[Dreamation 2008] WGP... The Monster Squad
Michael S. Miller:
The scenario was called "The Monster Squad" and centered on a group of highly-inhuman-looking superheroes. The opening bang for the group was that the group's UN sanction had been revoked at the end of the previous issue. A quick rundown of the players and characters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any of the players had actually played With Great Power... before, although I know I did demos for both Judd and Paul in the past, and that Mark has owned the game for at few years. Judd also played in one of the worst sessions of WGP... ever--before the full edition was finished--at Dreamation '05.
Mark Causey played DEBRIS, Leader of the Monster Squad. She had been an honest cop transformed into living granite in the same accident that had created Mudslide.
Remi Treuer played MUDSLIDE--a small-time criminal imbued with the Power of Ooze and trying to walk the straight and narrow--as "the dumbest guy in the universe." I had written Mudslide's crush on Debris onto the character sheet, and Remi played it up to a T.
Judd played CEREBUS PRIME, a German Shepherd with a 500 IQ. Given intelligence as part of Dr. Grotesque's nefarious plans, Prime's sister Cerebus Secundus was still loyal to their creator.
Joe played PROFESSOR FOGG, the sorceress supreme who had sacrificed her corporeal form to save the world. She had also been dumped by the world's most beloved superhero, The Utopian. Jokes of "Smart Sorceresses, Foolish Choices" abounded.
Paul played THE SALAMANDER, a young embodiment of cosmic forces who was destined to save-or destroy--many worlds. He was trying to come to an understanding of human nature, and avoid becoming the Destroyer.
Issues with the game:
• Extremely inward-looking scenario. The characters are written with no NPCs other than the villains. This will be something I need to rewrite before I run it again.
• The "I-must-not-lose" thing kicked in and I didn't slam it down hard, like I should have. Truth be told, I could have beaten all of you with the hand I had. I had a couple of aces and six wild cards, which meant that on the page of conflict, I could have had an ace in EVERY suit. Why didn't I? There was too much laughter for me to want to bring it crashing to a halt. Which is STUPID, I know. The crash would have been the step up to the next level. And it would have finished up the conflict scene a good 45-60 minutes earlier, allowing us to proceed with more great enrichments. On the other hand, I could have yielded as the villians much sooner, but didn't.
In retrospect, the options are obvious, but at the time, I wasn't at the top of my game. There's been a lot of RL stress of late and I wasn't able to check that at the door of the Hilton.
Mark, Remi, Joe, Judd, Paul, what are your thoughts?
Judd:
Quote from: Michael S. Miller on January 31, 2008, 03:57:27 AM
• The "I-must-not-lose" thing kicked in and I didn't slam it down hard, like I should have. Truth be told, I could have beaten all of you with the hand I had. I had a couple of aces and six wild cards, which meant that on the page of conflict, I could have had an ace in EVERY suit. Why didn't I? There was too much laughter for me to want to bring it crashing to a halt. Which is STUPID, I know. The crash would have been the step up to the next level. And it would have finished up the conflict scene a good 45-60 minutes earlier, allowing us to proceed with more great enrichments. On the other hand, I could have yielded as the villians much sooner, but didn't.
I think yielding at that point would have felt like a cop-out to all of us. We knew you could kick our ass and looking back, I was puzzled that you weren't kicking our asses more. You should've done it and done it as quickly as possible.
You created one of the most hateful villains I have ever seen. The Utopian is everything everyone hates about Superman and Captain American rolled up into one smug, condescending, shiny toothed prick. I wanted to kryptonite curb stomp the bastard.
And I wasn't going to get to do so that game.
Dr. Grotesque felt a bit flat to me, like some kind of tepid MlwM Master but The Utopian....grrrrrrr.
So, the problem with the scenario was that it would've been the next session or maybe the session after that before the system let us give the Utopian the hard stomping he oh-so-deserved and that wasn't going to happen in four hours. Is there a way you could start the game midway through the arc? I seem to recall one con scenario you ran where it was as if the players found a 4th issue of a mini-series in the 25 cent bin and that is what you were playing. I like that idea.
Because, as it was, we were going to get stomped because that is what you designed the system to do and that is cool, I like what WGP does but don't want to get kicked in the groin for the final 2 hours of a con scenario.
Judd:
I really should go over what went well.
The enrichment scenes were delightful. I loved the Monster Squad. I was rooting for Fogg to get over her ex-boyfriend and for Debris to assert herself as leader. I wanted to know if The Salamander destroyed the world or saved it and I wanted to know if Mudslide could make it work with Debris and go straight.
And dammit, I loved my Reed Richards in a German Shepherd bodied super-scientist. The enrichment scenes were gold.
And I think that is what made the ass-kicking all the more rough for us.
I think there would be ways to make a game where the characters were going to get kicked around and it would be alright but you got us all invested and shit. I was really rooting for the Monster Squad and that made the extended kicking we took rougher.
I think you had the right idea in your post. If you had kicked our asses, fast and furious and moved on to the next conflict, with Debris in chains, Prime gone over to his maker's bidding, etc. etc. and we got to play for a while after that scene that had the weight of Parker tossing his Spider-Man uniform in the trash, that would've been cool and less frustrating.
Remi Treuer:
Just a quick reply to confirm that Judd's feelings are mine, pretty much to-the-letter.
I could have done without the knock-down drag-out fight completely, even if we had won. The fight was out of character with the tone of the rest of the game we had played. The Utopian was evil not because he was punching us in the face, but because he was using all his considerable media power to make us look bad (and hurt Fogg). Dr. Grotesque was a father-figure to two members of the team (Mudslide and Prime). Our beef with him wasn't over his criminal ways, but being a bad progenitor.
I could have played enrichment scenes with these characters all day, and it makes me a little sad that the only way to move forward was to have a big punch-up. It seems like there's a way to layer the emotional issues over physical violence, but, man, once the laser beams came out, all that stuff just got moved to the side.
ptevis:
I wanted to jump to the conflict scene after the first round of enrichment, both because it would have given us more to react to in a second round of enrichment, and because then we could have gone after the Utopian in a second conflict. I think we just set our stakes on the conflict too high, and given how late in the session it came, there was no real way to avoid ending on a down note.
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