MicroCon: A Dirty Joke Never Gets Old

If you missed it, last Saturday are Petrie's Family Games was Micro-Con. I am the last of the "Originals" who took part in every microcons as a GM. I ran a number of different games: Basic RPG, Call of Cthulhu, Doctor Who, and this year, I went with a different road: and I went with DC Universe.

After playing DC Universe Online for a while and playing in Bruce's game on the 13th, during the all-night game I got the Superhero bug and something of a leaning towards DC.

So the question was... What to do?

My son and I have been watching a number of episodes of Batman and Superman animated series from the 90s. So I used that as an inspiration. One of the villains I really like - and how can you not like him - is the Joker. To make things even more interesting, I wanted to fit in Harley Quinn, his insane lover.

The problem is. Since the game would be set in Gotham City, I had to find a way to get Batman out of the way... What if the Joker captured Bruce Wayne?

Now I had an idea I could work with!

I had 2 parts to do, so I had to do something for both parts - as I did not want to run the same event twice, but something of a two-parter.

Part 1: A Dirty Joke Never Gets Old

The first part had the Scarecrow taking over "Little Poland" in the Gotham docks. Seeing that Batman did not answer the Bat-signal, he contacted other heroes (which I'll described later) to investigate.

The heroes went to Little Poland (which led to a number of unsaid jokes, as a Canadian, I never found Polish jokes funny, we all know the Newfies are the real funny people) where the heroes discovered that one of the strip malls had been turned into a gas-filled horror land by the Scarecrow.

The fight with the cops-turned-insane lasted much longer than I expected with the scarecrow really doing well against the heroes... He did take down Booster Gold who - confidently - strode against the villain.

Finally, the heroes took the scarecrow down and he admitted that he and the Joker were the ones who captured Bruce Wayne and that the Joker was gonna do some nasty things unless Batman showed up soon.

Part 2: Late Night Open Mike

The next night, the heroes were called back by Commissioner Gordon and asked to find the Joker and save Bruce Wayne.

The heroes looked around Little Poland and narrowed their search down. Finally Harley Quinn left with a huge semi with blaring circus music. The heroes tried to stop the semi but fell prey to a number of the Jokers' trick. Batgirl discovered that the trailer container a huge robotic Joker!

Finally, the PCs tracked down the Joker to WGTU, a local radio station. The heroes discovered Bruce Wayne, with the Joker in a studio. Busting in to save Bruce, the PCs fought what they (later realized) was a Jokerbot. Then Harley Quinn slammed in building and used the Giant Jokerbot to protect her beloved "Mista' J".

Finally, the PCs beat up the Joker and Harley, saved Bruce Wayne. Both villains were sent back to Arkham Asylum and Gotham was safe for another night.

Who to use?

Although I own both the Heroes & Villains sourcebooks, one of the issues I had was that I needed to find super heroes the PCs could use and keep the same power level for all. So I looked through the books for a long time before deciding that I did not want to give the players - some of whom I was certain were not big into comics.

So I turned to Mutants and Masterminds 3e for my solution... The MnM3 hero's handbooks has a number of pre-built archetypes, all at a PL10. PERFECT!

Looking through the list, I chose the following 6 heroes (whom I also had as heroclix models):

Batgirl: Crimefighter archetype

Booster Gold: Battlesuit archetype

Black Canary: Energy Controller archetype

Blue Beetle: Gadgeteer archetype

Captain Marvel: Paragon archetype

Nightwing: Weapon Master archetype

Not perfect matches (as each character has a few unique perks the archetypes do not have, but they were close enough).

How anal was I?

Okay... a number of people talked over there (Neale) about my being anal... The fact that I did practice my Joker laugh for the previous week at work (mostly) and practiced Harley's high-pitched, New Englander accent for a few days had nothing to do with it!

It's just called "good GMing".

That's right.

Don't a'gue.

Quotes

Thug (seeing Booster Gold):"Holy crap! It's Green Lantern!"

Harley Quinn (seeing Booster Gold):"Hi Green Lantern!"

Harley Quinn (driving a semi through the streets of Gotham):"This texting and driving is ha'd."

Jokerbot (upon being destroyed):"Time to go out with a BANG!" (explosion)

Thanks

A big thanks to Shannon who organized Microcon again this year. Thanks to Cam & Petrie's for hosting and a big thanks to my players who tolerated my Joker-like antics... And all the dirty tricks I pulled on them!

A big thanks to DC for creating such awesome characters... I had a blast!

JP