This game was a reboot of the Villains & Vigilantes started early in the year. Johan’s schedule was too irregular for him to continue, unfortunately, as I miss Doctor Fungus. Although Filip and Helma used the same character designs and names, it’s a full reboot/beginning, and Theo joined us with his character, the Neutron.

We took the time to write out the heroes’ powers carefully with all the quantitative details, but I can’t find Filip’s copy, so here’s the un-annotated list of Stinger’s powers.

This time, I used the NPC creation rules with care. I knew I needed to focus on having them do bad, illegal things, to honor the morality which is baked hard into many aspects of the procedures. However, I didn’t realize how deep and useful the formal procedures were when one uses them instead of perceiving an apparently disconnected bunch of lists in text. (all of these differ to some extent based on whether the character is super-powered or not; what follows is for the ones who are)

1. Roll for sex, weight, and experience level. Debatable nuances of the first two aside, the third is really important … because the 4d6 curve is centered on the highest player-character level, and the distribution of results always includes a very wide range. A superhero group definitely does not have a bank of potential encounters tuned directly to the level of the collective player-characters, but instead an uneven constellation scattered across a range, vaguely centered on the most powerful hero.
2. Roll age which is modified by level, then roll the initial scores which are also modified by level.
3. Roll nationality (80% to be native to the location; otherwise roll on a big chart); roll career or equivalent, which includes important subroutines regarding income and especially inheritance, which came up non-probabilistically often for me.
4. Use the player rules for powers, i.e., choosing types but rolling, eliminating one of the results, Weaknesses, et cetera.
5. Determine details of Security Clearance and a few other things, then arrive at a full cultural portrait, a backstory, and the general focus for the character’s intended actions.

I decided to jump into this whole hog and produced six characters without reference to one another … which turned into two distinct small groups and some independents, all terrifying.

I found this image to be a fine logo for Techbro.

So I had a folder of no-good persons, varying in their potential sympathy or motivations, but actively up to no good. At the table, I was determined to put together the many operations I’d encountered over the previous several play experiences.

• Considering the formation of shared social responsibility among the heroes + the momentum from what has just happened in play for any number of entities + the specific drives of the villainous/criminal NPCs.
• Taking the Swedish Criminal Code seriously and applying it constantly during play, and yes, I printed a copy for this purpose.
• Shunting physical damage to Power, as a function of your current Power level. This is how you get knocked out instead of killed, but as you continue to employ it, the amount you can shunt decreases, and of course, you have less to use for fueling powers. So the starting Power levels typically look quite meaty compared to powers’ cost to use … but a couple of rounds into combat, everyone is looking at their unexpectedly-decreased Power scores and questioning their life-choices.
• Committing to the many specific pockets of “tiny rules.” For example, and probably the most extreme case, Force Field in its Force Screen function. Uniquely, you don’t pay Power to set it up, but your current Power sets how big it can be. It operates as a defense item in the attack/defense matrix, defining an unsuccessful attack as being repulsed by the field … and then you pay Power equal to half the attack damage (rolled for that purpose). If the attack succeeds, then it punches a hole in the screen, damages its target, and also detracts its attack damage from your Power. The point is that no other power works like this, so if you take Force Field, you have a whole little legal paragraph, subsection 2 stroke B, to learn. To play V&V, one must actively decide to embrace these subset rules; it’s simply that kind of game.
• Applying experience points and other development rules, like ethics (e.g., you can reduce the damage you do prior to the roll, which Hippie Frog sometimes forgot to do), Charisma, Clearance Level, and the Invention Points. The Neutron has Enhanced Intelligence which greatly increases his chance for inventing things, and Theo was just beginning to dive into powers construction in order to apply it. The rules for inventions are different from merely banks of new powers.

The immediate scenario for session 1 concerned a Techbro van full of dodgy devices and fuel cells, mixed up in a traffic tangle at a particular intersection in town which had (in real life) recently undergone some confusing rerouting and signage, unfortunately being driven by the youngest and greenest staff member and now hanging half off a bridge.

Here’s a useful map of part of Norrköping I’ve been using a lot. The buildings are grey, and white is ground/pavement space.

For those of you who were at the Happening, Spelens Hus is at the top left mark, which also served as the heroes’ headquarters in this story. The action in our first two sessions took place at the circled bridge , and when Hippie Frog jumped into the river to avoid talking to the police, the current swept her “up” on the map to the green banks with the water running through them, a muddy area with lots of ducks.

The first two sessions concerned the confrontation at that bridge and included a lot of rules referencing, as I needed everyone to be on board with the system, and also established how our heroes managed to be “public superheroes.” That is not an easy task. They effectively trounced the two younger opponents, but when the brothers showed up, the heroes found themselves badly outmaneuvered via social spinning and emotion-affecting powers.

The third session was much more in-depth and rich in characterization, paced at a higher scale and mostly out of costume/uniform. The characters decided to lie low in superhero terms and investigate Techbro through multiple social avenues. They went to a Techbro “meet the industry” school event, and we played in the context of many, many cultural details, e.g., the school programs and procedures for events of this kind, the painful ice-breaking group activities, the weirdly luxurious office space in the otherwise highly industrial warehouse/lab building (one of those typical big cubes out there on a prairie), and more. We used this map much as a battle-mat without any fighting.

There were, however, plenty of dice in action, including a few surreptitious powers and a significant breakthrough as Filip/Stinger used the “start your own invention” activity bench actually to invent something, as well as to conceal that he was doing any such thing. The heroes communicated as best they could across the events scattered through the venue, always integrated with personal judgments and responses to whatever they were encountering. I especially like that they spotted all the opponents they’d fought in the prior events but had to remind themselves to play along. The sequence with Håkan’s presentation of the android head was especially creepy, as they had realized how android-y he is, and how much what he said wasn’t actually about the thing, but about himself.

This is the last role-playing game that Helma played, and one may find whatever symbolism or comfort in that Hippie Frog was herself as a superhero, and that she was excited and inspired about superheroes after a deep dive into many comics and a couple of good shows in the previous few months.

I began to edit the recordings back in July and August, but when her health had clearly failed, we stopped the games she was in (this one, InSpectres, and our plans to continue with Proteus). After that, I could not bring myself to proceed through them in full, which is still the case, out of grief and also because in them, she is sometimes visibly fatigued. Although a lot of it is very watchable, and I’m sorry to lose so much of Filip’s and Theo’s action, I have clipped out only a few bits for you to appreciate, and then I have to call it done.

Thanks for watching.