(2) - Dawn of the Metahumans

Game Master mdt

BTW: The above about airplanes and cars is not the GM trying to railroad you into flying with Bill, I could care less. I know what's happening, you don't. :) I just want to make sure people are making informed decisions about travel plans.

Mud wants to leave by plane, train, automobile, bus, bicycle or feet.

If that wasn't clear already.

Cheers

mdt, thanks for the info.

I'll add "Investigating the bombing" to the NO-NO list.

Pulse does mdt's comment that the plane is safer for your disad than the bus change your vote?

I'm happy to fly or bus, either way is good. Of course, Rocket's not in the "Bill is our enemy" camp. I'll assume that Aegis will continue to refuse his help.

Anyone (including but not limited to our Esteemed DM) are there leads that make sense for us to consider following? (I'm sure I'm forgetting some.)

Another option: Call Ace & co and ask if there's a need somewhere.

Pulse frying something like lights in the back seat is a very minor concern when compared to Pulse's force field depressurizing a cabin by ripping out some screws.

Speaking of, we really need to get a handle on just how bad her disads/side effects are. Especially since I think we have at least one person with an idea of how to study that.

Pulse doesn't mind the bus. She's against flying entirely. She'll fly if nearly everyone else wants to. She also doesn't mind a cage as much if it's on our terms instead of someone elses.

Hmm. We could always go to New Orleans, since Janice has a contact there that I haven't retrained yet (and knows the city), but it might not be low-key enough.

Just a note, Pulse is more likely to fry the bus than a plane, with her powers. This is true whether you go with Bill or not. PLanes are, as pointed out, natural faraday cages and are insulated due to lightning.

The bus (or any other ground car) is insulated by their tires, however, ANYTHING that contacts it can create a circuit (like a person touching the bus and a lamp pole at a streetcorner, or being hit by another car, a low hanging tree limb, etc.

So you are likely as safe flying a private plane (Be it one that an NPC has or one you rent) as you are a bus. From a powers perspective.

OK. MDT dictates reality in this game. However, I'd like to provide another perspective as an engineer who has done airworthiness certification tests.

Airplanes are grounded for lightning strikes channeling the electricity around the exterior of the airplane. Electronics inside the airplane can still be shorted from inside the airplane.

If an airplane is old enough (20 years), there is an actual cable connecting the cockpit throttle to the engines. And the engine fuel controls are mechanical not electronic. So, you can short out the lights and gauges (because the sensors are fried) flying blind, but you'd still be flying. Even the landing gear was mechanically controlled. Aircraft engines were relatively late adopters to electronic controls.

Engine air pressurizes the cabin. If the engines are on, you've cabin pressure even if you have a few leaks. Also, there's no danger for altitude sickness if you don't fly high enough.

The same can be said of the bus, but you have to have a very old bus (35 years?) to get a mechanical engine control. Again the interior can be totally fried, but the bus will keep moving.

Just my two cents.

cheers

Pulse's disad is not at a level that is life threatening. It's an inconvenience, but it's not going to kill her (unless she gets near a bomb, she might short it out and make it blow up).

Things she can't do :

Carry a Phone (long term magnetic field wipes her phone's memory, surges short it out eventually)

Carry a Thumbdrive

Wear a wristwatch of any kind (mechanicals stop working as they become magnetized, digitals short out)

Have any electronics that work long term (Unless she buys it as powers to get hardened versions)

Things she has to be wary of :
Vehicles will tend to break down on her long term. Vehicles are already set up to handle surges (that's what those fuses are for). The more complex the vehicle, the more likely it is to have redundancy to handle stuff she might do. So, thus my statement that an airplane (which has multiple redundancies and additional fuses and such to prevent shorts from spreading) is likely to harder to damage than a car (which has one fuse panel).

Visiting a hospital is dangerous for her to do as she may short out a life support unit if she spends too much time there.

Staying around people for extended periods who have a pace maker.

Note that it's extended periods of time. Her disads aren't going to just kill people as she walks down the street because they have a pacemaker. Actively using her powers (the actual magnetic ones) is much more likely to damage things than just walking around using head radio.

Another thing to take into account, as Mud pointed out, is how electronic things are. The older the car/plane/vehicle, the less susceptible to disruption it is. If Pulse wanted her own car, she'd probably want to buy a 1952 Chevy Malibu rather than a 2016 Toyota Prius.

Some vehicles are hardened, like military vehicles, against EMP. Those are mostly immune to her abilities.

Gotta say, as a geek who knows nothing relevant about electricity, I'm totally enjoying listening to and learning from this conversation.

Yeah, my worry was more with her side effect on her Force Field, in which we haven't exactly measured how bad the fields are, and thus don't know just how much force she'll give off. It's something she really should have already tested.

Likewise, amongst the group, it'd be ridiculously easy to make a nice non-electronic vehicle, with all the mechanics just lying around.

That all being said, would it be unreasonable to drop my last XP into making the bus 'better' by hardening it and adding whatever everyone else wants (if that's affordable)? :)

@Violet: Your post is TL;DR-worthy, which is gonna be rough for Pulse to respond to. She's used to small snippets of information, not data dumps. So... like she drops into Wikipedia, snatches the first line or so, then skims. So... I'm still trying to figure out how to get her to respond, sorry for any delays.

Pulse's disad reminds me of Harry Dresden's affect on technology in Jim Butcher's series of books.

Harry drove an old VW beetle which only occasionally broke down.

Cheers

If you've read the series, that's actually a very good example.

Gotta say, as a geek who knows nothing relevant about electricity, I'm totally enjoying listening to and learning from this conversation.

One of the things I like about HERO players is that, generally, they are a very, very knowledgeable and skilled bunch of people.

Also, Mud, you know, I had completely and totally blanked on the "grounded against things on the outside" difference - thank you for reminding me. I apologize for my mistake, and now I have reinforced knowledge about the subject, so that's good. :)

Truth to tell, I kind of like that Pulse is so convinced that her powers will blow things up - like, if she had one bad experience while things were developing, she could learn all the control in the world and still be afraid that she'll damage things just by being near them. It's a good character quirk.

Yeah, Pulse is brash, but she's up front about her fears of nuking things like pacemakers. :p

And yeah, Dresden Files is pretty much my goto source on things she shouldn't do. :)

I'm really... eclectic with knowledge. I have a really wide, really shallow water basin. Lots of stuff I hear, I keep, but in depth knowledge is basically jumping to conclusions. :)

Well, we all have our areas of experience. I frankly can't follow most of the hacking/Internet discussions. That's why I zoned out a bit during the virus discussion and argument with Bill.

cheers

This may've gotten missed so asking again.

Anyone (including but not limited to our Esteemed DM) are there leads that make sense for us to consider following? (I'm sure I'm forgetting some.)

Another option: Call Ace & co and ask if there's a need somewhere.

I apologize if there are leads I've lost track of. I'm wishing we'd created a doc or spreadsheet to track them. Maybe worth doing going forward?

In the meantime, are we out of leads (or at least out of leads that wouldn't also be "hot spots" for government attention, like the airbase)?

If so, I suggest we call the home office and ask if there are needs we could take on.

Sorry all, my last week :

Tuesday : 9.5 hours of work
Wednesday : 9.5 hours of work
Thursday : 6 hours of work, 5 hours of errands and packing
Friday : 10 hours of travel
Saturday : 8 hours of Niagra Falls with wife, pushing my her chair around Niagra falls for our anniversary (first wheelchair on the Hurricane Deck of Cave of the Winds)
Sunday : Spent day in bed in pain from Saturday.
Monday : 8.5 hours of work
Tuesday : 8 hours of work

Projection for rest of week

Wednesday : 9.5 hours
Thursday : 9.5 hours
Friday : 9.5 hours
Saturday : 6 hours
Sunday : 8 hours of pushing wife around Niagra Falls again
Monday : 9.5 hours
Tuesday : 9.5 hours
Wednesday : 9.5 hours
Thursday : 9.5 hours
Friday : 13 hours of flight

Good gravy, boss.

Take a rest, man. The game'll keep.

mdt, take your time.

BTW, if you know we'll successfully make it to our destination unmolested, we can take this as a time to RP playing there for a while.

I'll assume you want us to wait for you before we play out the road trip without you...but if there's some part of it we can safely improvise, just holler.

Improvise all you like.

Yeah I'm... extremely swamped too.

Supernatural Death Intro Scene of Amazingness

(Will never not link.)

In a busy stretch but excited to post soon, hopefully within the next 12 hours.

So, we come to a cross-roads.

As the GM, I can tell you that only Rocket could possibly make it to the stadium in time to do anything, if he ran full out. Nobody else has the speed to do so. Assuming he brought his 'super hero outfit' with him.

It will be several hours before Pulse can get through on the phone, as it was overwhelmed with people calling it and they shut it down to keep it from showing up as an anomaly on the NSA scans.

The group can continue toward California at normal pace, and be there in a half-dozen hours, but they'll encounter roadblocks several hours out, as California declares a state of emergency, and martial law is invoked. Interstates are shut down, flights grounded, etc.

So, we can RP that out, and the group trying to sneak in, or we can move forward with world events as they continue travelling to keep a low profile or go home to see if the city is now no longer being looked over with the bigger CA thing going on?

Go go GM box text!

Cheers

Violet can get us past roadblocks, if necessary, by convincing the guards that we're supposed to be there - a little nudge goes a long way.

In character, Violet thinks that the team needs to do something, anything, to help out. But at the same time, we shouldn't paint a big target on our backs.

She's not big on going back to St. Louis, yet. Yet being the operative word.

Truth to tell, a small part of her is wondering if she should reach back out to the more reputable members of the government Meta-Ops teams and see if they'd be willing to back the team and keep us out of the sights of the darker aspects of those groups.

Hmm, driving isn't ideal. Rocket's probably too weak to carry us, and Janice can only fly long-distance around 15 mph. Without teleporting, this doesn't feel very practical.

Even if we can't stop them hunting them down seems fun I vote we sneak in

I've got two separate answers - In character, and out.

In character, Pulse knows that it's a really bad idea to go that way... assuming life imitates art. She's pretty sure there'll be a lockdown, as you said there would, and she knows they can't reasonably make it in time to do anything worthwhile. She also feels like they need to do something.

Out of character, I feel like trying to do something in California is much more interesting than continuing to hide from literally everything. I know it's going to be really dangerous to press the issue, but that's a lot more interesting than hiding out and doing nothing to draw no attention.

I also vote we sneak in. :o

To be clearer, I would appreciate the PCs heading toward SF and seeing world events unfold. We need to live with our choices. Then we can get as far as violet's jedi mind tricks can get us.

Cheers

MDT I love your descriptions and narration. However, I'm suffering from the fact that my personal memory is much less than my character's memory. Would it be horrible if you put the name of the NPC in parentheses after their description if our PCs would know them? Hope that is alright.

thanks

Pretty sure: Gridlock, Death, Shimmer, Don't know tribeam, War, Pestilence, Zhombei

Don't know red scythe, Death, Ace, Famine, War, Gridlock, Quicksilver? Magician, Shadowcat.

I was wondering if that was the home team or not. I, like Mud's player, could use a tad of a refresh.

Edit: Although I am also pretty sure that he'd have given us names if we recognized them. Maybe not! But maybe so!

I think it was intended not to use names. Some of us won't recognise some faces. I only know Zhombei because I read Aegis's intro. :)

Stone Man : Gridlock
Red Scythe : ??????
First Female Teleporter : Shadowcat
Skull Man : Death
Horribly Disfigured Man : Famine
Woman in rags : Pestilence
Man in Bomber Jacket : Ace
Woman with Tri-Beam : ???????
Zombie : Zombei
Woman in Red Armor/Fatigues : War
Top-Hat : Magician
Second Female Teleporter : Shimmer
Man in Coat and Sunglasses : ???????

The main reason I didn't put names in was nobody met all the NPCs in their training (remember, Mud and Snapdragon had a different training crew than the rest).

Odd that I flipped Shimmer and Shadowcat!

It definitely makes more sense to have Shim evac, as opposed to fighting in my headcanon, though :P

MDT. Thanks. Completely understand why you wrote the way you did. I appreciate you accommodating my poor memory.

cheers

BTW, I've been super busy this past week but digging myself out now.

Very curious to see where this goes!

Ok, so...

GM is in a pickle. :) This particular bit is fairly easy in RL when I get to it in this campaign. We're at the 'Chicken Shwarma' point, as I've come to call it lately.

Basically, this is the point in time where the Chitari have attacked New York, shown the world aliens and supers exist, and the entire world is in an upheaval.

I can go as slow or as fast as you want as changes unfold. We can go day by day, week by week, month by month, or we can fast forward as much as you want (month, 3 months, 6 months, year, your choice).

Certain events will unfold in the world that you have no control over, and other events you may or may not have control over, depending on what you do.

You know, that was exactly what I was thinking of. Having watched the first few episodes of Luke Cage last night, your use of 'The Incident' wasn't missed. May not have been intentional, but I didn't miss it. :)

I think the group volunteering to help out is pretty cool, it's a very down-to-earth thing to do for supers. Extra fun if Rocket gets impatient and does the work of ten people while off-camera :P

Aside from that, I don't think sitting around twiddling thumbs is an ideal way to go about things, while we try to discuss what to do. So, i'll try to help narrow things down.

The following are questions that need answers:
1a: Do we stay in the California area, when told not to do super things (with the knowledge that the big bads are off the radar for now)?
1b: If not, where do we go, instead?
2: What do we want to focus on? Should we try to track a specific bad guy, try to ally with supers we know aren't murderers, fight crime in general, keep a very low profile, work on a doctorate in genetics?
3a: More for MDT than other players: If any supers go public as good guys, that might be a good place to pause -before- we reach any point we'd ask for here otherwise. Assuming this was going to be done anyway, how far into the 'metas are real!' thing do you want to play in?

1: I feel that staying in California is a bad idea, as it's swarming with feds and probably disease. If there were bads to handle, then going above radar would be okay, but since they aren't still in the spotlight, we shouldn't be either. I would kind of like to head back towards home. This could be influenced pretty easily by other players though (for example, Blaze's concern about his mother).

2: I think Pulse would keep her ears to the ground for anything she could. This might be a place to start working towards moving Shimmer's 'files' into her Brain-ROM, and then trying to set up a domain (or whatever computery thing that makes more sense) for the good guys to use to have quick access to collected data.

3: Personally, I don't want to skip the 'emerging metas' stage of things, and would definitely like to continue being superheroes who fail consistently to do what they're setting out to do. :)

3: Personally, I don't want to skip the 'emerging metas' stage of things, and would definitely like to continue being superheroes who fail consistently to do what they're setting out to do. :)

*points at this*

I'm good with working forward in vignettes if need be, but I'd definitely like to be doing things in character that enable us to be The Good Guys, even if we keep stumbling in our battles (whatever they are).

Violet needs time in character to develop her relationship with Rocket beyond the "saccharin cute banging all the time" stage - it's something she's never had, honestly. She also needs time to get her psychological issues addressed, either on her own or via dealing with things as a hero (and thus giving her the necessary experiential evidence to show that she's really NOT that bad off, and allowing her brain to reroute things).

As well, there's that whole needing practice for teamwork and things.

1a. Mud is alright going to ground zero, because he suspects that he is immune to the plague. And completely understands if anyone else doesn't want to go.

1b. No clue. This question is deja vu considering how much time it took us to decide to get to Vegas

2. Mud would focus on his studies. He doesn't see himself as a superhero looking for trouble. He would cite the instruction to lay low. However, he would quickly stand up to any injustice that he personally encounters.

I'm enjoying the narrative story and consider this time between movies, so I'm ready for the plot to get us engaged.

I hadn't intended for you to not be going after bad guys. Just that everyone, good guys, bad guys, etc are going to be laying low for a bit to see how things shake out. I wasn't sure how you wanted to handle that passage of time. I don't want to leap you ahead 90 days and not give you a chance to react in character as something happens in the world in week 4 for example if you want to post reactions/etc.

Basically, it'll be about 6 months before the next story arc picks up for your characters on the main story arc, unless you all go off on a different one without me (which is perfectly fine, what I have planned and what you want to do don't have to be the same). I'm mostly looking for feedback on how much you want dribbled out at a time over the six month period I had planned so you can react/decide what to do.

And yes, Blaze did choose a bad location to be from. Sorry Blaze.

The time skip I vote should be kept relatively small, like week by week and posting what we spend the week doing makes it easy to rp out new powers and personal things.

Aegis just wants to do something since all they've really done so far is run away or have to give up the bad guys and Ground zero is the closest she can be useful so it would take some talking down IC to get her to leave

mdt, thanks for being transparent in a complicated moment in the story.

Pulse, I like the way you've organized Qs:

1a: Do we stay in the California area, when told not to do super things (with the knowledge that the big bads are off the radar for now)?

1b: If not, where do we go, instead?
2: What do we want to focus on? Should we try to track a specific bad guy, try to ally with supers we know aren't murderers, fight crime in general, keep a very low profile, work on a doctorate in genetics?
3a: More for MDT than other players: If any supers go public as good guys, that might be a good place to pause -before- we reach any point we'd ask for here otherwise. Assuming this was going to be done anyway, how far into the 'metas are real!' thing do you want to play in?

1. Leave CA. Rocket will respect Sanction & Co's command to do so.

2. One question here (to mdt, and to the crew): is there anywhere where we wouldn't need to lay low? e.g. I'm wondering if perhaps we want to go somewhere in Central or South America (since we can drive there)...or anywhere, if we have Shimmer to teleport us. Fight organized crime somewhere, or help disaster relief (if there are disasters that need it), or whatnot. (Fighting organized crime in a foreign country sounds like it could go horribly wrong in many ways...but it also sounds interesting.)

If there's nowhere where we can "work" without attracting unwise attention--and Rocket will follow Sanction's advice, if she thinks it's unwise to use powers anywhere on the planet right now--laying low sounds fine.

Home base is a fine place to do it...or go somewhere warm. Maybe the Caribbean coast of Mexico?

3. I agree that we should pause semiregularly, where there might be something we want to react to, and to let us grow a bit power-wise and roleplay-wise, rather than too much FFing. That said, I also trust mdt to make reasonable pacing decisions.

Hmm. Some of us just moved into our last base, though...

Do we want to handwave talking Aegis down and just skip to 'fixes spark plugs angerly'?

Conflict between pcs rarely ends well

Aegis: To be fair, none of the other PC's ever suggested giving up or not helping, so I'm not sure they can be blamed for expressing frustration at statements indicating that they did.

MDT: I'm honestly not sure how familiar you are with the San Francisco Bay Area, but setting up a relief point for anything in Santa Clara as far south as Barstow is not the best idea. It's over seven hours away from Santa Clara, and while it would realistically be an initial staging point due to its key location on the routes in to California from the East, it's not likely to stay that way as time goes on.

Santa Clara is literally smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, and has three major highways routing through it. It is the artery for the technology industry and commerce in the area. The Horsemen couldn't have picked a better place to grind California's economy and industry to a halt if they'd tried.

In terms of disaster relief, it's more likely that the ports at San Francisco, Oakland, and Alameda would be immediately turned into staging areas, along with San Jose City/Mineta International Airport becoming the FEMA airbase. The other option is Moffett Field, which, although currently operated almost entirely by NASA and Google, is still used as a Naval staging airfield rather frequently. Moffett Field also has vast quantities of open space for stashing the sick and injured.

Gilroy, south of San Jose on highway 101, has a large amount of open space, farmland, and stable water infrastructure, and is another highway nexus (101, 152, 156) that would easily serve as a staging/recovery/observation area for infected and injured persons.

Stanford Medical would also have boots on the ground, as they have isolation facilities - which of course would be quickly filled to capacity.

Now, this is your game and if we're stuck in Barstow we're stuck in Barstow, but I thought I should offer some Native Guide knowledge just in case you wanted to use it to further complicate our situation. :)

Yeah, I didn't have a ton of time to pour over the CA area to get more realistic, the information you've given so far is very helpful. Barstow is basically a 'first stop' area on the interstate. Not saying your people can't get closer, but from Barstow, getting closer is likely going to mean helping out for a week or so in Barstow and then volunteering to help closer.

For Blaze (and any other characters from CA), PM me with your preferences on how to handle family possibly being in the area. I can leave it entirely up to you, make it a mutual discussion in PM, or you can leave it entirely up to me (may or may not be good, I usually use some die rolls to add some randomness if it's entirely up to me).

So, completely off topic, "The Alien Con" will be taking place in Santa Clara on October 28-30, and it looks like it's going to be a weird one.

Pretty much the entire cast and crew of Ancient Aliens is going to be there, including Giorgio Tsoukalos, the man who is single handedly keeping the Centauri hair style from Babylon 5 in style. Katee Sackhoff and Jewel Staite, among others, will also be there.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I should be amused, or frightened.

Or perhaps both.