"Champions: Phoenix", Part 1

A while ago I blogged about how I was going to participate in a superhero role-playing game. I just completed my second session of it, and so far it is very exciting and incredibly funny! Here is the story so far:

-- Cast of Characters --
Technomancer (that's my character) - a "gadgeteer" who has the ability to create new gadgets in the field. The way this works in game is that there is a "variable power pool" where you have a certain number of points that you can allocate to build powers, and you can switch them around. Also he has two flying robots to help hime - "Alpha" which has an energy blaster to hurt enemies, and "Beta" which has powers that can aid his allies.

Field Effect - A "super strength" character with a very interesting background. His background is that he was captured by aliens and given superpowers, then put back on Earth as part of a "reality show" being broadcast on the aliens' home planet. There are invisible cameras filming him, and he gets "stage direction" in his head from the "producer" talking to him to tell him what to do. Also, if things are getting boring the "producer" will teleport him to somewhere more "interesting," like in the middle of a fight.

Strobe - A light-based "energy projector" type superhero. He has the ability to blind and paralyze enemies.

Rift - Has the power to go through "dimensional rifts" that he uses to teleport, and then blasts enemies with energy rays.

-- The Story So Far --

The story starts in the near future, in a mall in Kempe, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix. Technomancer was there looking for Alpha, whose A.I. had developed a personality of its own and decided that it wanted to go shopping at Hot Topic. But unbeknownst to him, he was alking right into a trap. He saw a bad guy come up to a victim, inject him with something, and the victim fell over, and the bad guys started carrying him away. As Technomancer moved in to help, a dozen or so thugs armed with blasters surrounded the area and attacked! Technomancer used a telekinetic field to grab the bad guys and stop him from carrying the victim away. Seconds later, Field Effect got teleported into the action, and quickly carried the victim to safety. Strobe and Rift also enetered teh fray, and a pitched battle ensued. Technomancer aked Alpha to shoot the bad guys, but its blaster didn't fire! Fortunately, teamwork and strategic telekinesis use won the day, and all the thugs were soon defeated.

After that Technomancer discovered that the reason Alpha's blaster didn't work was because a computer virus of "unearthly origin" disabled it. As it turned out, the virus was put there by Field Effect's producers in order to make it "more interesting for the viewers" because otherwise "the fight would have been too easy." Also, Field Effect tried to walk away from the scene but kept getting teleported back. Since Field Effect isn't allowed to talk about the whole "reality show" thing, his producer told him to blame the teleporting on a "time hiccup." Also, we interrogated the bad guys and talked to the victim in order to find out what was going on. As it turned out, the bad guys were members of the evil organization known as A.C.M.E. (American Criminal Mastermind Enterprises) and they engineered the situation in order to lure Technomancer into a trap to steal his robots. The victim was an innocent dupe, who had been paid $500 to "go to the designated spot in the mall and wait there" and didn't realize there was an evil scheme. We also discovered that the thugs here weren't actual members of A.C.M.E. - they were just "goons" hired off the street and given blasters. So we had to investigate more to find out the source.

Our investigation took us to a seedy area of Phoenix, where a group of goons were driving around the city in a van looking to hire more bad guys. We found a van that matched the description, and Field Effect disabled it by punching the hood and removing the engine block (remember he is the one that has super strength). The occupants played innocent:

Occupant: "You destroyed my car! It's going to cost a lot of money to get it fixed."
Field Effect: "Don't worry. It's under warranty, isn't it?"
Occupant: "I got it used."
Field Effect: "Well, you should have gotten a certified pre-owned vehicle!"

Eventually the occupants admitted they were hired by a "temp agency" to go out and hire the goons. We next went to the temp agency, hoping to wait until it opened to get more information. Field Effect was waiting outside, in his normal form with his defenses down, when a supervillain rushed up at high speed, ran him over, and stunned him. And with that, session one ended.

Will the villain's surprise attack work? Will our brave superheroes manage to turn the tide of battle? And will they be able to put the villains into jail without violating their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure? Find out next time on "Champions: Phoenix"!