The Week in Stories - May 5

The weekend was taken up by working, so only one game to report on this week.

Superhero U

We still need to come up with an actual name for the game, but that's the short form we're going with for now. Last night, we did my night of character creation for my PC and some NPCs for her. It was another short session, as we got to a certain point, had laid down some interesting conflicts, and now want to take them forward into the actual game.

One theme that is emerging is the idea of powers that hurt someone else unintentionally. Last time, we had our happy couple NPCs who are going to develop incompatible powers, most notably, the guy's power, which will drain energy from her the longer they're touching. It's going to be interesting to figure out a couple who are crazy in love but may never be able to be together physically again, and whether or not that can work.

Last night, we came up with a different variation on the theme. My character's powers are linked with her twin sister, but in such a way that really messes up the twin sister's life, and gives her almost no benefits at all. Riffing on an obscure Marvel character, Lila Cheney, my character, Ruth, can teleport, but she can't teleport directly someplace. First, she teleports to wherever her twin sister Ruby is, and then can teleport away anywhere she wants.

That's disruptive enough - Ruth will be popping in and out of Ruby's life at every inopportune moment. But then in play, as her power started to manifest, and Ruth started to feel all odd just before she teleported for the first time, it seemed reasonable that it started with her becoming aware of some kind of sensation from where her sister was before she teleported. It started with sounds. Melissa, playing Ruby, built on that, telling me what sense of touch Ruby was having that Ruth then experienced as well. (Making out with a football player named Chad, in this case.)

We continued to develop this throughout the evening, and now it kind of looks like Ruth can't turn it off, which will be disruptive for her life, getting random sensations from her sister, and disruptive for Ruby's life, as Ruth will keep randomly appearing and Ruby will know she never has real privacy again.

The dynamic between the two of them is good - exasperated, but they still love each other. Poor Ruby really gets the short end of the stick, but it's not that fun for Ruth either, who really doesn't want to be dealing with two sets of sensory impressions (except sight, it appears) all the time.

The other complication is the friend, academic rival, and study buddy of Ruth's, Miriam, who Ruth has a huge crush on, while Miriam is more interested in the other twin. That will be difficult as we go forward!

So, we have some good stuff in play. A large number of characters, and we still have Melissa's week of character and NPC creation to go, but we're expecting some will fall by the wayside and others become unexpectedly important. It also gives us more leeway to have serious repercussions for some of the NPCs. This university may end up having unexpectedly high mortality rates.