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A preview of Point of Insanity Game Studio's "Small Town Hero" RPG supplement.
Citation preview
PREVIEW
Small Town Hero-Preview
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Small Town Hero Written by Al Seeger
C. 2011, Point of Insanity Game Studio
http://www.poigamestudio.com
Cover art by Dave Peterson Interior artwork used under license from Louis Porter Jr Design’s Image Portfolio
Series.
Welcome to a preview of Small Town Hero, an
upcoming super hero adventure from Point of
Insanity Game Studio. The adventure has been
written with no particular system in mind so
running it will require some advance
preparation. Small Town Hero is intended for
newly created characters, but you may alter the
content of the adventure as you see fit
depending on the level and needs of your
campaign.
The encounter presented here is the first major
event in the story. It involves a low level villain
named The Puma leading a group of thugs in a
bank robbery. If your super hero campaign is
based on a game created for a licensed product
(such as Marvel or DC Comics) then feel free to
substitute Puma with a villain of appropriate
power level. However, this encounter is generic
enough that it can easily be inserted as a minor
event in an existing super hero campaign.
One final note…
Since this is a preview the finished product
might differ slightly depending on how the rest of
my work on Small Town Hero unfolds. The
finished version of Small Town Hero will include
an optional prelude encounter and several
optional side adventures as well. No estimated
release date yet but I’m hoping to have it ready
by March of April 2011.
Happy Gaming!
Al Seeger, Point of Insanity Game Studio
About the setting
The backdrop for this adventure is a small town known as
Stonewell. It is a middle class town with a population of
9000. Not far from Stonewell is a large city named
Washington Point (population 550,000).
Any material related to Stonewell has been written as
generically as possible. Some parts of the adventure and
supplemental material refer to events and places related
to American history. This does not mean the adventure
needs to take place in the United States. The game
master is free to place this campaign anywhere he wants.
Ideally, the adventure should be set in a small town of
around 7000 –10000 people located a short distance from
a major city.
The finished product will contain two supplemental PDFs
to flesh out the setting in more detail. The first one will be
“The Player’s Guide to Stonewell.” This PDF contains
general information about Stonewell that can be
considered common knowledge and may be distributed to
your players freely. The second PDF is “The Game
Master’s Guide to Stonewell” and contains some of the
secrets and urban legends of the town as well as notable
personalities.
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The first major event in the story assumes there is a lone character
(preferably one with innate superpowers or who happens to be
carrying a few small gadgets on him) who is at the bank when a
robbery takes place. Another way to handle this encounter is to
have the characters find out about it through a contact at the police
department or by monitoring a police scanner.
This encounter will involve a group of five robbers and a minor
super villain who goes by the name of Puma. The bank robbers are
nothing special and should have the statistics and abilities of the
average street thug. Each carries two handguns with 12 shots each
and two spare clips. One thug will carry a 20-ga. shot gun with 8
shots in addition to the handguns.
Puma should be about the same level as the characters. His main
powers are superhuman agility and enhanced jumping ability. His
costume incorporates a set of cat-like claws. These claws should
inflict about as much damage as a short sword or similar sized
edged weapon. Puma is a skilled fighter but will prefer to send his
minions in first to soften the target up before he gets involved.
THE PUMA
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You are on your way home when you remember
you need to stop at the bank. While waiting
your turn in line a group of three masked men
storm the lobby! One of them fires three shots
into the ceiling and demands everyone get
down. The leader of the group approaches the
teller with gun drawn and demands money. The
next few minutes seem like an eternity but then
the wail of police sirens fill the air! The lead thug
mutters a few choice profanities as three squad
cars pull up outside the building. He looks at his
fellow bank robbers and nods. The lead thug
snatches a toddler, one thug grabs an elderly
woman, and the third thug picks a young boy.
Their intention is clear-human shields!”
How the encounter plays out from here depends
on what action the characters take. If the party
confronts the thugs then they will react as
expected-by opening fire. The GM must keep in
mind that any attack made against one of the
thugs has a chance of hitting the thug’s hostage.
The toddler will die if hit once. The old lady and
the boy can take two hits before dying.
However, the young boy isn’t going to allow
himself to be a victim! He has a yellow belt in
Karate and when the opportunity presents itself
he will attempt to escape his thug by biting his
arm and stomping on his foot (no damage but it
will allow him to get out of harm’s way). The
distraction will allow the closest character to the
thug to make a free attack.
The police outside the building will hold their fire
once they see that hostages have been taken.
Their primary concern will be the hostages’
safety. Soon enough though they will have their
hands full! Read the following at an opportune
moment:
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Small Town Hero-Preview
“Out of nowhere a black van speeds into the
parking lot! As it stops the man in the driver’s
seat rolls down the window and fires at the
police with his handgun. The back door opens
and a thug with a shot gun rolls out and fires
twice, taking down two of the six officers on the
scene. A third man, this one dressed in a
masked costume with large claw-like hands,
springs out of the back and with blinding speed
pounces on another one of the policemen.”
What happens here depends on the number of
players and their positions. If the party is inside
the bank then the thugs and Puma will wait until
they get outside before attacking. Now that the
getaway vehicle is here the thugs inside the
bank will attempt to get out of the building as
soon as possible.
Since Puma lacks long range attacks he will
focus on commanding his thugs. If threatened
he will attack, slashing away at those who come
too close.
The remaining three officers will try to reach
their wounded comrades and get them out of
the line of fire so their wounds can be treated.
After three rounds two more squad cars with
four more officers will arrive along with a team of
paramedics to treat the wounded. Any
remaining thug not already engaged will try to
hold back the officers with suppressive fire until
they can get to the van with their loot and
hostages. If all the thugs make it to the van they
will head west since that is the fastest way to
get out of the city. The region to the west of
Stonewell is largely rural, so there will be less
traffic to deal with. The thugs’ van has several
clips of ammunition in it so if the chase goes this
far they will have plenty of bullets to fire at any
pursuing heroes. If they have hostages they will
attempt to push them out of the van as a way to
slow down the characters.
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Wrapping it up
This even ends when Puma and his thugs either
escape or are defeated. Naturally, the police will
be very grateful for any aid the characters have
given. If the characters managed to capture
Puma alive they can try to interrogate him but
he will say nothing except he was robbing the
bank for money. If asked about the claws on his
costume and his superhuman abilities he will
deny he has such things and the interrogator
must be crazy!
If a character with the appropriate resources
does some research he will find out Puma’s real
name is Antonio Sanchez. “Puma” is the
nickname he received while playing high school
football. He was once a gang leader in the city
of Washington Point and has spent time in and
out of jail for various minor crimes. It is unknown
how he got his superhuman abilities and where
he obtained his costume, as he did not display
such things before.
Here’s what happened: Antonio was approached
by a member of an organized crime family and
offered one million dollars in exchange for robbing
the bank in Stonewell. All he had to agree to was
getting a shot before the robbery took place. He
was told the shot would increase his reaction
time. In reality the shot was an experimental drug
designed to turn ordinary people into powerful but
easy to control super humans. The drug’s effects
vary wildly depending on how the individual’s
body reacts to it.
In Antonio’s case it increased his agility and
jumping ability. The drug’s side effects, combined
with hypnotic treatment and subliminal
suggestions, cause Antonio to not be aware of his
new powers or his costume. Therefore, when
Antonio denies having super powers or a suit with
cat-like claws a lie detector test will show him as
telling the truth because his mind has been
conditioned to forget he has such things. Nor
does he remember the encounter with the
organized crime family. He honestly believes
himself to be just a common street thug. The truth
has been buried so deeply in his brain it will take
a mind reader several hours to find it!
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Where to go from here…
It is perfectly acceptable to play this encounter as a one shot event with
no significance to the overall scope of your campaign, but in Small Town
Hero this will prove to be only the beginning of a deeper and more
sinister scheme. So, if you wish to use this event as a starting point for a
new campaign here are some ideas to get you started.
In the coming weeks there will be several more attacks by low level
super villains. These opponents will share one thing in common-they
were all given their powers by an injection that made them susceptible to
mind control and brain washing. With careful investigation the characters
will be able to trace the source of the problem to an organized crime
family in Washington Point (or another major city of your choice).
During the course of the adventure the characters might run into a man
named Dr. Mikhail Lebed. He is a retired physics professor who lives a
quiet life on the outskirts of the town.
However, there is more to Dr. Lebed than meets the eye! He is originally
from Russia and was forced to work on a variety of top secret projects
during the Cold War. His inventions included things like mind control
devices and suits of powered battle armor. Eventually he defected from
the Soviet Union and came to settle in Stonewell. Dr. Lebed still serves
as a secret government consultant in matters of technology and if
approached correctly could serve as a mentor to characters that use high
tech gadgets to fight evil.