Seed of Virtue: A H&S Campaign Start

[Sidhain]

I was pleasantly surprised when some friends of mine showed up today and said "we want to game!" being that I was not working, and hadn't planned anything at all but writing, I was delighted.


So we start discussing games (7th Sea is one of their current "games to play" since he asked for a Swashbuckling game and I let him borrow it, but I told them I could run a Superhero game right then--they said sure so we discussed what kind of play they were interested.

1) Dark setting with normal human problems cropping up
2) No costumed
3) Callsign/Codenames however were a must.

We agreed that my Millennia setting (being fleshed out in aching slowness in H&S was perfect for this)


We ended up with:

ShadowStalker teenage angst but with humor is drive was Spirit of Adventure, and his powers were "Random Superhuman Ability" that is he could have any power he wanted for a brief time, if he suceeded at a Power test.

Poltergeist, a picked on outcast with the ability to become invisible, and mess things up with minor TK--her drive was Guit/Guardianship having failed to protect someone who'd picked on her in the past she saw them end very messily--this affected her deeply and gave her a reason to defend even those she didn't like.

Mentro, who was able to implant hallucination directly into his victims minds (he never used it in this first adventure) and whose drive was also guilt (witnessed murder of a police officer by corrupt police)


The setting Theodore Roosevelt High (Fictional) in California (undisclosed city but basically San Fran)

The plot: They've gone to school together for years, their powers they've had for a while--between 5 months and a year (setting based origin, common one) and they meet their peers--including a nice girl who they've all known for years. Role-playing the carious first few highlights of school, including the frustrating difficulties of staying awake and listen to a History teacher--then skipping to lunch where the heroes do their thing. They all lag behind their peers for one reason or another and end up together in the same back alley like turn of the school building (actual choice of the pcs and not contrived--one was just hiding from others, one was hanging out with friends /smoking/ off campus and so on.

They see each other and don't even nod they just glance and head in, but all them catch sight of a leg--the leg of the friendly young lady.

Characters upset begin trying to figure out what was going on--one calls cops, one goes to fetch security and perhaps the principle, but is hassled by the guards so drags them in instead. The other waits.

They discover through the interview of dealing with officials a number of things

A) the head of the security guards is smart, and fairly decent human being.
B) The principle is hot-tempered, accusatory and in general an arse.
C) The police ask nearly the same questions as the security guard but less warm in general.

It falls out that the only people they saw back there were a few basketball players--and one of them didn't come out from there.


Moving forward through the day they go to the pep rally where ShadowStalker tries to cause havoc with his powers--and manages to trip up everyone but one pretty boy b-ball player.

Suspected (and in fact likely guilty of the crime)

Players investigate but discover him loading the bus unlike the other players, helping the cheerleaders. The others loaf and watch. The heroes go and investigate but find nothing untowards.


So they go home.


Next morning--

They see on the news a maid found at a hotel discovered dead--similar mysterious ciircumstances to their peer/potential friend.

Along the route of the b-ball players travelling out of town.

Shadowstalker, and Mentro go to the Mall where they find Poltergeist working, about to leave for the day--and unwilling really to go home so they hit upon the idea to investigate


So they go to the city where the game is played and sneak around the court facilities--until they get caught by him, as they go through his bags (he fouled out and hit the showers) he tries to beat some sense into them--revealing his power--the ability to leach life energy from people--usually only small, slow amounts unless he willingly kills. Leaching from them (who being supers make it easier to leach)--they struggle to stop him.

ShadowStalker accrues a lot of stress from a variety of failed actions and re-tries with his justifications and so me the GM triggers that stress turning it into a successful attack by the villian--draining him to near passivenss.

Mentro tries but fails twice, and gets jabbed in the throat with a superhumanly strong blow from him. (Stress finally triggered as well)

Poltergeist is still standing, she tries to invisibly tackle him and does take him down--but can't hardly hold on as they struggle, and her stress acrues from several successive attempts to retry her grapple (she succeedes but its a hard fight) and he drains her to near passivity as well.

But ShadowStalker is back up and uses his power--luckily maxing his die roll and linking it to gain a power--Superstrength, where upon in one move he hefts free standing locker bank and slams the villian into unconciousness. (Crumbling part of the lockerroom around him as well)


Players limp home wounded--throat bruised, black eye, and other stress events they suffered (the fatigue energy drain wore off, but the rest did not)



Heroes win.


Players talk about campaign: Poltergeists player my fiancee' who'd previously mentione dthe difficulty of H&S was happy saying it was much easier and mentioned that she thinks it may have been another player who impacted her negatively when he plays.

Other players who'd never tried H&S before felt it was simple, fun and dynamic--making one offer to run it at some point after /one session/ of play.


So far it seems this works well for introducing newbies to it who are already gamers so long as they aren't pre-prejudiced towards the style of play.


We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing other games, including the Toy/CCG Zeta-Gear game, 7th Sea, and my large collection of supers games.

In addition to compliments on the "professional" look of H&S and the playtest notes of my SF game and its PC sheets.

Well they just aren't picky enough on that I guess.

[Uncle Dark]

What is H&S?

[Andrew Martin]

What is H&S?

H&S stands for Hearts and Souls. It's Sidhain's superhero RPG. It's available for playtest from Sidhain directly as PDF or Word document.