In Which The Warlock Illumines the Shadows--The Journeyman GM's Perspective!

As mentioned last entry, this is part of my October cross-blog shenanigans with Will Herrmann, better known as the Journeyman GM.  Here's his perspective on our "Shadows of the Cold War" game!  Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Shadows of the Cold War was my second campaign ever. I was in the middle of a Dungeons & Dragons 4e campaign and, as a new and eager roleplaying gamer, was interested in trying out a new roleplaying game system. Heroes Unlimited was definitely an interesting one to have chosen (like all games from Palladium, it's riddled with typos, very messy character creation, and internally inconsistent mechanics), but fortunately, Andy had houseruled the egregious problems and we spent far more more of our time talking things out than we did worrying about the game mechanics.

"Aren't the stars and stripes a little...
...old-fashioned?"

Having always been a Captain America fan, I decided to create a super soldier. In his backstory, I decided that him and his twin brother were experimented upon (experimentation on twins was pretty common in Nazi Germany and I figured the Soviet Union might have done something similar with a super soldier program). Using the random character generation in Heroes Unlimited, Ulrich Hartmann wound up with speed, strength, endurance, and fighting prowess that far exceeded that of a normal human. He knew a variety of fighting styles and could pilot just about any vehicle with ease. And at night, he became even more deadly, perhaps out of a realization that the darkness would hide his brutality. Despite this, Ulrich definitely had the Captain America attitude of using his power to protect those who were weaker than him. Ulrich's full character sheet can be found here.

The thing that meant the most to me was Ulrich's hindrances. In Dungeons & Dragons, characters are generally flawless. Sure, they may not be proficient in certain skills or they many be deficient in some attribute, but they don't really have any character flaws. Ulrich on the other hand received constant headaches and had a metabolism four times that of a normal human (this led to a lot of fun situations and his nightly ritual of going to the Happy Panda all you can eat Chinese buffet). In addition, he had escaped from the Soviet Union and was being hunted down by his twin brother, Jakob Hartmann, who had the same powers, but a much more brutal and self-serving outlook on how they should be used. And perhaps the most defining thing for the campaign was that he literally started by walking off of a bus. With no money, no job, no place to stay, and a poor understanding of the English language, the early sessions were largely focused on Ulrich trying to find a place to live and a job to support himself. These hindrances to Ulrich's character wound up defining him just as much as his superhuman abilities and I think because of that, I wound up gravitating toward systems with hindrances later in my gaming career.

Ulrich followed the meaning,
not necessarily the movement.

Being on the run from the Soviets, Ulrich naturally needed a superhero identity. Having always admired the words of Karl Marx (but not how the Soviets had "corrupted" them), Ulrich decided to take on the name "Manifesto" and made it his goal to right the injustices he saw. And what better place to do it than in America? Hub City itself had recently constructed skyscrapers for the rich to work in, but had the poor living on the streets next to it.

Eventually, Manifesto teamed up with several other superheroes and started tracking down an individual who had kidnapped a young girl…and it was clear that he was too powerful for the police to take down. Admittedly, this nature of this villain made me a bit uncomfortable (see Andy's description) but it definitely made our final fight of retribution against him ore meaningful.

Unfortunately, Ulrich met his match not from some violent super-powered killer, but from a car crash. How that happened is a fun story in and of itself, but ultimately it meant that Manifesto's crime-fighting streak came to a premature end. I'm told that future plots would have had him meet his evil twin brother again and have his past catch up to him again!

This was my first exposure to Andy's GMing style. He's big on creating overwhelming challenges and creating very personal stories. Although I'm not as crazy about Watchmen-style superheroes as Andy, I found the game overall to be really enjoyable and the first real exposure to having characters that seemed "real".

All in all, Shadows of the Cold War is one of the most memorable games I've played in. It was the first that really let me play a character that was human and had his share of flaws and, much to my surprise, it was fun having to deal with the challenges of daily life. Manifesto is one of my favorite characters and a Savage Worlds version of him will be included as a pregen for Wild Card Creator.

In Which The Warlock Illumines the Shadows...

Continuing our cross-blog extravaganza, the Journeyman GM and I decided to stop and reminisce about one of our first real campaigns together--my Heroes Unlimited/Call of Cthulhu mash-up, "Shadows of the Cold War".  While the campaign was somewhat short-lived, it provided some great moments of role-play around the table and really showed off some of the things I love about gaming at Wittenberg, to say nothing of Will's skill and creativity as a player.

For those of you that don't frequent my blog, I billed "Shadows of the Cold War" as something of an "alternate-universe Watchmen", in which the events of that seminal graphic novel never actually happened:  Ozymandias never detonated his squid, Silk Spectre never determined the identity of her father, and Dr. Manhattan simply up and left.  Our heroes took up residence in the DC Comics underworld of Hub City, which was all but polluted with crime and vigilante activity.

Rorschach's vengeance:
an inspiration for Manifesto's
first investigation.

While our three other heroes--played by the PlatinumChick, DigitalKat, and L-Train--played "average" citizens of Hub City, Will had decided to take a slightly less orthodox route.  His hero, Manifesto, was the semi-successful result of an East German/Soviet super-soldier project who had gained most of his combat experience fighting in Afghanistan.  After falling out with his handlers over ideological issues, Manifesto escaped Soviet control and stole into the United States, hoping to spread the word of Marx to the impoverished masses of the Hub.

While it might not seem exciting to many, the two introductory sessions of "Shadows..." may be among my all time favorites.  Manifesto was literally a "stranger in a strange land"--bereft of basic 'givens' like citizenship, a drivers' license, or even the ability to speak proper English, Will/Manifesto stared down a greater threat than a supervillain or a back-alley ganger:  the plight of poverty, viewed through the eyes of an illegal immigrant.  Manifesto was lucky in many regards--he managed to procure work as an unskilled laborer at a construction site, was able to find his way to a housing and human services branch through which he procured a small apartment, and received some significant donations from the Salvation Army.

Throughout these sessions, nary a die was rolled--after all, what good is combat prowess or technical expertise, when your character is living on the streets?  But the buy-in on Will's part was spectacular, and the table was riveted throughout.  When Manifesto finally managed to get his feet under him and meet some of his fellow vigilantes, it was like he had finally 'made it'.

This isn't to say that our game was a matter of The Sims-lite.  Rather, our game focused heavily on investigation and several ongoing attempts to thwart an arms-trafficking ring run by The White Russian, an enigmatic criminal mastermind.  Leads into a Benson and Hedges Holdings warehouse led our heroes to what may be the most foul villain I've ever created:  Mr. Kisses.

Meant to be a riff on "Mr. Fantastic gone mad", Mr. Kisses was a serial rapist and murderer, with a penchant for targeting under-aged girls.  His deranged psyche had fetishized the "American Ladies" young adult novels of the time, leading him to kidnap school-aged girls, abuse them, and then kill them.  However, with an in-born elastic ability, Mr. Kisses' victims died messy, horrific deaths.  With each clue they found, with each step closer the group took, Mr. Kisses provoked a powerful sense of righteous vengeance, which I've rarely seen around the game table.  When Kisses died--and they most assuredly did not let such a madman live--there was a collective sigh of relief around the table.  One less girl would be made a victim in this world.  One less mother would spend sleepless nights in tears.

While Mr. Kisses certainly hit home with a Rated-R, Iron Age sensibility, this isn't to say that our campaign didn't have moments of comic relief.  As a side-effect of his super-soldier experimentation, Manifesto's metabolism worked at four times the normal rate:  he had to eat a full meal every few hours or be stricken with crippling migraines.  It became a running joke at our table that Manifesto would hit the Happy Panda Chinese Buffet on his way home from work, eating the place clean!  Set in 1986, our game was rife with references to The A-Team, MacGuyver, and the worst of 80s music.  Lockshanks, L-Train's character, even made a point to go see Return of the Jedi on its opening day!

The treacherous roads of Centralia, PA

As I mentioned earlier, our heroes met an untimely end, mainly due to a poor choice of driver and some phenomenally bad die rolls.  Our campaign ended just as it hit its nascence.  I had planned for our heroes to visit Centralia, Pennsylvania in the upcoming session, uncovering Cthulhian horrors amongst the smoking ruins.

Despite our tragic (and more than a little ironic) end, "Shadows of the Cold War" left a sizable influence.  The wonky mechanics of Heroes Unlimited left an ashen taste in my mouth and the Iron Age of Comics remained a relatively untapped realm of inspiration for a would-be game designer.  In designing Cold Steel Wardens, I dropped elements directly from "Shadows..." into the game--The White Russian, Mr. Kisses, and even Manifesto himself have made it into my first draft copy as NPCs and, in Manifesto's case, a fully playable pre-generated character.

And Will?  Well, despite my tendency to kill off his characters, he's still coming back for more...and next week, we'll take a look at what it's like as a player in one of his games!