One Dice Supers - First Game

    From left, Tom, Allen, and Keith look over the action taking place at our sprawling superhero HQ

Our Sunday evening gaming group has been going steady since the early 1980s. At least four of us -- Allen, Joel, Tom, and myself -- were "charter members" of the unofficial group. So, that means we have been gaming together for four decades! The other day Allen and Tom were reminiscing about how we got our start. Our number one game was Champions superhero roleplaying. Even back then, it was more of a skirmish than RPG, but we played it for a number of years virtually every Sunday. We mixed in board games regularly, too, but Champions was our mainstay.

    Slightly banged up superheros are attended to by the medical staff of the headquarters

Allen told Tom (reportedly - I wasn't present for the conversation) that he'd love to drag out all the old heroes for another game. Tom was intrigued, and began researching a set of rules to play it in  a series of interconnected skirmishes ("...since role playing is forbidden..." he added). That comment was directed at me, likely, as I have no interest in role playing, per se. When anyone has brought up up playing D&D or similar in the last decade or so, I have demurred. Recently, in response to a discussion on the Lead Adventure Forum, I came to the realization that even back then our role playing was really skirmish gaming. The "taking on the role of" was limited. A few players indulged in making speeches (I know I loved my superhero Whaleshark's comic book-like rants at the villains), but for the most part we were rolling dice and fighting on a tabletop.

    The bad guys break in to our HQ and knock our elderly security guard unconscious

Perhaps Tom realized this, as well, and took Allen's suggestion and ran with it. He created a world forty years later when our superheros are old, slowing down, and hoping to retire. However, the world has gone crazy, and is channeling a scene from the graphic novel, "The Watchmen." The public is becoming more and more anti-masked vigilante. Crowds, demonstrations, and government rules are attacking those trying to defend society from crime. In fact, that was how Tom's opening scenario begins. A crowd has gathered outside the hero's seldom-used headquarters, and is threatening to break in. "Off camera," a group of seven of us respond. The heroes are attacked by a group of super powered anti-heroes, drive them off, but sustain wounds and retreat to our medical facility.

That is where Tom's scenario begins. Well, actually it began a few weeks ago when Tom sent us the rules he'd chosen, One Dice Supers, and instructed us to create a pair of characters. Although all rolls are taken care of with the roll of one six-sided die, don't let that convince you the game (or character creation) is simplistic. There are four stats, which are used to derive other stats, and then you add in "Gifts," "Embellishments," "Flaws," and more. All of us were suitable baffled on what to do and how to do it, but Tom did his best to talk us through the process.

    Captain Steel wades into the goons invading our HQ, protected by his high tech armor and shield

My hero is one I created when I was playtesting a superhero variant of my Mean Streets gang warfare game. He's called Captain Steel, and is essentially a strong, agile man in high tech police riot gear. Well, was...in Tom's world we are past our prime and are slowing down. Instead of gaining experience, we will lose skills and strength over the course of the campaign. It's a very intriguing idea. He said he was inspired by the Wolverine movie where Logan is losing his powers and slowly dying. Not to be too depressing, we were also instructed to create a "young apprentice", who will be introduced as we progress through our games.

The game begins with us gathered in our medical facility in our HQ, when we receive a mysterious hologram message from someone calling himself "V for Vendetta." The hooded man is trying to rally us to fight back against what is happening in society. As his message ends, our alarm system goes off and the anti-hero crowd, spearheaded by the Metropolitan Anti-hero Guardians Alliance (MAGA), breaks into our building and knocks our elderly security guard, Stanislaw Lee, unconscious. We immediately begin heading through the doors and rooms to rush to his aid and stave off the crowd's invasion.

    Keith's hero, Badger (at left) busts into a room full of goons, trying to overwhelm them with his voice

Keith's character, Badger, is the first to arrive as he calculated his movement wrong (lots of calculating and deriving new statistics from previously-generated statistics in One Dice Supers). He does his best "presence attack" to try to scare the crowd off. They back off appreciatively, but then immediately go on the attack the next turn. The figure Keith was using wields an armed tipped with a concrete saw, and immediately splatters two of the crowd. Hmm...with heroes like this, maybe I see why we have a public image problem! Meanwhile, the rest of the red-hatted crowd spills past him into the hallway. 

    Three gun-armed goons fall back into the lobby, ready to ambush Badger when he follows them

They are met by a pell-mell rush of superheros charged up and ready to take out some bad guys. With each blow, MAGA minions go flying unconscious, hopefully, or maybe worse. Meanwhile, Badger is still in the room with the more powerful, gun-armed goons. He takes a couple wounds. Hearing his shouts, Captain Steel heroically busts through the door to his aid. He's immediately fired upon and shocked to see some of their attacks get through his high tech body armor and titanium shield. This was alarming, but don't fear. The rules have a recourse for us in "Stunts." Each hero is granted six stunt points to use throughout each game to affect rolls, attacks, defense, etc.

Both Keith and I had to use some of those points to minimize the damage that Badger and Captain Steel were taking, respectively. Eventually, though, we beat down the goons enough that they surrender. Andy's superhero, named "Lift" for his telekinetic powers, uses his telepathy to probe why the crowd was here. Meanwhile, Badger, brandishing his bloody saw, menaces the prisoners into telling them essentially the same thing. They were paid well (they say they don't know by who) to come here, riot, and attack our facility.

    Captain Steel, at right, heroically wades through the crowd of goons to help his teammate Badger

The rest of the group discovers the same thing when they interrogate two attackers in another room. They appeared to be super villains, but had actually stolen and reactivated two powered costumes that were displayed in the museum that is our HQ. I guess we have to do a better job of securing the dangerous weapons in our facility! With all the bad guys in custody or down, the mission was declared over. Tom admitted it was meant to be an easy one to teach us how the system works. Everything is indeed predicated on the roll of a single six-sided die. To hit, you add your ability in question to your skill to the roll of a d6. If you exceed your opponent's Defense, you add in any damage bonuses from your weapon. Subtract the target Defense from that new total number and you have the amount of Health the target loses. Essentially, the roll to hit is combined with the roll to damage in these rules.

For example, Captain Steel adds his Strength of 3 and his skill in his composite material billy club of 2 to a roll of, say, "4". If this "9" is greater than the target's defense, they take hits on their Health. By the way, Captain Steel has a Defense of 9, but also has an Armor of 3, which is subtracted from any hits that exceed the Defense. He also has 11 Health, to give you an idea of how much pounding a superhero can take. Alarmingly, the shotguns the MAGA goons were shooting at him added five hits if their attack roll succeeded. One Dice Supers will likely see players carefully husbanding their Stunts points to survive to the end of the mission (expending one stunt point, for example, causes an attack to automatically miss).

    Big turnout for our last Sunday gaming session of the year, with Anthony & Andy joining us

We had a lot of fun bantering about, razzing each other about what our heroes were doing (or NOT doing). In particular, I razzed Keith about his rather bloodthirsty choice of weapons, and Joel's robotic character on his slowness to the battle. I'm looking forward to seeing the stories that Tom creates. He is a very experienced game master, and has been playing role playing games for many of the decades with other groups. So, he has skill at weaving a compelling tale.

This will likely be my next to last blog post of the year. I will likely do a Year in Review next. I doubt I will get either the scatter terrain I am working on or the batch of miniatures done before Jan. 1.

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures acquired in 2024: 227
  
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 254