You'll Believe a Man Can Trash a City! (Man of Steel)--Spoilers!

You ever notice how, when you have lots of good things to say about something, it seems harder than when you get your back up about a given topic?  When I realized Iron Man 3 wasn't working for me, I actually had to sit up after the film and work through my issues with the movie.

I've been thinking, and talking, a lot about Man of Steel.  Just not here.  The movie gave me a lot to think about, and I think it did a lot of things right, but I've wanted to make sure that I can see the potential warts as other people see them as well, so I've been reading a few less flattering reviews of the movie to "ground" my own opinion.

Let me just get this out of the way--I though Man of Steel was great.  I think it's easily on par with Nolan's Batman movies  (not as good as Dark Knight, but even the rest of the Nolan Batman movies weren't), and one of the better super hero movies that I've seen.

It's not perfect.  Not unlike the Nolan Batman movies, the serious, stylized storytelling isn't as "light" to watch as the Marvel movies.  This isn't a condemnation of the Marvel movies, or a statement of superiority one way or the other, but the tone of the movie, as with the Batman movies, almost requires you to pay attention to the movie, and rules out lightly watching the movie in the background.

Sometimes it hits those thematic beats a bit too hard.  While I think the film makers had to really nail down just how much power is involved when you have multiple Kryptonians flying around, there may have been a skyscraper or three too many that didn't need to be leveled.  I also think that Jonathan's emphasis on Clark hiding his powers until "the time is right" might have gone just a bit farther than it needed to go.

What Worked For Me

Yes, Superman is really strong and can fly and has lots of powers.  You get that from any media you've seen him in.  What you haven't really gotten is just how powerful Superman is, and how far above the mundane his powers scale.  Between Snyder's "violent flight" technique, the ability of the Kryptonians to utilize multiple powers at once in the big fight  (can you say flying while using super strength to punch someone utilizing super speed?), and the fact that our world doesn't hold up well to Kryptonian power, you can't help but really "get" what Superman was talking about in the Justice League animated series when he talks about a world made of paper.

I've never been a fan of the Space Messiah take on Superman. You would think that I wouldn't like the obvious imagery that invoked just this very concept, a connection between the messianic and Superman.  But the touch was very light and very specific.  The stained glass window that evoked specifically Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane worked very well, because it specifically underscored that Clark was agonizing over sacrificing himself for the well being of others, and that he had to have faith that it was the right path to day.

The Space Messiah Digression

Forgive a slight digression.  In some ways, I really enjoy the 1978 movie, and in some ways, I think it saddled Superman with as much baggage as Adam West's Batman. The Space Messiah theme in the 1978 movie and its sequels went a little more like this--Krypton was perfectly evolved, and Jor-El was all knowing and all wise.  Even though he was clearly saving his son by sending him to Earth, Jor-El also knew that his perfect son would do perfect things on Earth to teach the silly apes there how to live the right way, so long as little Kal-El wasn't stupid enough to consider himself one of them, sullying his perfect status as a Kryptonian.

Heck, the theme of almost every movie was that the more distant and "above" humanity Superman remained, the more he could accomplish the impossible.  Bryan Singer almost perfectly completed this thematic beat when he showed that, if Superman just remembered that he could never ever be with his son or the mother of his child, he could even lift an island of Kryptonite into space without killing himself.

So how is this baggage as bad as Batman being associated with Adam West for decades?  To this day, people have it in their head that Superman is this guy that was, from conception, perfect, and that the only way he can do the wrong thing is to act like a human being.  While a lot of versions of Superman have done very well by actually showcasing how human Clark Kent is, and how much his humanity makes him who he is, the biggest media portrayal of Superman for decades was of a perfect Space Messiah that acts like a bumbling, two dimensional fool when he masquerades as a human.

While I still have a certain affection for the 1966 Batman and for the 1978 Superman, they both have very specific quirks, and with that one media version of those iconic characters dominating the public imagination for so long, those quirks get blown way out of proportion, rather than being incorporated into a averaged whole.

Er . . . More Stuff That Worked

The emphasis was firmly on Man of Steel being 1)  a science fiction story, and 2) a super hero story.  There are all sorts of undercurrents and themes you can come up with to put in the story, but if the story isn't primarily those things, I don't think it's going to work.

Jor-El's opening scene was epic, and firmly painted this as a science fiction movie.  Krypton isn't this sterile, sacred utopia.  Thank goodness there wasn't a crystal in sight.  Krypton was alive, and seemed like a real place, because it had colors and geography and native animals.  It had a history that went beyond, "we were perfect, excpet for Zod and his bunch, and then we blew up."

I was also happy that Snyder and company seemed to be able to pull of what DC has been struggling with for a few years now. How do you create tension between the military and the powers that be and Superman, without undermining Superman as the best of the best good guy, or making The Military as the bad guys.  At DC, failing to answer this question well has pretty much led to Sam Lane turning into Thunderbolt Ross.

In this movie, it makes perfect sense that the military is worried about Kal-El, and it makes perfect sense that he's worried about what the military will do if he turns himself over to them or trusts them.  The fact that the movie actually spend time on making sure that you saw this convergence in the middle was the best resolution to this situation that they could have come up with.

Another "coming together" moment was that while Jor-El clearly saw Kal-El as someone that could lead humanity and guide them to something better, he also recognized that Krypton made mistakes, and that Kal-El's greatest strength was going to be learning from the mistakes of Krypton and Earth and finding a better way than both.

What Could Have Worked Better

I think by the time we saw Smallville trashed, and saw what the World Engine was doing to Metropolis, we had a good idea of the stakes of the movie, and how seriously the Kryptonians could trash a place.  There was a bit of overkill with the number of buildings that fell during the Zod and Superman fight.

I guess at this point in time, I'm so used to the Superman origin that it's a given to me that Jonathan and Martha taught Clark to be a good man, and that it's because of them that he had that drive to help people whenever he could.  The movie didn't spend a lot of time on this.  It did show us that Jonathan and Martha loved Clark and cared for him, and it really emphasized that Jonathan was worried about Clark using his powers publicly.

While I assumed that the message from Jonathan was always, "be a good man and do the right thing, but never let anyone see you use your powers until you figure out your grand purpose," I can see how some people may not have taken it as a given that he ever taught Clark that first part.  I've seen people criticize the movie because they felt that Jonathan was only teaching Clark to hide, and it's a valid point, but I think it was  more a matter of what they were emphasizing to tie into the larger story.  In other words, I'm not assuming that everything important that Jonathan ever taught Clark was shown in the movie, but I get where you could acquire that idea.

I do think that the scene where Jonathan died could have been done better.  It felt too much like Jonathan was intentionally sacrificing himself to force Clark to realize that his life (Jonathan's) wasn't as important as Clark's destiny, "and by gum, I'll prove it by making you watch me get killed by this tornado that you can't do anything about."

I think it would have been possible to pull off that same concept by having Jonathan go somewhere else to save someone, and never come back, while telling Clark not to risk it himself, and had the same impact on Clark, avoided the weird "hey Clark, look me in the eyes while I die saving this dog to prove a point" moment.

The big reveal of Clark showing up at the Planet was great to close out the story, but doing something, anything to look less like Superman wearing glasses would have been good.  His hair, posture, and mannerisms all looked the same as Superman's.  I know he doesn't have the greatest cover for a super hero, but several sources have shown him at least slicking back his hair and holding himself a little differently.  Maybe next movie.

Crisis on Infinite Movies

I like that Superman gets to be the big reveal, the thing that changes everything.  He should be.  But it does mean that any hero that comes after him doesn't get the same treatment that Snyder wanted for Superman, meaning that their movies have to reference the events of this movie.  No one else's movie can be 100% only about them, because the world knows, in a big way, there we are not alone, there are super heroes, and there are really big threats out there.  None of that can be credibly ignored.

That having been said, I'm a lot more optimistic that we'll get to see good DC Comics based movies that don't involve a rich vigilante from Gotham City.

Hm . . . I wonder if that Guillermo del Toro "DC Supernatural" movie will be set in this universe?

Everything Else that Wasn't The One Foot In the Grave (Only War, June 6th, 2013)

Our guardsmen, badly wounded and shy a medic, got word from HQ that we were getting reinforcements.  We shimmied up to the top of the fortress and waited for our brand new sanctioned psyker and his attendant, and our new ratling sniper and his aide.

After we secured our new troops, as we were heading down into the fortress again, there arose such a clatter.  And we couldn't really see what was making that clatter.  The rest of the team went down to the courtyard while the sniper and my heavy weapon guardsmen stayed up top with our long range weapons.

The sniper thought he saw it, and took a shot.  I fired a frag missile in the same general area, which didn't hit. Eventually the rest of the crew closed on it and engaged it in melee, which caused me to rethink my strategy. I didn't really want to blow up my friends, so I used the grav chute and jumped down into the thick of it.

Everyone else retreated, and I pulled the shotgun.  Eventually the Tech-Assassin went down, and the main injury that anyone took was my guardsmen from her drop from the sky.

The sergeant decided that we had cleared out the fortress, despite the fact that we hadn't even seen half of the place yet.  As he got ready to send the all clear, the rest of us began to wonder just how much trouble we were going to be in if something jumped out at a higher ranking officer, so Sarge had us head back into the side of the fortress we hadn't explored yet.

Let me just point out that our group had insane luck this night.  Most of this side of the fortress was clear, but we did find a room occupied by three Juggernauts of Khorne.  We pretty much should have been dead at this point in time.  I fired my missile launcher at them, and it did nothing.  Our weapon specialist's krak grenades did some damage, so I took one when he got knocked out and threw it at the beasties.  The psyker hit them with confusion and bought us some time, then buffed all of us nearby.

As it turned out, the Juggernauts all took very minimal damage, but they took damage.  Because they all have Warp Instability, that means there is a chance they phase out if they don't cause fear or injure a creature after they take damage.  Two of the three missed our Ogryn, and both of them went poof.

The rest of the fight was a blur, but somehow we took out the last Juggernaut, and survived.  Hey!  That means we'll get out of this alive and having successfully completed a mission!

Then, as we were on our way out of the fortress, a massive horde of cultists stormed us.  Oh, and a badly placed smoke grenade  (is there any other kind) made us blind to where the bad guys were.  Before the grenade went off, I managed to hit with my last frag missile, and threw a few frag grenades blind.  I was the last line of defense before the cultists crashed into my friends, and I did so by taking so much critical damage that the blood slick I left behind slowed down the horde.

In the end, the cultists died, everybody else got extracted from the site, and I started rolling up my Ministorum Priest, Brother Cervantes.

Brother Cervantes was assigned to the regiment because they might have been exposed to Chaos, and the higher ups were concerned about the moral fiber of the group.  Brother Cervantes was a bit zealous about pointing out Sarge's mutterings, we got our next assignment, and we got ready to head out.

The team got their mission gear, and found out that they accidentally received a box meant for the Inquisition.  And they opened it.  And found a neat sword with symbols that we have no idea belong to Slaanesh.  And a big old Chaos sonic weapon.

Thankfully, I was busy following a false lead that Sarge gave me when they were plundering Chaos.  The ratling is strongly thinking of turning over the crew, and the psyker is encouraging others to carry the gear without touching it themselves.

Did I mention that my Ministorum Priest has Hatred (Psykers)?  There is some tension.  I said a prayer over the regiment as we were about to ship out, and he tried to loudly out pray Brother Cervantes.  Oddly, Sarge seems much more reverent now that he got his new gear that Cervantes knows nothing about.

Thus we land on the roof of our next objective, armed with Chaos  (at least the Ogryn and the Sarge), and with a psyker that kind of wants me dead and likes leading others into temptation.  I am sure nothing will go wrong on this mission.

Marvel Heroic Civil War Session One (June 3rd, 2013)

And now for the main event.

One of our players wasn't able to play, based on his internet connection, so we weren't going to have more than seven characters, with the following Avengers available for the various scenes:

Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Daredevil, Moon Knight, Tigra, Wolverine, Spider-Woman, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Thing and Yellowjacket.

Everyone was going to start out in Avengers Tower, with a crisis just around the corner.  Essentially I wanted to give the group a little head's up and a transition scene if they wanted to create resources before they dove into the first action scene, but as has been pointed out, here and a few other places in the night, I let things lag just a bit too much.

Almost out of the gate, things slowed down quite a bit, and we didn't start with a bang like I would have liked.  It was my fault.  I waited a bit too long to pull the trigger and was hoping the players would do something big from a cold start, which in retrospect is pretty silly.

That said, once things got moving, the night moved along fairly well, and the action seemed to be pretty descriptive and action oriented.  In the first scene the group had to deal with a MGH drugged Goliath, where they used a combination of complications, intimidation, and a big Iron Man delivered sucker punch.

Then the media showed up.  I wanted this scene to go well, and my players delivered.  The tension of the press asking pointed questions made most of the heroes uncomfortable, and they were scrambling to get away for the most part, and boy did that Doom Pool grow.  The media creating a tense atmosphere seemed appropriate for the opening scenes of Civil War.

The group got a pair of leads, one that led to a front lab producing MGH inhabited by the Serpent Society, and the other requested guard duty in Broxton, Oklahoma, due to some object falling from the sky.  They went to the lab first, since it was in New York.

The scene went pretty quick.  Due to the media, the Doom Pool rose to such a state that Hulk was going to rampage, so instead of taking time off for Hulk to savage the team, I spent the 2d12 to have Hulk destroy the lab and all evidence therein.

I wasn't quite sure I should have kept Hulk from rampaging.  The first time it happened in the campaign, I probably should have just let it happen, but I really wanted to vent a bit of the Doom Pool after the success I had with the reporters.

Regardless of whether Hulk should have gone wild or not, Moon Knight really stepped up, nearly killing Diamondback while interrogating Cobra.  Iron Man was so upset by Moon Knight's interrogation that he started charging his weapons, Moon Knight gave him a tongue lashing, and Iron Man took off with emotional trauma and left the scene.  More or less in a manner orchestrated on purpose by Iron Man and Moon Knight's players.

Finally, the party headed to Oklahoma for guard duty, and eventually ran afoul of Doctor Doom and a whole slew of Doombots.  Doom held his own, but I didn't get too tricky with him.  After a pretty drawn out fight, with the rest of the team trashing the army of Doombots, Wolverine tore through Doom himself . . . and found out he was a Doombot as well.

The session was good.  It was actually a great session.  It wasn't perfect, and I learned a few things, and hopefully I'll be able to remember those lessons in the future.

• I need to pull the trigger on action quick whenever people don't have a strong preference to describe what they are doing in a scene, or when decision making is taking a while.  
• I need to be careful in how I'm managing the Doom Pool.  I want it big, but I also want it to help me tell some memorable stories.
• I need to do a better job communicating Watcher to player.  I had a player that probably should have had more of a head's up on who he could have used for the scene, but I didn't take any time to specifically ask about that especially well suited character.
• Especially in the middle fight, I didn't cycle through all of the players and their characters as efficiently as I would have liked, in part because I pulled the trigger on the Doom Pool just a bit early to avoid Hulk's rampage.

Despite needed to learn those lessons, I'm thinking this really got off to a good start.  The group seems to be excited, we have some good characterizations going on, and our Road to Civil War seems to be right on track for some serious conflict.

Back in the Digital Saddle Again (Marvel Heroic Roleplaying One Shot, May 28th, 2013)

I finally pulled the trigger and started up another Marvel Heroic Event, this time running Civil War online via Google Hangouts.  Based on previous experience, I asked about eight people in the hopes that I would end up with five or six that would accept.  So I ended up with eight.

I'm really happy, as I like all of the people that I'm gaming with in this event, but my comfort zone is usually getting into the red line around six people, and I wanted to make sure that not only the hardware could handle a Hangout of this size on my end, but that I, as the Watcher, could juggle that many people.

So I rounded up some people and asked them if they would be interested in playing through a short couple of scenes based on the Avengers Assemble comic from last summer, with the Avengers taking on the newly reformed Zodiac and Thanos.

I didn't get eight, but I did get seven, which I thought would probably be a good start for seeing how well both the Hangout and my Watcher juggling talents could handle the upcoming event.

Overall, the night went really well.  We seemed to be cycling through people relatively well, and what everyone was doing was pretty clearly explained and laid out.  Our Avengers for the night were Thor, Thing, Wonder Man, Hulk, Moon Knight, and Wolverine (we were having some technical issues that weren't on my end, so we had a player in the Hangout that wasn't playing due to his sketchy connection).

I made up Zodiac as the largest, most insane mob ever.  I knew it would be a pain to stat out twelve cosmically powered villains and run them, so I made a 12d10 mob to take on the Avengers that, well, assembled.

Zodiac  (As They Appeared in the Event)

Team  12d10

Distinctions

Former Lackeys
Cosmically Empowered
Living Zodiac

Power Set

Cosmically Charged

d10  Superhuman Traits

SFX  Power Surge.  Step up or double Cosmically Charged power trait. If the action fails, spend the largest die from the Doom Pool.

SFX  Area Attack.  Add a d6 and keep an additional effect die for each target beyond your first.

Limit  Burned Out.  Remove a die from Team Affiliation to add a die to the Doom Pool.

Specialties

Menace Expert d8; Covert Expert d8; Crime Expert d8; Combat Expert d8



It worked relatively well.  It was very hard for Zodiac to get less than a 19 for their result, just by nature of probability.  So every round I had a 19 or a 20 for my result.  It was a little hard for some of the lower powered Avengers to overcome that.

We had some fun "attacks," like Wonder Man's attempt to wow Zodiac with his star power, and some fun defenses, like Hulk's "growl and beat the ground in front of them to make them change direction" defense.

Eventually Zodiac was down  (I shut down two of the Zodiac members during the fight).  The group took a slight breather, and Thing's player left for the night before Thanos showed up.

Ah, Thanos.  I can say that the original comic of Avengers Assemble, with the Guardians of the Galaxy arriving around this time, has some credence, because I spent a d12 from the Doom Pool to have Thanos go first, and with a wave of his hand, he took out Wolverine and Hulk.  Moon Knight used one of his SFX to leave the scene, which left Thor going toe to toe with Thanos.

I used the "timer" mechanic from Annihilation, and had Maria Hill set the Helicarrier to self destruct, at which point Thor was actually trying to keep Thanos busy until the whole place went up in flames, which seemed to work.

If I were running this as an event, I'm not sure if I would have gone with the huge mob.  If only because of the statistical realities of rolling 12d10, the total is always going to be pretty high.  6d10 would be less of a "sure thing," but doesn't quite feel as right as going for the whole 12 dice.  Still, it worked better than I thought it would.

Overall, people were cycling through pretty quickly, area attack didn't stop everything cold, and the Hangout was stable, so I was heartened that my regular event might work out alright.

And How Did that Session Go? The Latest DCC Campaign Session (May 30th, 2013)

So what happened in our last DCC game?

The party ran into various forms of custom undead creatures.  An ooze made out of discarded organs, an undead assassin, a cabal of wizard apprentices that were more powerful if all three of them were casting in conjunction, an undead berserker charged with necrotic energy, shadow snakes, and a bear zombie with sharks for arms.

The group also faced deadly traps that required multiple saves, one to avoid damage, and the second to avoid maiming.  As far as the maiming went, only the wizard suffered the secondary effects of the traps, as the wizard had his brain pan pieced with a spike that did intelligence damage.

There were also several magic items designed to cheat death (see my previous posts).  Many of them were used before the session was out.  Alas poor Raoul the executioner with the awesome full name was one of the permanent casualties, after he first successfully filled out the Balance Sheets of Necessity and survived his first death.

What was interesting about this session is that there were three hallways on either side of the main hallway, and one big set of double doors at the end.  Normally, if the players perceived something as the "boss battle," they have, in previous campaigns, headed strait there, wisdom be damned.

This time, I set up that area as being where the potentially helpful NPC was in residence, and where the items that would help with the rest of the dungeon were situated, and the players had their characters head to the double metal doors last.  Remember Judges/GMs/DM . . . never assume your players will do anything predictable.

In the crypt of the caretaker of the dungeon, the ghost of the priest of Death explained the purpose of the dungeon.  The extradimensional space was set up to contain death cheating items that the priesthood of Death wanted guarded.  He died defending the dungeon from an evil necromancer's army of undead, mainly to keep the last prize, a chalice that grants vampirism, from falling into the necromancer's hands.

The priest told the party that he could do anything without a body, and wanted to "ride" one of them, and tried to make a deal so that they could take the chalice to the priesthood of Death and keep their plundered items.  Unfortunately, the priest couldn't match the merchant's price, and the threat of having the priesthood of Death after them didn't deter Groot.

A graverobber that was in the tomb and had just been woken up from a stasis trap  (replacement for poor Raoul) decided to make a deal with the priest, but Groot was having none of it, and unlocked the door to the chalice room, as well as the undead monstrosity that was waiting within.

When the undead serpentfolk attacked, he tore into the group pretty viciously, and on top of that, the ghost of the priest was upset enough about the chalice being taken by someone that wasn't going to bring it to the priesthood of Death that he was ready to attack.  So I was a bit concerned about a TPK.

While the rest of the adventurers were busy surviving the multiple attacks from the serpentfolk, both party wizards decided to massively soul burn themselves, one casting chill touch for maximum effect, and one casting magic missile for maximum effect.

The magic missiles were used to blow up the serpentfolk, as well as the ghost of the priest of Death, leaving the party free to deliver the gift of vampirism to the merchant that hired them.

Still surrounded by an aura of massive cold, one of the wizards took point exiting the extradimensional space, which blindsided the Deathguard waiting for the adventurers on the other side of the portal, nearly killing them with cold before the fight ever started.

So now the group has two exhausted, physically strained wizards, in the Lost Graveyard, waiting to get home and collect their reward.  Hopefully without the priesthood of Death finding out about them having the chalice or knowing that they slaughtered the Deathguard stationed at the Lost Graveyard.