The Replacement JLA: Session One

We had our first session of the DC Adventures Super hero game and it went pretty well. Jen was working late at an event, so I picked up Lily and she helped me shop for snacks. She was very careful to buckle in Baby Bear before we started driving.

We bought some munchies and did some last minute preparing while we waited for the guys to show up. I turned on some Avengers cartoons to set the mood.

We each had a super person we were playing:

I was Dawnfire, a 17-year-old girl with a degenerative nerve disease, who was an invalid raised in a clean room until an experimental therapy gave her super powers. She looks like Ellen Page. Here's a picture of Ellen Page dressed up like a superhero.

Dave was a guy modeled on the Greatest American Hero, a more or less regular guy with a supersuit that gives him powers. He didn't come up with a description or background for the guy as of game time, so we all decided that he looked like William Katt.

Believe it or not...

Casey ran Blink, our teleporter. During the game, he remarked that the guy played a lot like a speedster and I agreed. No picture for him; he moves too fast to make that possible.

Frederick had Rächen Bloodson, the half-human son of Etrigan the Demon and Morgan Le Fey. I enjoy the exercise of designing the characters, so I built most of the guys we used, and I think his guy came out especially well. I didn't think I'd be able to make him in the system, but it's really versatile and it doesn't penalize you for playing a concept character.

Lastly, we had a guest star. Frederick's son came along and he ran Plastic Man.

While we were waiting for the last guy to show up, Lily was off to the side, playing with her little toys, apparently completely engrossed in what she was doing.  She took Belle from Beauty and the Beast and put her on top of Brainiac 5, with Belle's pleated dress completely covering Brainy's head.

Lily: Belle's peeing on Brainy. Pee, pee, pee...
Me: Uhh....
Lily: ...pee. pee. pee...
Me: *Sigh* The sad part is, there's probably a picture of Belle peeing on Brainiac 5 somewhere on the internet.
Lily: (stops playing) REALLY?!
Josh's friends: *laughter*
Me: Sigh. How do I know this is getting back to Jen?

If there wasn't a picture of it before, there is now!

The session was pretty short. The gist of it was that the Justice League was MIA and supercrime is on the rise as the badguys realize there's no one to stop them. We opened on the scene of a museum robbery, with us watching from the skylight as a guy in power armor directed his minions to loot the place.

(Lily wanted to play as Wonder Woman, so every so often, I would have her roll a die and tell her that's how many badguys she lassoed.)

It was your run of the mill superpowered fight. We jumped down through the skylight and started punching or zapping people. Because we misunderstood the Area Attack rules, Blink was absurdly effective against the minions (he's got an area attack of quickly popping in and and out and punching all the targets in a 120 foot radius) and effectively dropped all of them before anyone else could make a move. Bloodson and the GAH zapped power armor guy with their hellfire and heat vision respectively, and as I had no ranged attacks, I closed to melee and kept punching him. Plastic Man kept transforming into Foghorn Leghorn and a putty colored Superman.

So we went back and forth and even though the guy in the power armor (Bob was his name, as it turned out) had a couple levels on us, we made short work of him. We were pounding him pretty steadily and he decided to just surrender rather than be battered unconscious, which is probably what I'd do if I had a bunch of superpeople beating on me.

After his surrender, we had this exchange:

Eric the GM: How old is your character?
Me: She's 17.
Eric as Bob the supervillain: (an aside to the Greatest American Hero) That girl over there...is she legal?
Me as Dawnfire: No, but I have super hearing!
The Greatest American Hero socks Bob in the jaw and he goes down.

Those heroes still on the roof noticed that Batman was perched there observing us. Plastic Man, the only one who knew Batman, realized that this guy was a substitute. He recruited us to his substitute Justice League, and that's where the session ended.

Overall, a very decent session. We're still learning the finer points of the system and this was essentially a prelude where we were setting up the premise for the campaign. I think I would have preferred a little more role-playing, but I think that will come in time as we all get a firmer grasp on our character's personalities. I'm looking forward to the next session in two weeks.