Herding Cats: Necessary Evil – Week 1

Okay so now the fun begins in earnest.  This is a continuation of a game that I ran a number of years ago so one again it’s going to seem a little in medias res.  That said this is the beginning of this run so it should be cool. 

The only issue is that I had a computer blow up that took out week two’s recording so we’ll be stretching your imaginations a little bit extra.  Sorry everyone.  I’m new to Audacity.  I’ll fill you in when the time comes.

Anyway.  The campaign is based out of Necessary Evil, a Savage Worlds campaign setting where in Super-Villains end up as the Earth’s final hope against alien invaders.  It is by far one of the best Super-Hero style settings I’ve encountered and if you’ve ever tried running supers and ended up dissatisfied because of player behavior this is an excellent setting to run in.  This way when they decide to soak some random gangbanger in ice water and attach jumper cables to his testicles it will just be awful instead of against the intended feel of the game.

Not that I’m a bitter GM or anything.

The only problem with Necessary Evil is that it is Savage Worlds.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I LOVE Savage Worlds for anything that hovers around the Pulp Hero level of power and if that is where you want to play then it works great.  For Superheroes it can come off a little anemic, though they have recently published a revised “Deluxe” edition which has a Super-Hero supplement and that sounds a bit more promising.

So what to do?  Well.  When in doubt run the game with Truth and Justice!  Truth and Justice is the best Super-heros game I’ve ever come across.  Character creation is fast (like 10 minutes once you understand how it works) and you can actually end up with a character that roughly resembles what you were shooting for rather than something that looks like a shadow of what you wanted.  T&J is produced by Atomic Sock Monkey Press and is available at RPGNOW.com.

For this particular game we have a crew of miscreants worthy of wanted posters.

 Obsidian (aka Devil Dude)

Otho Baal Sideon a.k.a. OBSideon, A good-looking well dressed man in an expensive business suit. He appeared on earth sometime near the birth of modern humanity with innate knowledge of purpose: to release people from the burden of their immortal souls. He has command of hellfire, and limited super speed and strength. He also adapts to his situation and retains a vast reservoir of demonic knowledge from the depths to time. His motivation is simple. He does not believe the alien menace will long leave the human population alive, and so far as he can determine aliens don’t have souls. Influences on the creation of this character include The Devil from Sinfest comics, Money from American Gods, and Al Pacino from The Devil’s Advocate.

 Locust

Hui’s origin in a nutshell: a Chinese orphan ends up in a Buddhist monastery, doesn’t really fit in at the monastery, eventually finds some magical armor, pretty much goes bad, kills a lot of Chinese soldiers, flees the monastery, ends up working for a Shanghai Tong as an assassin, kills a lot of people, gets sent to San Francisco by the Tong, kills a lot of people, gets in trouble with the Tong in San Francisco, kills a lot of people, becomes a free-lance hitman — working mostly for the Mafia, kills a lot of people, survives the V’Sori invasion and becomes a ‘freedom fighter’, and kills a lot of people. Hui doesn’t really dress like a “super” tending towards robust, dark clothing that semi-conceals his leather and iron hauberk. The hauberk is inlaid with images of leaping insects.

Horrowshow

The Horror Show was a typical suburban housewife, who’s book club turned out to be cultists bent on creating their own Shoggoth with her as the source. After seemingly being rescued by a magic hero before the spell could be completed, she later partially turned, consumed her whole family and went quite mad.

Zer0

Zer0 is a two meter tall robot of gleaming perfection. His physique is that of a perfectly proportioned human male, though these features are generalized and simplified. A single red crystalline lense peers out from his head, which is earless and smoothed over, with neither nose, nor mouth, nor hair. Apart form his single eye the whole of his being is formed of a peerless silvery white metal known as Wonderium, as developed by his creator Dr. Wonderful. When Zer0 speaks it is harsh and metallic, full of distortion like in a bad PA system.

The Dauphin

A short version would not be able to convey the character.  The Dauphin

There are also Singularity Jones, a funk based space bounty hunter and the Golden Prince, who is worse than Hitler.  (But they didn’t get me write ups so they can sit and spin…)

What has gone before:  After being recruited by Dr. Destruction into his resistance organization (Omega) Zer0, Horrorshow, and the Dauphin have caused billions of dollars in damage and tens of thousands of wasted man hours.  Over time they have collected additional members for their cell including: Obsidian, The Golden Prince, Singularity Jones and Locust.  From time to time they are joined by the likes of Spider Serpent, Icy Repose, Thorn and more.  They have thwarted the plans of the V’Sori on numerous occasions and proved a burr for all that faced them.  Eventually the Longshoremen (a pre-V’sori criminal organization became sufficiently annoyed that they hired a professional hitman, known only as The Matador, to eliminate them as a factor.  To this end he sabotaged the MAGICALLY ENHANCED NUCLEAR NEEDLE BOMB which Zer0 and several others had constructed in the center of their base with the intent of using it to rile up the Magmamen living far below Star City.

Yeah.  Hope you enjoy.  Try to keep up. 

~Geo

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