and large the main combat character, played by me.
DJ, Another Kinetic (mostly sound), with Shadow and a little telepathy. Probably likely to become the other combat monster from the way she is going :) (Funny that the two femal characters are mostly combat oriented). Played by Dan
Sebastian, primarily an ESPer with useful Telepahty and a dark side. Sebastion has the Shadow power as well, but it is entirely out of his control and manifests as his dark side. Played by Vic.
And Christian, primarily an ESPer, with reasonable power in Dimension and TK (kinetics only). Christian is the nominal leader of the group for this story and is flawed in his dealing with others because he simply canot read people. He simply takes them at face value. Played by Jono.


The NPC's
Romero, loyal lieutenant of local Drug Lord Raphael.
Three mooks with guns.

The party have offended Raphael by first accepting his offer of help and then going back on the deal once they found out he was a drug deal. Raphael has scores of mooks with guns scouring the countryside looking for the PCs.


The Scene
High in the Bolivian Ande's an ambush for Romero is set by tghe PCs. Thier plan is to capture him to send a message to Raphael and convince him to come and talk 'peace'. At a bend in the road they fell a tree across the road. Elsia and DJ are set up to fell another tree behind the car carrying the baddies. Alex, Christian and Sebastian are set up to sow confusion amongst the baddies and attack the mooks to take them out.

At the beginning of every session the players all draw a card (a big thanks to Jarratt who suggested this, it works really well). The idea is that this card should be used to influence the story in some way during the evening. This card can be used in any way, however a de facto ethic has arisen of not playing bad cards on other players or the baddies. This is relevant because I drew "Teamwork" and Dagger drew "Opps" for Alex. I played my card for the team (sometimes I use them for the baddies) and Dagger played Opps on Alex.

For the scene each player also drew a card. I drew "Mercy" for the Baddies, Jono drew "Grace" I think, Dagger drew "Fracture", Vic drew "Wrath" and Dan drew "Court".

The immediate interpretation was that the combination of Mercy for the baddies and Opps and Fracture for Alex meant that; 1. the baddies spotted the ambush by spotting Alex and 2. they got the drop and opend fire on him. So, before anythign else Alex goes down in a hail of AK fire from two mooks.

Thus the plan goes to custard. One of the historical interpretations of the "Wrath" card for Sebastian is that it brings out his Shadow Beast, he loses control and it goes on a murderous rampage. This time the Shadow beast effectively declined and left him to die, so we interpreted Wrath differently.

Vic decided that as Sebastian had traditionally vent his wrath through the beast, and that avenue was no longer available, he would lose it himself. So he throws his flashbang at the mook and romero on his side of the car and charges. Now Sebastian has the limitation on his telepathy that it cannot be used for harm. But, in the throws of wrath this is violated. So he uses him power to create emotions to overwhelm the poor baddie with all consuming terror and horror.

At the same time Christian decides to teleport right up to Romero and stick a gun in his face and force him to surrender. Elisa sprints superfast to body slam one of the
mooks shooting at Alex knocking back and then laying into him with telekinetically strenghtened punches. His ribs will take months to heal. DJ follows up on the other mook, she has armoured herself in shadow and empowered her bo staff with it as well (the scene making the bo staff was funny). The whacks the mook in the chest and he goes down.

Sebastian is now kicking poor screaming guy while he is down. Christian points a gun at Romero, who was drawing his twin pearl handled colts and says "call them off". Once could ask who needed to be called off, however it's clear Christian meant the variously pummelled mooks.

Romero smiles, drops the pistols and suddenly turns to stone. This is a specialised use of Metabolic control. Christian stomps on his foot, losing the oppurtunity to shoot him, and phases it into the ground. Romero smacks Christian in the chest with a super strong and superhard punch sending him flying and cracking several ribs.

At this point DJ, Elisa and Sebastian all move in threateningly and Romero decides that it would be easier to negotiate. Dan uses his "Court" card to force the Romero to talk with him by 'holdign court' (nice move Dan). So, in the end, they arrange the meeting they had desired.

What happened to Alex. The PCs have special suits that are make from psychokinetic material. This acts as armour for them. He got hit by three AK rounds, two in the chest and one in the gut. The two chest ones were defelected by the gut on penetrated. He was knocked out for a few seconds them awaoke. He immediately started using his metabolic control to stablize himself, then drank the 'elixer' that the guy who made the suits had made for them that hugely boosts metabolic control healing. He was okay in about 5 minutes.

And so the scene ended with the baddies piling off in their car having knocked out screaming guy (because he wouldn't stop) and fleeing the scene and the PCs returning to their secret hideout with Father Carlos and Sister Rosa.

All in all a very enjoyable scene and very well played and well told by all.

I am working on writing up a doc on the ins and outs of the Card Guided Story telling system as well as more setting information for the Uncovered setting.

The repercussions of Sebastians loss of control will be interesting to see played out over time. For, perhaps, the first time in his life he acknowledged and went with his 'negative' feelings. In the process he drove someone completely insane.