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Hello players who came up with the name for themselves if they were a superhero when they were eight years old
and then decided to make it a fully fledged character.
Okay, and DMs who spent $15 on a source book because they refused to write their own.
Do you want to redo that?
No, I'm keeping that.
Okay, you just looked at me in a really judgy way.
That was intentional.
Welcome back to Table Talk. I'm Maddie.
And I'm Robert.
Welcome to Season 2, our first official episode in Season 2 because we had our little social
zero catch up.
We're so off track already.
Can you tell?
Yeah.
Can you tell?
So anyways, today we're going to be talking about capes and crooks.
It's basically the campaign setting is like cyberpunk superheroes.
So it is like 2099 if anybody has played cyberpunk 2099 or read any of the source material.
I didn't know it was 2099 like in our world.
Yeah, it's 2099.
Yeah, like it's set very far-ish.
I guess not super far in the future, but far enough that technology has developed and you can have heroes
that have Iron Man-like suits because that shit's not happening in 2023 or 2024 or five or six or seven.
So we got to hit the fucking fast forward button.
The idea for the campaign kind of just stemmed from a deep love of superheroes and comics in general.
And I think, I don't know, after I had done World Serpent's End and tied that up, I tried to figure out what my next campaign was going to be.
I wanted it to be a little less fantasy heavy.
World Serpent's End was kind of all over the place, which you all should go back and listen to the previous episodes about World Serpent's End.
And you'll kind of go very quickly understand just how chaotic the setting was because there was never a constant setting.
It was like we would have three sessions in one setting and then another three in a different one.
But fantasy is not my number one go-to.
Like in terms of places and things that you can play, I think one of the lovely things about TTRPGs is that you can put them anywhere.
And if I can put them anywhere, why the fuck am I going to put them in Skyrim?
Like, respectfully, I think there's enough-
There's so much content in that world.
I know I also bugged you when we were talking about campaigns and stuff, but I was like, you know, I think we should do a superhero campaign.
I think that would be super fun because, and I'm sure that around the time this is coming out, I've already fully launched my return to the app.
The internet?
Yes, and I did a very big superhero project on there in years past.
And I really, really loved it and I wanted to kind of like-
Talk a little bit about New Metro specifically because I think the early conversations I had with you about what that world was like and that you all had created really helped influence how I wanted to roleplay this world.
I think it really helped me, which I'm getting ahead because you still haven't talked about it, but it really helped me get away from the more serious stuff, like this more serious-ish content that I'm used to digesting and play a little bit more player-friendly.
We'll call it that way.
Player-friendly.
So I am a TikToker.
I was like-
No longer retired.
She's out of retirement.
No longer retired.
I'm back and making videos again in our basement.
And there were these things, like I was a cosplayer and more than just cosplaying characters that were already out there, I made like a lot of like those like POV videos and like those kind of blended themselves to creating these like original characters.
And we launched something called like a tag and it was like this kind of like storytelling community online, which was very, very similar to D&D and like someone would create a world and then you would create a character in it and then other people could create their own characters in this world and they could interact with different characters.
And you could collab with people and it was really fun.
So I-
Mostly on my own, I did like work with a couple other people, but like all of the like grunt work was done by me was this world called New Metro and it was named after-
It's a combination of New York City and Metro City from Megamind because I think that name is hilarious.
And it was kind of the concept that I had like had forever ago with some writing of like this very like campy superhero world.
Like this is the world you think of when you think of like classic golden age or technically not golden age.
It'd probably fall a little bit more silver bronze age superheroes in like a Marvel Comics universe.
Just a little less DC because DC could be a little wonky sometimes.
But this very like-
Oh, it's just the classics. It's the tropes. It's the-
You're trying to make it as a superhero and then also you've got to make it to your fucking high school classes on time.
Like that very early Peter Parker vibe.
And I inserted this character named Nightlight.
And so the whole concept behind her was like this world where it's like grounded in reality, but also still very lighthearted and fun and goofy.
Because that I think is part of the big appeal with comic books and don't get me wrong.
All the edgy stuff out there is great. Like I enjoy a lot of it.
But it's kind of nice to go back to the classics of like when you're a kid and you're learning about Spider-Man for the first time.
You're not learning about like the fucked up Spider-Man parts.
You're learning about, oh, this is a cool guy who can shoot webs and webs up bad guys and wears bright colored costumes.
And has like non-consequential issues that he's dealing with.
And it was like that kind of energy and that kind of focus.
And just like this really, it was a really interactive world and it was so cool collaborating with all these people and creating like a fully fleshed out world.
Where like superheroes were a part of it and were like kind of like local celebrities.
Like a little bit more than local, but like, yeah, you know, you sometimes run into fucking Captain America when you're going to the bodega to get yourself like your fucking sandwich in the morning.
And yeah, you're going to stop and take a picture with him because it's fucking Captain America.
Like, what does a world look like, like a modern world with our modern views that's still fun and has superheroes in it?
Right. And isn't like mega depressing like DC or kind of overly skiced element like Marvel can be sometimes.
I don't know how many of our listeners, and I guess we can call them watchers now too, are familiar with Marvel and DC and how different they are in style.
Like Marvel in particular in recent ish years, like the, it's like a term called power scaling, like the power scaling of the universe has just gotten insane.
And the consistency and the continuity is, it's very difficult to follow because there's so many different writers and different artists and different storylines.
I mean, that's kind of how comics have always been, but jumping into comics, I think now is harder than it ever has been before because there's such a wealth of content.
Oh, it's it's so many people write the characters differently and the stories are really crazy. But like, for reference, talking about Spider-Man, one of more like the most iconic, in my opinion, the most iconic villain for him being Venom,
the current Venom run in Marvel Venom and Eddie Brock have just become a God, like on celestial status. Like that is, it's gotten insane.
Like the power scaling is just fucking nuts.
And it used to be like this is a world of superheroes, like I'm like, I love my comic history and everything and like in the original like Golden Age and everything.
It for the most part was grounded in like Earth and grounded in reality, like you had characters like Superman or like all these characters.
I mean, you say grounded in Earth and immediately go to like number one alien.
Let me explain myself a little bit more.
All of comics.
Let me explain this to my little, the comics aren't taking place in space.
That's like literally what I'm saying when I say grounded in Earth is like now there's entire runs of comics that are just like literally take place in other planets and other spaces versus
Invincible is a very good example of a large part of their comic run takes place in different planets and different universes.
And even if you're looking at like the fucking multi version is also just a certain.
Multi version is crazy. Like all of that, like the power scale and like that kind of puts it on par of like you're going from comics used to be about a fucking like a burrow in New York
in a city block or a city like, oh my God.
It's like the whole thing.
Why would anybody want to commit a crime in New York City?
Yeah.
In Marvel comics, like.
That's crazy.
You're literally asking to be arrested or sent to another dimension or to have your memory wiped and beat the shit out of like there's no there's no reason why anybody would commit a single crime.
I wouldn't fucking litter in New York City if I lived in Marvel comics.
I wouldn't do it.
I'll say my favorite are all of the fucking like tiktoks and memes I've seen about like people.
When me when I found an apartment in Gotham City for $200 a month and then it's just the audio.
Yeah, it's just like Joker making threats with a riddler saying he poisoned the fucking water supply like it's all of same shit.
There's bombs going off. It's fucking insane.
And then to shift to DC, they've gotten darker and darker as time has gone because that's their biggest selling point right now is like comics is that Marvel is
Well, more so with the movies and less so with the comics.
Marvel in general is a lot less willing to cross certain lines that DC will for the sake of telling a darker story or a grittier story.
Marvel you can always expect a random asshole of a crazy powerful character that was introduced to two fucking panels ago saves the day.
It's all great.
Doctor Strange snaps his fingers, Wanda does whatever the fuck she wants to do and then everything goes back to normal.
But like in DC comics, there's oftentimes a stronger air of like lasting consequences and like people can do fucked up things and people are allowed to die except for Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman or the flash or anybody in the fucking Justice League.
Like there's still like DC has their golden boys and girls, but the general thought is that they are able to be darker than Marvel is.
And I think an approach that I took with this particular campaign is trying to find a healthy balance between the two.
Something that my this is on the difference between like DC Marvel comics.
My I took a class in high school called history of science fiction and fantasy literature and we did an entire unit on comic books like that was a big chunk of it.
It was pretty cool.
It was fucking phenomenal.
But one of the things that we talked about in class of like the biggest difference between Marvel and DC and like like an easy way to describe it is DC makes gods and Marvel makes people with God like powers.
And that's like the big difference of like, OK, DC has these ultra powerful characters and their downfall is often they are untouchable.
Like how the and that's why you see like Superman turned evil so many times is because they're like that's just a more interesting concept for people to grasp onto because it's hard for people to grasp onto these characters.
They're untouchable versus Marvel feels extremely touchable because they're like deeply.
So is anything can happen in Marvel comics and the power structure and like the power hierarchy is is anything and anything anything and everything you could possibly want.
Like you can read a story where Spider-Man becomes fucking Cosmic Captain America, whatever the fucking title is, Cosmic Spider-Man.
Yeah, scroll girl or Deadpool or like people that can like look like literally hop in the panels in between pages like the amazing Gwenpool is one of my favorite runs ever where it's like in DC.
You have a God and there's not a single person on anybody's roster that can touch that God because the power scaling and like the hierarchy is very defined and set in finite.
So then kind of to that point, right?
That's when you have people that take runs with Superman to the extreme because that's as far.
I mean, that's the upper limit is an alien that looks like a human that can then do anything anybody else can do.
Yeah.
Which is interesting like Superman as a character has read so many different stereotypes and so many different takes on the like untouchable like not omniscient.
That's always one of the downfalls is that he's intelligent, but he doesn't know everything all the time.
Yeah.
But like the invincible skin immune to this immune to that ridiculously broken strength like crazy powerfeeds.
Like you have like you mentioned a dark Superman and Justice is a great example.
I love him.
Red Dawn, which is a DC animated movie with really, really good with Russian.
Well, what is it's Russian Superman, isn't it?
Yeah, basically if he landed in Russia or in the USSR instead of US, SR Superman.
You have deceased comics where they do their zombie runs, which is I mean, that's probably about a star because they have more fun with their comic lines.
I'll give them that do and they have a stronger branding on like the lines that they do like they have deceased and then they have injustice.
They have flashpoint like there's all sorts of fun stuff you can do.
I mean everything and anything.
Good luck finding something though.
Marvel like picking a Marvel comic to follow or a series to follow is like the equivalent of throwing a fucking dart at a globe.
Like you have zero idea what and who you're getting something like I'm looking for like a light television show to get into and you're like Game of Thrones.
It's like that's that's a lot.
At least Game of Thrones has continuity though.
No, that's true.
Good luck finding continuity.
Marvel is like pick a show on Netflix.
Yeah.
Any show actually.
You can pick whatever show you want to.
Watch one episode.
Pick a new series.
Watch any episode.
Pick a new series.
Only watch the pilot episodes of all television series streaming on Netflix.
Like the third one.
You don't get the pilot episode.
You don't get the pilot episode after you've watched episode three, six and nine in that order and then you get the pilot.
Anyways, to wind his back.
Sorry.
We we oh my god.
I've told the last one train of thought.
So when I was trying to come up with a new idea for a campaign that I wanted, I always knew that I wanted to do superheroes and then I talked to Madison about it.
She mentioned new Metro.
I thought that's kind of a cool setting or a way to play it.
And I really like the cyberpunk setting that cyber the cyberpunk 2099 or 2077.
I think it's 2077 has to offer and then like the original source book, which I think is cyberpunk 2020, which is crazy to me.
I was just looking at the PDF like it's cyberpunk 2020.
Because you just learned it was a TCRPG.
Yeah, I just learned that it had a source book to the game series on which the game also phenomenal.
But I like that setting a lot.
I like superheroes and then playing it in a more relaxed fashion.
I think is kind of where all those interests intertwined.
And then that is when I started looking for source books and came upon capes and crooks, which I've done some Googling.
I have no idea who it's by.
Wait, I have credits.
There's credits right on the inside.
I'm just going to say to the lead designer is just because that's going to be easiest.
Lead designers, Justin Hanlon, writers, also Justin Hanlon, Richard Hansren and Alina.
I'm not going to try and pronounce that last name.
Let me see it.
It's Alina in it's an R.
I can't read.
Nevermind.
Anyways, I can't even see the text.
If there's a team name for them, they did fantastic.
But when I was looking up TTRPGs specifically in fifth edition for superheroes, capes and crooks was the most consistent among any of them.
You can buy the source book on what a Crit Academy you can also buy it on.
What was the other thing I was just looking at?
It's like drive through RPG.com.
You literally just look it up.
You'll find it.
It's only $15.
I did pay for this one because I don't believe in pirating most of the time.
But it's got a wholly new system.
It's bound in fifth edition rules.
So you still have your normal combat and your action economy, your speed, your AC, your hip points, all that fun bullshit.
But everything else is different.
But every other thing is different.
And that was something I didn't expect once I bought it because I watched a review of it and I looked at some of the preview pages and I was like, oh, this is just like a little tacked on edition.
A little tacked add-on.
Nope.
It's a wholly different system.
There's no spells.
There are no traditional classes.
No races.
No backstories.
No races.
No backstories.
No roles kind of in a different way.
It's a wholly different system.
But it's really fun.
And I like that it's as different as it is because it's enough removed from fifth edition when you're playing that you're like, wow, we're like superheroes.
But it's still in fifth edition that I had.
I didn't have to teach my players how to play a wholly new game outside of learning how the power system worked.
I was like, character creation is truly the most difficult part of this.
Yeah.
Learning how to make characters in this goes crazy, man.
It was nuts.
But once you figure it out, everything else is pretty simple because it's still 5e.
It's just everything is retextured, reskinned, and things are added in as well.
They still have a lot of just reading descriptions of spells, and they're not called features.
They're called enhancements in this universe in Capes and Crooks.
They've basically, some of them have been ported directly over for fifth edition and then given a new like techie name.
Others are wholly new creations to the book.
Both are equally cool.
But in terms of story, well, we'll talk a little bit more about the source book and like how the character creation and stuff goes.
But a jumping off point for the story, I knew I wanted to do like a Teen Titans-y kind of like, not coming of age campaign,
but like new heroes fighting their way in the world and then becoming a team and then seeing how that kind of dynamic goes.
The running title that I've used for the campaign that I haven't really said at the table because God forbid they ever act as a group is the Sapphire Prodigies.
Because they're all young, they're all new, some kind of more than others, but like new to the group experience, new to being a team.
In this particular universe, it's very unheard of for there to be teams of superheroes because being a superhero is something that's still very kind of taboo to an extent.
And just in recent years in this setting has become a normal thing.
There was a point where I was trying to decide whether or not I wanted them to have to like earn their hero license.
So like going through exams and then actually having to get like a credential that says like their license to be a hero.
But I kind of skipped that because I didn't want them to have to go through all that.
So in theory their parents and grandparents went through all the hard work about like earning the reputation of heroes.
But yeah, it's a little bit more realistic in some ways than other systems and getting to kind of explore that group dynamic
and then hopefully play this out for at least another year, which is going to be our longest, one of our longer campaigns I guess is going to be fun.
But that was the basis for the story.
There's a lot of interesting stuff in here about background and I kind of took pieces of it that I liked and pieces of it that I didn't.
I've mixed and matched some in-universe history and lore with like campaigns, not campaigns, with video games that I really like.
Web series that I've read, some Marvel stuff, some DC stuff, so it's kind of like an amalgamation of different shit.
But that's kind of where the story inspirations come from.
Towards the end of the episode or session I guess I should say, we'll talk a little bit more about like the individual characters and sort of how the party has worked itself out.
But I think just jumping straight into things, what the character creation is like, if you want to grab one of those sheets and like hold it up and wave it around.
So we'll put in graphics later.
They came with character sheets. I didn't like them. They gave me a headache to look at.
So I over the past couple months.
They're just very bright colored and a little clustered. They try to fit a lot of things on very small pages.
So I made new character sheets. So I designed them to look like comic book covers because superheroes and comic books.
So this is, there's like most of them, I don't know why I'm showing the camera like we're not going to put graphics up.
So just to hold it up.
Also shout out to the art on the front of these. Madison has done being AI to the max and has come up with some really, really cool character art for all of our heroes.
Which has been really fun to do for this particular campaign because it's so superhero based.
I make comic books that recap each session and I go through and I make character art of like specific moments and kind of mesh them together.
Which is fun for me.
A lot of fun to watch.
Like this is kind of, it's several pages long because I just wanted the information in like way that we could hold it out and like make it pleasing.
And then these are all powers which are basically spell slots.
Yep.
But yeah, do we want to go through?
I'm going to just literally hit the table of contents.
So there are, the table of contents is fucking huge.
I'm not going to walk you through everything just going to jump around to some of the more important things to know about the source books.
So here, six, welcome to Cobalt City.
So in the book it's called Cobalt City. I changed it to Sapphire just because I don't really like Cobalt all that much.
And it's Elle's Burstone.
Yep, it's my fiance's Burstone which is where the name really came from.
But the concept for the cities in general is that they're basically what are called gym cities that are all around the world.
The rise of superheroes or I guess super powered beings kind of came at a significant cost.
So right around the turn of the 21st, 22nd century, things started getting kind of crazy.
Basically people started manifesting what are called deviations in the universe.
And some are positive, some are negative, some are incredibly destructive.
Others are very helpful or minimalistic.
But it didn't just happen to people. These deviations also began to manifest in the wildlife and the sort of the floor and the fauna,
which basically very quickly turned the normal human thriving environment into a very hostile planet very quickly.
And there are some deviations that manifested in people that went like catamclistic and we see like the wiping of countries basically off the face of the planet.
Just things go to anarchy very quickly.
Like Mad Max outside of the city.
Yeah, Mad Max outside of the city. At some point I'm sure we'll do a one-shot at seeing and exploring what's out there.
But out of that comes the gym cities, which are basically golden cities or golden worlds kind of around the globe that are managed by like what is left of the world government
and then policed by DRT, which is Deviant Response Team.
And the idea behind the gym cities is that they're supposed to be as close to a utopia as you can get for having deviants and non-deviants living in the same place.
So if you're a Deviant, you can live in a gym city. If you're a non-deviant, you can.
Like food, water, rent, all of that stuff is mostly paid for. Like there's always going to be an option.
You don't really have to struggle to survive.
So it is, but it isn't. The take that I wanted to put on it was that there's the idea that we could get there, but it's not going to be executed that way because nothing is ever really that good.
And it's the same concept with Cyberpunk. Like we imagine ourselves in 2077 and 2099 having technology that, I mean even today, there's enough wealth circulating in the global economy that if we wanted to end world hunger,
it would take like a handful of the few billionaires that live in the United States to fix that problem.
So the idea is that from the altruistic perspective, the further we get in the future and the better our tech gets, the better the world becomes and like the cooler the cities can be.
And then it just, in true Cyberpunk style, it doesn't fucking end up that way.
No.
Not at all.
Why would it? There's still people.
There's still a class system, spoken unspoken DRT is corrupt to an extent very authoritarian. The cops basically are hands off anything that is deviant related, which is the majority of the problems that occur in cities like this.
So this one takes place in Sapphire City, which is one of the first cities around the, one of the first gem cities around the world that essentially says vigilante ism is okay, which then comes the term superhero that becomes coined.
And then of course the opposite being supervillains.
And so then you have this kind of like human artificially created system where you now have superheroes and supervillains, which are essentially deviant to fall on either side of sort of the moral line.
And more or less, they're defined that way based on how DRT views them.
So if DRT considers you a villain or a vigilante, that's what you are.
If they consider you a villain.
That's also like a hero. That's also what you are. And the reason why the team thing in this universe is so different is that teams, because being a superhero is very recent and just new to the game being legal.
There aren't that many teams to speak of because you're not going to like put yourself and six other people on live television.
If it's illegal, it's going to be a lot easier to survive as individuals.
And so we have one major group in the city before that called the millennial group.
It's the only really successful superhero team.
And so then we pick up at the beginning of the campaign where we have all of these sort of new heroes or new ish heroes, new to the team thing come together.
So that's kind of the setting for the world.
On the opposite end of like biological deviations, there are also magical deviations people unlocking like ancient magics that have existed in the world.
And then the Doctor Strange is the one does the what the fuck Zatanna like.
And then you also have people that are like Iron Man because you have technology of 2077 2099 where you can make suits like that.
You also have your Batman's. You have people.
Yeah, yeah. Batman's that are just trainers.
One of the roles in the creation that we'll go over is literally just you train.
You're a guy or a girl that trains. You're a you're an it you're a thing and you trained.
Yeah. And you trained really well and you focus on martial arts and you're competing with super powered beings.
It is just as ridiculous in this and concept as it is Batman competing with anybody.
And there's also aliens in this that we've not.
Yeah, that I won't I won't touch.
I'm leaving that.
There's also can I actually aliens that come down during this.
Which is crazy.
So during it's called like the rise.
So during the rise, which is when deviations start popping up in the source book, it says that aliens begin to visit somewhere altruistic than others basically acknowledging that the people of Earth have gotten to a point where they can be acknowledged and like a galactic.
I don't know stage.
I haven't touched that.
I don't plan on touching that for like a hot minute because it's enough managing people to people relations and androids and people with the age of
and like animals that have become people.
Why would I throw aliens into the mix to like I just I'm not I'm not really there yet.
Public opinion is also huge in this.
It's not a system that I've worked out finitely yet because they don't fucking have one.
I'm going to talk about some of that when we start talking about the campaign.
Yeah, them as a party.
They don't really have public opinion yet, but more.
Everyone has an individual one, but as a group, you all don't really have one on established individual public opinions are very strong, very strong.
And basically what that looks like is from a role play perspective.
Some people are going to be more or less willing to work with you based on what your public opinion is in the world.
Yeah.
And the same thing I think happens in any other fantasy based campaign to this just puts a more formal system to it.
Yeah, because it's a world where social media does exist.
Social media is still a very big thing. That's the majority of how superheroes and even supervillains promote themselves to the public is through social media.
Because like in true regular fashion, news networks very quickly fall out in the future and it all becomes social media based and social media driven.
So that's how people promote themselves.
Yeah.
100%.
Show my favorite aspects of this world.
I just have to kind of shout that out.
I think it's such a cool way of like making it feel real of like during your downtime.
You're like, cool, I'm going to check what my like, what my Instagram followers are up to or like what people maybe maybe somebody saw the actually break into that building and break that guy's leg.
I'm going to see if that has affected my like general public status and like if I'm a criminal or not.
Yep.
And then also to have like, and we've started to kind of like roll that in our last session of like, like, hey,
What's the perspective?
Why are you associating yourself with the people that you are associating yourself with?
And then other people in that world asking those questions, like, why are you associated on any like in any form or fashion with a person that like the general public considers to be more or less a villain.
Yeah.
An anti hero to an extent, but like the level of harm that they bring in the lack of cooperation with like the general police and public makes them label the villain,
which I think is just really cool from a like role play standpoint.
You ask yourself those questions in game because it was something where I didn't even think about I like, I didn't think about why my character was associating with certain different characters.
Because yeah, there are other like people at the table.
That's why she's associating with it.
It's the whole reason to have a character in this world be like, hey, this person fundamentally goes against your morals.
Yeah.
Why are you working with them?
Why are you hanging out with them?
What's up, man?
Why are you putting your name on that?
And that's good for you.
And you're like, oh, I should probably talk to that person and get them to stop breaking people's legs.
Even just having conversations as players and as characters becomes really fun too because then it's not just, oh, we're all working together because it's fun to be superheroes.
You know, it's like, I'm working with you because I want to mentor you.
I'm working with you because we ended up on the same case by coincidence.
And now I feel like maybe this is an opportunity to collaborate or become a team.
It starts to become very, your party being a party starts to very quickly become grounded in like real legitimate reasons instead of just like we showed up at the same time at the same place.
Yeah.
Which is in fact how the party came together in the first session.
It was the right time and the right place.
Yeah.
But they still have not managed to really be a party.
It's just a fun challenge when you have so many different people and so many different heroes that are all very dynamic.
Yeah.
But dynamic to such an extent that none of them really have solid reasons to want to hang out with each other.
Yeah.
Which, I mean, I think that's going to create some really interesting dynamic with that public opinion thing because some characters care more about public opinion than others.
My character personally cares a lot about public opinion.
And the last session had a character with a really great public opinion be like, hey, what are you doing, man?
Like,
Yeah, no, 100%.
You could be doing a lot better and you're choosing to do this.
That's a choice.
So going in and going through character creation before we start talking about like the campaign itself.
So I'm just literally going to go down the line and then Madison, if you just want to talk about what the process was.
Yeah.
If you just want to pull up yours and we can sort of walk through yours.
But that's my girl that I play.
So the first step out of nine is choosing an alter ego.
So those are backgrounds and traditional and traditional fifth edition and D&D, I think even in Pathfinder 2, they have a similar system with backgrounds.
Where it kind of, it gives you small bonuses and like it's more for a role play thing like the Urchin background and fifth edition gives you something like advantage on checks with like merchants or allows you to be thrifty in certain scenarios.
If you pick soldier, it basically means that you have like repertoire with whatever the standing military and the area that you're in is.
You can always find like a base to stay at or an armory to have access to that kind of stuff like your background is.
You can always like find a spot to play in it.
Yeah, like it's average to play.
Yeah.
So backgrounds are more for flavor than anything.
But in this, they're also kind of for flavor.
They're just, they're a lot fewer.
I've got benefits from it.
And they do come with benefits 100%.
So I'm just going to speed run some of the ones in here really quick.
So there's Average Joe where basically you're just a fucking guy.
You're a dude.
You're a man.
You're a dude.
You work a nine to five at a seven, eleven.
Like you're just, you're doing what you can.
And then your proficiencies and your skills are based around basically being able to blend in with the every man.
With anybody, whoever, however, normal people will like shelter you as long as it doesn't put them in danger.
Because like you're just a guy.
Like you're one of the, you're one of the people.
You're just a little dude.
It's definitely the most boring out of all the ones on here.
But you know, to each their own.
The next one is a businessman, which is exactly what it sounds like.
You are a businessman.
You got to read some of the bonuses for these because they're goofy.
Oh yeah.
The bonus for Average Joe is, or I call it the features, common citizen.
You just have one of those faces.
Since you're average and fit in perfectly with every other non gifted person, you're easily trusted.
You can easily find a place to rest and recuperate among citizens unless you've shown yourself to be a threat.
Yada, yada, yada, yada.
So for a businessman, their feature is let's make a deal.
One of the largest benefits of being a businessman is understanding the process of businesses and how to work it in in a subtle way to get what you need.
Wherever you're in a place of business, such as a store, a manufacturing plant, office or similar, you can easily convince any lower level worker to allow you to set up a meeting with someone in charge of running the business.
The other ones include criminal, doctor, doomsday prepper.
Doomsday prepper is crazy.
Yeah.
I just got to put that out there.
It's a curveball.
That's fucking crazy.
It's a curveball.
Lawyer, reporter, which is days you should talk about in a minute, mechanic, and I think that might be the last one, and scientist, and spy.
Yeah, it's just kind of, they're very general, so it's basically just picking what your day to day profession is outside of being a hero.
Like we have a scientist in our party, we have a doctor, we have an android who doesn't really have a background, but whose background is based in his origin.
We have a reporter.
Well.
A reporter.
I'll talk about that.
We have a door-dashher.
Yeah, so I came into this with the concept of basically what is a world of which a college student wants to be a superhero, but being a superhero is expensive.
You've got to be able to get gear and all these things.
Incredibly so.
And you're also trying to balance college classes on top of that.
So you start doing like fucking door-dash in your superhero costume because you can get through the city faster.
Or you can, I just wanted to play a college kid, and that was her alter ego.
So we ended up landing on reporter as that and just kind of re-skinning it.
So it's kind of a custom one, but we keep most of the features the same.
If you want to go ahead and read the features out and all of the bonuses that come with it as an example for the listeners.
Yep, so for a reporter, your feature is notable contact, which you still have not really used.
You have a short list of reliable and trustworthy contacts who act as your network liaisons.
You know how to get messages to and from your contacts, and for a fee, you can find out a piece of information or something.
That's pretty fair. I know the most NPCs, so.
You do know the most NPCs, for sure.
And you also have the most world knowledge when it comes to people and all that fun stuff.
You just haven't had to use it.
Yeah.
So some of them are more useful than others.
The notable contact thing is nice, but the other one is like nearby garage for mechanic, which is you can find a garage wherever you are.
You can disassemble any equipment you find and then put it back together.
The difference in nearby garage versus notable contact is kind of fucking wild.
Notable contact is like I can send an email to someone and...
Fucking Doomsday Prepper is broken, so the feature is called Jerry Rig.
You essentially get to know exactly how to make any tool for any particular job once, at least once.
Yeah.
So if you're like, I gotta kill Superman, you can figure out...
How to make that kryptonite bullet.
How to at least make the gun that'll fire the bullet and maybe even how to make the bullet casing itself.
It doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna know where to get fucking kryptonite.
Yeah.
That's something a scientist can figure out, because they're like research and knowledge based, but like...
The difference between fucking being able to make any gadget for any occasion and then being able to send an email to somebody is very different.
Yeah.
Well, aren't there other things like you get a bonus to...
Yeah, you also have bonuses to other things like skill proficiencies, languages, equipment.
Oh, that's boring.
Yeah.
Again, the background is more to just give you an idea of what you do in your day to day.
Yeah.
So then after you pick your background, you do...
Or your ultra eagle, I should say, you move on to origin.
And origin is basically how your deviations, how your powers manifest.
So this is like your race?
Yeah.
This is...
It's kind of like your race and then also a little bit of your class as well.
Yeah.
Class.
So the way that they've done it in here, after origin, you pick roll.
And roll in origin is basically a mix of race and class.
Yeah.
And they kind of cross over in different ways.
So again, just to kind of shotgun the ones that we have in here.
So for origins, we have Android, Beastman, Experiment, Freak Accidents, Genius, Inherited,
Inhuman, which is our alien, Mutant, just think X-Men, Training, Batman, Undead,
Totally Bucket Wild category to have in here.
And that's it for our origins.
Yeah.
So for example, Daisy is a freak accident.
The specific freak accident is basically like you're a normal person and something happened
to you and now you're not normal.
And this can manifest a lot of the time in like fucked up body parts and...
Think like Flash in the lab when the lightning hits and all the chemicals go boom and now
he's got super speed.
And then Amy Fox falling into a pit of electric eels.
Yeah.
Or Spider-Man being bit by the spider.
That's what freak accident is in this world.
Daisy specifically was getting hit by a fucking stray bit of magic during a fight that she
was watching because she was a big superhero fan girl.
It was like, I'm going to get so close to this fight and then she got fucking blasted.
She's a super fan.
And now she's a superhero.
Blasted.
Started blasted.
So since...
We're talking about freak accidents.
So they have traits.
This is where the kind of race stuff comes in.
But the way...
The reason I think it's a little bit classed too is because it really plays into the representation
of how your powers come out.
So yeah, we kind of explain what freak accident is.
So you get an ability score increase.
I'm not going to read all these off for a bit because it's a pay for the source book.
But it determines what your size is, what your speed is.
What's your same pay for the source book like we're like?
What your language is, your innate skills.
And then I'll read this one.
Everyone has a unique feature.
So for freak accident, it's innate power.
You get to choose a first level superpower.
You can activate it whenever you want to.
And it doesn't cost a slot.
So that's similar to a lot of the wizards in magic casting classes where you get free
stuff.
It's similar to Warlock.
Or not Warlock, Jesus Christ.
Teethling, bloodline of whatever.
It's like you get certain free spells a day.
And then just to talk about how different they can be.
So then you have Android where the concept is basically in a cyberpunk world, we definitely
have some sort of robot, some things, whether they're like in-home service bots or like
trash bots or murder bots, battle bots.
Like there are robots in some way, shape, and form.
And so a player can choose to play as one of those bots.
We have one of those in our party.
I knew we would end up with one.
There were forged.
We're playing on a table full of men.
Somebody that's familiar with Fifth Edition and how broken the races are.
Go back and listen to our race episode.
We've had a robot at every table that we've had.
Warforged are the, in my opinion, single most broken race in all of Fifth Edition.
Prove me wrong.
You fucking can't.
They don't need to eat, breathe, sleep.
They don't have to really long rest ever unless you just want to get your spell slots back.
They don't incur points of exhaustion.
They can't be poisoned.
They can't be affected by most status effects.
They're immune to a laundry list of things.
And they're just as broken in this setting.
Come to find out.
Yeah, it's crazy.
I would love to play like a Warforged spellcaster.
You get to pick.
So one of their unique things is that you have technological integration, which basically
gives you proficiency and a new check that is a new ability score, not a new ability
score, Jesus Christ, a new skill that they put in here in lieu of a religion check, which
is technology.
And technology checks are fucking rampant at the table because when you're playing in
a city full of incredibly advanced technology and you're interacting with social media,
tech is a very big focus.
There's not a single person at my table in this party that is not at least a little proficient
in some way with technology, with the exception of I think one person who's an old man.
So and he's not even that old.
He's just older than everybody else in the party.
He's a little old.
Yeah.
Just going to read some of the things here.
You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned and immune to disease.
You don't need to eat, drink or breathe.
You don't need to sleep.
You can do six hours and that's it.
You have integrated arm and which gives you a plus one bonus to your arm and class off
rip and your technology checks, any proficiency you have is double.
Because you're a robot.
You know, you're just walking tech.
Beastman, they're what I've called them any powers or any deviance, which is basically
just slaying for animal powered.
The way that I interpret the lore in the source book is that animals can become more
human and then that can be a player or an NPC or people in the humans themselves, their
deviation can manifest in the form of animal like traits.
So it can go either way.
And it's kind of hard determining which one it is.
Batman.
Correct.
Kind of shit there.
But they're fully intelligent either way.
Yeah.
So you basically, for this one, you get to pick like natural armor.
You pick your Beesha origin.
So there are three options on here, natural armor, feline agility, keen senses.
I'm not going to read the description for beta.
You can kind of parse out what those are supposed to be.
You get like additional critical attack dice with brutal melee attacks.
It's fun.
You get to play like an animal creature.
Is there any other one that I want to highlight for me to move on to the next one?
Genius.
I'm not going to tell you what that does.
You're a genius.
That's one of the critical thinking skills here, it's exactly what you think it is.
Your intelligence is buffed by a fucking lot.
You're incredibly smart.
Inherited is one of the more magical, or one of the more magical origins on here, which
is Thor.
The image that they included is basically Diet Thor.
The beef I have with Inherited is pretty true.
Europe, two people at our table have Inherited.
I know.
I'm aware that's what it comes from.
So Inherited has one of the most broken features of any origin on here.
I'm half-ling shit.
So whenever you roll a 1 on a d20 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you
can re-roll that die and use the new roll.
You want to know what's funny.
There is nothing in the description on here that says that you can only use it up to a
certain amount of times per day.
So this isn't like a lucky point.
This isn't forcing somebody to re-roll.
Right?
This isn't like none of that.
This just means that you physically cannot roll natural ones unless you roll another
natural one on your second roll because you do have to keep the second roll.
Bucking and saying absolutely bonkers.
I will say one of the people who took that, he took it simply because he knows that he
has the worst rolls out of anyone at our table and rolls so many not ones that he was like,
I'm going to get ahead of the curve here.
Three people at our table?
No, we have two.
I was thinking of the wrong person.
We have two people in here.
But it's basically Thor.
So your powers are bestowed to you by a deity or a force of nature, whatever, whatever the
fuck, that's your power.
So that's kind of where it deviates a little bit instead of just being purely technology
based or purely animal based.
It's also like a little bit of magic.
Inhuman, you're an alien, I'm not going to explain that.
Mutant, X-Men, you're basically one of the prettier deviants.
Your powers manifest in a very traditionalist way.
You get to choose an at will power which are basically cantrips.
I'm not going to read it.
Training, you're a Batman or Iron Fist, take your pick.
Undead, I still don't understand why this is a fucking origin but it is.
Basically you died and came back to life.
Jason Todd.
Yep, died and came back to life.
Lazarus Pit.
You have dark vision.
You can also take yourself to one hit point from the very beginning of the game instead
of going to zero.
You have advantage on all death saving throws, poison, disease, don't need to eat, drink,
or breathe.
So reborn.
Yes, reborn.
Don't need to sleep.
I'll have fun bullshit.
Fuck with reborns.
So yeah, that's the base setup.
I'm going to skip some of what it has in here and go to rolls because to your god, the
zero advancement table is fucking insane.
Yeah.
So now we have rolls.
So the advancement table real quick also kind of works more like Warlock like you get your
powers from like you only get so many and they all are always going to be at a certain
level like you don't get to have like a first and a second as all of them are available.
It's the Warlock table.
Spell slots.
Well, the advancement table itself is a little bit different but what she's referring to
is that instead of, oh, I got ahead of you.
You did.
You got a little bit ahead.
So the mechanics work is that every person, every PC is like a new model.
is a magic user there is no purely marshal or purely magic
everybody has access to all spells all of the time
uh... which makes it kind of more fun in my opinion from a role-play standpoint
is it means whatever power you take there's a little bit more liberty in
getting to like rebranded and make it yours it's the same the other way around
if you're like a like a
fucking doctor strange you can also throw fucking hands
yeah you can pick like an ability to pick up a fucking uh... heavy object in
your environment and then get like proficiency with it and deal double
damage like you can fully customize your character to whatever extent you want
to
uh... because of that it works more like warlock which is what madison is getting
at you only know a certain amount of powers
those power slots the so
though the spell slot level levels up with you as you move
and then you have your at will power which are basically cantrip to balance
out the fact that you have
fuck all power slots
uh... for reference
anybody that's familiar with the system
at the tenth level you only have
three powers lots
a whopping three
unless unless you take a class or a roller feature that allows you to have
seventy six
mass and then
uh... but that's kind of how the power system works with a little bit more
once we get to the part where it tells you to pick powers but it's it's a
different system
roles this is your class uh... and it's class in a very loose way so the way
that they explain it in the source book which i really appreciate is that
uh... roles are very
flexible
so you can have a
telepath based or at like a telekinetic based brute
or you can have a
uh... marshal based
element controller like
uh... it's very open they're not quite a shoehorn it's basically what role are
you gonna take in combat
uh... so it's giving you like a more tropey kind of like kicks on bikes kind of
deal were like
what is going to be your position when you are fighting as a team or in the world
you're doing
uh... so there's a brute which is basically just
all of their benefits you get uh...
higher constitution
you get better health
your power building on fires a corner wisdom your proficiencies are basically
bucking everything
saving throws a kick ass
uh... and then you get a bunch of fun bonuses to strengthen doing on our
strikes
uh...
another mechanic that's introduced in this is called stamina dice
uh... it's kind of like it's kind of like hit dice but they're more widely
used them you can use them to basically do anything you can spend an icon of the
couple new ones to add you can spend half of them
to bring yourself to use uh... one hit point instead of zero
uh... and until the you can have any more
uh... you can also spend them to regain power slots which that's the one that i'm
pretty sure i came up with because
you know
it's a little fucking silly that you only have three at level ten
and in the at wills are
insane so many of those are fucking nuts though uh... but with that being said
the way that i like to use them in a dice in that sense is that essentially you
can force yourself to go beyond in a very intense moment
uh... as like a bonus action and
uh... roll so many stamina dice and then get x amount of power slots back
the more times you roll to do that the more consequential it is because the
idea is that you're pushing your body harder and harder
to regain those power slots
so the more times you do it in a given day
the higher chance you have of gaining points of exhaustion
uh... so if you're on like your third time going beyond
you have a significantly higher chance of incurring three points of exhaustion
uh... as opposed to doing it the first time where the check is like
five or six
anyways that stamina dice so roles also determine how big your dice are so for
bret they get a d twelve
so
uh... if you're rolling
like if you if you have uh... you bring yourself back to life from zero to one
and you take half of like sixty twelve
that's going to be significantly higher than somebody who stamina dice is like a
d six
six
right because you add that much health
equal to the amount of dice to roll so anyways that's kind of fun
uh... there's a very long list and scan kind of hold it up and hopefully
be able to plug it i don't like
straight up sugar pdf cuz again you have to pay for it but
and you get class features basically
so deadly debris
third level you can pick up any nearby debris and use it as a ranged weapon
and do a shit ton of damage
uh... and dominoes
indomitable level ten you can reroll any saving fail
uh... any saving throw that you fail
uh... you can use that more and more so i'll help yet
uh... especially indomitable well ultimate defense uh... you have
resistance to all damage except psychic damage
which is fucking
bonkers at level that's a third
third level a third level
third level
that's not even like while raging that's just always
uh... i think it's something you might have to act that i haven't read all of
this super all the way through is nobody chose pretty pretty much an example
so our other ones are crime fighter
uh...
where it's very i was playing with braces what the fuck was that sorry i'm so
i was booze old it's almost two in the morning yeah um... crime fighter sleepy
yet anybody that just kind of fights with traditional techie weapons like
think nightwing batman robin those kind of fuckers
uh... but again you could be totally telekinetic and also be crime fighter
which is which is cool
uh... some of their role features are basically being proficient with a lot of
different kinds of weapons their stamina dice are detains instead
they start off with more weapons in their equipment and then you basically
choose like a martial fighting style which is very much based on fighter from
fifth edition
i'm not going to rest of them
uh... you also get well
one of the fucking features is wild by the way at tenth level you get a feature
called psychological warfare were basically yeah somebody it's not a
yeah uh...
you choose somebody in your first any that you can see and then uh... fucked
in mentally with your words
if they fail
their frightened of you and you can just keep doing this
this is the feature
i mean once they roll out of it it works like regular fear with they can be
feared by you again but uh... yet but in the office just the idea in my head of
the way that works is just batman where is she over and over
yep
uh... element controller
think average are the last air bender
all of the things revolve around picking an element of focus on or
it's very similar storm but you can be storm you can also be
fucking
iroh from avatar you could be a
any of your traditional element controlling things you can do lightning
on that fun shit
uh... you get control points so you can spend those to basically so it's a
three-point source of points you can use them to do different things at your
powers like extend the reach or only choose one creature in a room instead of
tend to hit that kind of deal
uh...
and then we have exosuit
iron man
we also had a robot take exosuit so that was fun to try and figure out how
that was going to happen
uh... basically whenever you have your suit on you get a shit ton of bonuses
uh...
enhanced strength by by nature you also get like built in med shots
uh... all sorts of fun bullshit
at the twentieth level you basically go berserk and uh... become damn near
unkillable
and get a whole extra action for i think a full minute
all in any time you roll an attack you roll an additional d six
on everything
it's nuts
uh... gadget tier thank artifice are not really the rest of it it's exactly
what it is
uh... hard cut it next
jumper which we have a jump which is really cool it's all about teleporting
this is one of the more unique roles that they have in here slash classes it's
basically uh... anytime one of their features is like crawler
yeah like night car i think exactly night crawler so what other features is
that huge crush on night crawler that's just a lot of people that a lot of
people dead
uh... it was from the superhero squad fighting video game and series which was
a children's what i'll give you cut man
holly shit that theme song which so fucking hard
so what are the really cool features of jumper is surprise teleport which is
basically if you teleport before you attack enemy you have advantage because
there's surprise like a rogue
and like a row
it's really like it's in pieces from different ladies they combine a lot of
different things fourteenth level you get mass teleportation it's the exact
same thing in fifth edition
mass teleportation
bad things can happen
uh... and then void slip which is nuts you basically get to do mass
teleportation whenever you want to
it's also at the twenty-th level so i mean do whatever the fuck you want
and then madison's thing
uh... which is mystic
yes i took this so mad in the book it's like doctor strange or like one day
it's like arcane arts uh... i
took a very different direction and i went what if
it's comic books instead and robert was like
tell me more
okay explain by
uh... and so her individual thing which is kind of like a reskinning of
on that it's not comic books by the way yeah there's an any universe reason
and there's an actual basis for her powers it's still magic but it's not
fucking comic books i didn't let that happen
okay so there was definitely the direction we could have got which was
very like spider hammy cartoon with i have a lot of hate spider ham
i was great in spider verse i just the the corny fucking like gwen pulled in
between the white pages but shit the fuck up about is not a fan of the corny
shit man i am anyway so uh... mystic is magic
yeah i'll uh... so she ends up mimicking she's able to mimic powers that she
reads about her comic books in the way that a wizard would be able to
like read about a spell in a spell book do it she's like a pair thirty six
different spells yeah and that's what she does except it's with other people's
powers because super like comic books exist in this world about these
superheroes
uh... if you want to go ahead and read so instead of like studying a spell for
reference it would be like her picking up a comic book and then reading it and
like really analyzing and looking at how they do their powers and then being
able to replicate that her own version of it yeah which is a really really
unique and original take on what this could have been
thank you uh... some of the wizard by the way it's
yeah it's it's wizard it's a hundred percent of the the features you don't
really have a lot of features now that i'm looking at it i don't have a lot of
familiar at third level which he absolutely didn't want
uh... you get like a force armor at first level
uh... your at will powers are significantly stronger at sixth level
which is what i will say this about this class feature it gives you
force armor you can take a armor or you can take uh... buckin
powers from other people oh yeah that's you there's a whole bunch of shit that
comes with this uh... but you can it also gives you cure wounds and then
something else
cure wounds and we're free you get to use them as force armor shield bonus amount
of time today so it's really nice and that it gives you the the things that
you need to take to be a like decent
fighter so you can become the support for your party and then also choose
whatever you want to do for fun which is really nice about that class can be a
wizard also fun fact that the familiar uh... robert and i got into a full
screen fight over the familiar
cuz i
hate familiar as i don't see purpose i also don't connect with animals in real
life
like i don't get like i don't get me wrong i don't like the purpose that
people of animals purpose objectively and mechanically is that you
in theory can get advantage
on an infinitely higher number of roles than anybody else in your party because
all you have to do
depending on the day that's it is not
depending on how your dm rolls your conjurer you're familiar if you have
them go on the same turn as you you can just have them
run up to you
give you the help action
but i think about a bomb
you have buckin advantage
i uh... what i have you can have your familiar to that every night
as to a point robert so that's why you then have to move the cat around like
it's another little mini player that you get to control but that also gets to
take actions like i don't understand what
i where's the disconnect
i don't get a whole nother person
it's not a person it's a cat
can take actions like i don't it's it says in this book which we are i i don't
know what's happening with it it can't attack
meaning it can't attack is in the fucking book it cannot attack bullshit
i promise you you can okay
uh... it is out loud acts independently of you obeys uh... your thing in in
combat it rolls its own initiative that says it can attack the continuum
which i think is dumb i'm overruling that it's my world that's stupid anyways
uh... we are like i'm telling you i can
i communicate with your familiar telepathically which is dope you can see
through their eyes
uh... as an action you can dismiss them and then resummon them
all sorts of fun stuff i told robert if you gave me a familiar that it's sole
purpose would to be another target on the battlefield basically a meat shield
she would have me chill
uh... anyway i do have a cat i like my cat
and i'm actually
ideal of the cat i just don't understand his mechanical bonus i do understand
that i like having a little guy's mechanical bonus is advantage
i don't know how else to tell you that
okay scenario you're fighting the big bad
it's like if you hit this
it's a guaranteed win or at least it's going to be significantly better for
you and your party
you got your little familiar he's been playing support do an object interaction
whatever
in this moment maybe we're gonna sacrifice the cat
we're gonna call it help action
where the cat's gonna physically distract your villain
in whatever way you see fit that doesn't mean we're actually putting them in
harm's way
you know how advantage on whatever it is you're gonna do
i want you to suppose to rolling cool i get a good idea one thing before my cat
with an a c of four in two hit points
well let's think about this if you deal you are the idea to kill a cat deal forty
damage to the villain
in the cat didn't even hurt them
who do you think the villains going for
the cat no i know you try again i feel like you're gonna go to the cat try again
who's it gonna hit
try again
wrong cat
wrong cat wrong no you're wrong you know i love to play strategically in
combat i'm going after the person that's doing the most damage also think
you go after what's gonna do the most emotional damage at the very end of the
fucking fight like i'm gonna leave them alive
if you can't tell
my players have a lot of paranoia about the way that i like to play combat
which is very ruthless because i think it's stupid
for villains that have spent the whole god damn campaign
learning about their players to then fuck off and make dumb act i also
recognize i have a lot of like
it's just issues with you
right
right then better this campaign though you have significantly significantly i
let somebody live when they died three times in the span of two rounds i know
all
i'm i'm happy
it's been going good this campaign but i still have
i'm getting over my trust issues anyways with him and i have poisoned the rest of
our table and i encourage you're a psychic you can read people's minds you
have telepathic push mental barrier you can understand people whatever i don't
care
shape
uh... you're a shape shifter dog
you shape shift you shape shift you get like it's druid
is ruined
i don't want to tell you is good
uh... speed sir this is a unique one it's very much like rogues but so i think
it would cooler
basically the last but the way that this one works is really neat i think it's
some monk features the more movement you take in a turn the more damage you
get to do
other sex your movement speed i went through here in theory
by the time you hit level twenty your movement speed as the speedster can be up
to five hundred feet a turn
and the more the more distance you cover in a turn the more damage does you get
to add to your your final damage
so it's a whole thing we like a run around the park in like city and like
the injustice ultimate with the flash were like yeah
which is sick
you can't make it's alright as fucking sick man it's alright anyways a lot of
the powers for that is uh... increasing your movements be doing more damage you
get bonus on dexterity checks uh... all that fun stuff
one of your ultimate abilities is basically being able to create a
fucking hurricane
that does a lot of damage ultimate feature the twenty-level feature for
mystic is counterspell
because counterspell doesn't exist in any other way shape or form in this
universe
and we've went over this
that makes sense mechanically because how the
is a fifth level player
countering anything in this universe when one of those abilities could be
rockets
riddle me that
you can't
you cannot
so we've locked it behind the twentieth level because i'll be down
and you're gonna stop
one of my three powers
that it uses a villain
but you know you exactly each shit
i think that it should come a little bit sooner than twenty level and maybe
we'll we'll talk about that in a later date uh... so now that we can take a
case
maybe now that we've picked an alter ego in an origin and a role we would do a
billy scores you know how to do that if you've watched the previous episodes in
season one if you haven't fuck you go listen to them okay working i also love
you if you're listening
there's a happy
uh... and then you choose your powers in your skills and stuff i'm not my
favorite powers and talk about some of your favorite
i'm not a favorite powers
uh... you also have equipment
yeah on that list of equipment is a tesla can
yeah that's just there attendee ten lightning damage
uh... my girl also has gone there's not an ammo count on that by the way no
uh... you can just
going real quick so enhancements are kind of like features
and there's some fun ones out just got the right and i have to read through all
of them in the book and hence the service out mine
uh... one called precision which is when you roll uh... attack damage every die
you roll that the one is treated as to
uh... which is pretty nice really cool and steadfast resolve you're able to
push yourself beyond your limit your limits for a moment you can use a
bonus action to uh... increase your proficiency bonus by one for one minute
really cool when you have features that allow you to have spell slots equal to
your proficiency bonus
for free crazy that's so nice
raise that gives me when we were at uh... level fifteen it gave me six free
spells
or six free powers when we were normally only supposed to have three powers
uh... which is crazy
uh... then i also got i
agonizing blast which is really similar to agonizing blast from fucking
by the end some of them are a bit of the same some of them when you make a
range power attack at a d four to the damage
uh... then you also have at wills which are cantrips
uh... my favorite is kinetic blast which is basically elders last
uh...
favorite cantrip
i'll say that really cool thing that the source book does is with their
cantrip you can also level up
parking kinetic blast with the same bullshit features that you can with
elders blast yeah it's great
uh... but the elit everybody has access to it
yeah anybody can only one who has it though right but in theory every every
one of yours could have kinetic blast and fuck you if they're even if they're
all different fucking roles in origins every single one of them bitches can
have their own
and i'm glad that's
yet that may do something this is a world we can also break your character
so easily which is really fun to make you feel like a superhero and that's why
things get so crazy is they do because how are you gonna feel like a superhero
if like you you aren't super here like if you want shit yeah if your batman
with no prep time because prep time doesn't exist in this universe yeah
cool you fight superman you're dead in two seconds yeah you know unless we give
you
i don't know kinetic blast which does like a shit ton of damage in one turn
i'm gonna highlight another thing that i think is really cool it takes uh...
dumb ass cantrips uh... from five e that don't do anything and makes them do
something i mean is light is an example because my girl's name uh... nightlight
she goes
uh... that's just like a little fun little mechanical thing uh...
uh... so the light can trip is normal uh... it does the
object a longer than ten feet
uh... twenty-foot radius dim light blah blah blah
yep yep uh... and that it's level uh... you can release a burst of light
between yourself and an attacking enemy
when you're attacked by creature within thirty feet of you you can use your
reaction to flare bright light
uh... to impose disadvantage and then at eleventh level
uh... you can release that light to do that for any creature that you see that
is attacking an ally within thirty feet of you
and then at seventeen level
uh... when you use this power they the target has to succeed on a constitution
savings or be blinded until the end of its next turn
that is from the fucking light can trip
that's crazy as cantrips into things that are useful it's super super sick
uh...
because it's are also ninety nine percent of the things you can do in this game
cantraps are sorry at willpower's willpower's weapons are also fun uh...
just cuz you get access to like guns and shit in the air i'll go i'll read some
equipment of the quickest so you all can kind of get that idea so for armor you
have like kevlar threat armor survival car um... them we go up to medium kevlar
body armor synthetic
survival suit tactical carbide on uniform
battle suits uh... bucking the adams suit which is basically uh... fuck you
eat shit i don't get that i don't take damage
uh...
or melee weapons batons daggers great clubs hammers uh... sickles fucking
spears
crossbows pepper spray
i have pepper spray and i'll have a stall a sling taser
by the way i also have a taser let me read you really read you what taser does
because on this lineup it's fucking insane
taser
low on a hit the target must exceed a dc twelve constitution saving throw or be
restrained until the end of their next turn yeah it's not the taser
is a weapon you can have off rip
a first-level player
can force another creature to make a dc twelve constitution saving throw
i don't know why i have not used my taser in game
i don't either from being honest
fact about my character who is a spell casting character has the most weapons
out of any character in at our table including the fucking battle android so
again
riddle me this why would i use the mace
that does one d eight blood or one d six bloodsling damage when i could use the taser
which does one d four lighting damage and then also gives me
advantage on them because they will be restrained
oh it's crazy tasers are tasers
uh... and then for our like gun guns
uh... these are called marshal marshal weapons
uh... sir bigger melee weapons some of them include a flail battle axe great
sword a lot of traditional fantasy stuff and then like laser daggers laser
blades
uh... a tesla blade which is basically like a laser blade
uh... a tesla glove
uh... warhammer war pick a whip tesla whip that kind of fun stuff they love
putting tesla in front of anything
and then you have your bigger like a keky of course and then you have your
larger uh... marshal ranged weapons
one of them is it
fucking chain gun which is a many gun
cannot wait to sell rifle
well what's funny to me is on this list we have
chain gun and then right above it is blowgun
so we have chain gun which does
three d six piercing damage
and then you have or sorry three d eight piercing damage and then you have
blowgun which does one piercing damage
you know what the benefit of using a blowgun is if you hit somebody with it
in your head in
you're not revealed
but you can do one damage
there's not even poison that comes with that
yeah there's a revolver a shotgun sniper rifle
you as a dm right now to explain the scenario in which a blowgun
uh... okay
you have
fifteen inches
and they're all using blowguns
fifteen inches fifteen inches fifteen inches in a warehouse or fifty assassins
in a warehouse they ambush a group of five players and a huge part of the
issue is now going to be figuring out where fifty points of piercing damage
is coming from
congratulations you discovered two of them what about the other forty eight
blowgun is only gonna be successful in a setting where you can either throw
numbers at them or you
dm some shenanigans about what's in the tip of your dart was in a little
talk maybe if you do like a fucking kryptonite yeah like in the tip of this
blowgun is rather than the dart is poison take three days of poison damage you
know
that's
yep the uh... that's literally the only other alternative is
uh... in numbers
like a goblin ambush you know i'm saying
right as you can like use it to like a knock an object over
like
hit a button
don't worry guys were in the super secret like
we're sticking to the fucking d r t headquarters we gotta get that door open
yeah i don't know why i got this then you have to take out my fucking straw
uh...
was the range on that actually
tell me the range
uh... okay under feet
twenty five two hundred what
whose breath
i would like
lungs
for reference the revolver caps out at sixty
uh... i don't know if i should with the blowgun it's crazy
you could successfully do it by shooting with the blowgun
and hit the people
that's a good time
another thing for equipment is tech and our king items its magical items
don't give me a huge list is the kind of encouraging to make your own which i
tend to think i'm pretty good at but
energy shield you equip it gives you a c based on the rarity
element gun you can fire an element
uh...
fucking this one's wild deviant shackles
uh... have a little bit of a campaign yet but let me just
me tell you what they do
uh... you and any creature you share the passcode with can use an action to
basically turn the shackles on and off
uh... any creature from tiny two large can be used or can be bound
uh... you can also it says that like you can make the magical or not magical
the fun part is the checks to come with it
a successful d twenty dc twenty hackers tool check can open shackles or
a dc thirty athletics check and break free
those of the only two options it gives you
uh...
that's you can place them on any incapacitated creature
and then they're basically permanently incapacitated
the way i know and the opening line is these manacles suppressed deviant powers
so if i slap a couple of shackles on somebody who i've knocked out with let's
say upload art
uh... congratulations you don't have access to powers
the way i would cut off my arms
is that not fitting
so the joke there
we ended up going
all down our own uh... flashlights in my mind and uh... my character got her
already got off
yeah
she'll drown spy transmogrifier roba the wizard
robo the lost madjai
it's a little bit of a
i have to say this about the source book and i kind of love it
is sometimes when it's just plugging things in from five e it keeps the language
of like really magical things
because the
verbatim
like verbatim i don't know what i don't know how to pronounce it
but i'm gonna show you the word
augury
yeah so that is just ripped straight in and so it's like cool you use dragon bones
to tell the future
you're using
description to tell the future
in this setting and i who are we robbing in the setting to get dragon bones
i
dragons exist in this world canonically
this implies that dragons exist correct
part of the description is that like the reason that people have access to
magic when their deviations occur
are like
fucking manifest out of nowhere which in the source book it also says you could
be born with deviations are you could wake up as an eighty five year old and
just have them
now you can fucking launch newt's new fingertips
it's fun with that
uh... anyways as a toddler just with the power to which is why in the source
book it talks about everything went to shit because there are a lot of people
very quickly realized that like
i can do anything anything i want to in there wasn't a damn group of people that
could stop
and so they said let's suppress this entire group
yeah that's pretty much it as far as character creation goes mean you have
spells and powers and um...
uh... you have your enhancements i guess one thing i want to say my favorite
power real quick one thing to do powers
uh... yeah pick a favor for a quick and then we're gonna do signature powers
which is one of the core things in spoke
i think you know what my favorite powers
uh... if i do i would suggest you pick a different one
or i'm just gonna i'm gonna
go straight to signature powers
is this an at willpower no okay
the what is it is the one i use all the concussion beam uncle concussion
me i thought you were gonna say kinetic blast is going to be a little sad that
you can catch and be more of a fucking time
so first of all another great thing
uh... this is a power this is a bonus action so you get to also like do
an action on top of this
which is another really cool thing so concussion beam
uh... has a range of a hundred and twenty feet you or a gadget releases a laser
that streaks towards a creature of your choice
range power attack on hit they take forty six damage
and the next attack role made against this target before the end of your next
turn has a vantage
thanks to the subtle concussion left from the impact on the target and then
this raises with each so currently we're playing uh... at
i'm playing at level five
and i am doing uh... sixty six plus one d four radiant damage
uh... at the fifth levels and said at the fifth level and i'm concussing people
a subtle concussion brain david love the phrase subtle concussion i love that
it's called concussion beam that shit is so funny
but again
anybody of any class can take that
uh... also anybody of any class can take buckin web shot
yeah exactly what you think that is
any
the class can take
telekinetic push and pull
we had a buckin in our one shot which will talk about eventually and we can
talk to it last time but like we'll go in depth like a full uh... breakdown is
that was just insanity such a good or robot
uh... picked a power that allowed him to hop dimensions
he took blink
that it's called phasing in this but he a blade rise in the m should have looked
over everyone's list and in and like you know i'm in canon universe reasons on
how they could happen
send the moment the only thing i had to say was damn i guess d r t is come up
with some pretty cool technology in this time jump
yeah
cuz he was like
and i guess you gotta find a way to counter magic was he said i go into the
ether and we went
home
he said sorry the
anyway the ethereal and we're like
the ethereal
you're a robot you can take elongation is an android
that makes it like
like robot extend the arms
you can take ground freeze
as a fucking telekinetic
tell me that works
you can't
because it doesn't you make people think that the ground is frozen correct
that is exactly where i would take that
you know it's like that bucket hypnotist thing when they do the shows and it's
like you can no longer move your arms in a certain direction and i don't
know i wish it i can
yes that bullshit
i have it so easy when it comes to like fitting my powers because i just go to
robert and go hey who's a superhero in this world with this power cool it's
mine now
i just get to come up with new people all the time ago this is who it's based off
of
and i was that
uh... beyond enhancements
you're having way too much of that bracelet i'm
beyond enhancements are you have
what are called signature powers
uh... which are basically so you have your can trips about contingency your
at will powers you have your spells
your powers and then you have something entirely different which is signature
powers
so the way signature powers work is that they do not count towards your total
powers known
they can only be used once per long rest and they don't require any power slot
to be used
think of
all of your basically i want to say
fifth level spells and above are all
your signature powers
and again
any class
or any role any origin can take any signature
uh... i'm i'm a hit you with a couple just so you can understand how absurd this
concept of a minute
uh... big bang
signature power instantaneous one action
you send cosmic negative energy coursing the any creature you can see
and then they have to make a concept if they fail that
they take eighty eight plus forty necrotic damage
uh... if they're killed they become fucking fungus
anybody can take that
so the next one on the list is black hole
it is exactly what you think it is
you create a black sphere of negative energy from your hands weapon or gadget
that ripples out in a sixty-foot radius fear
sixty-foot radius in a whole fucking big that is
uh... from a point within any range you can see which is a hundred and fifty feet
each creature that area makes a con saving throw
if they fail they take twelve d six necrotic damage
you can take that as a speedster
you can create black holes at the tip of your fingers because you run so god damn
fast multiple people at our table to black hole i pretty sure almost everyone
at our table had black holes signature power uh... huh
which was in craigslist you get the contingency once i talk about a few more
because i mean this is really where the absurdness of this universe comes in
and i'm not fine
uh... you punch someone
uh... if they have a hundred and fifty hit points are lower
not a hundred
hundred fifty hundred fifty hit point lower
uh... fucking global invulnerability
which is the same nuts
uh... yeah but anybody can take it
yeah i had eleven level anybody can have that
basically nobody can fucking hit you in a ten foot sphere
nobody at all
that matter what power they use black hole can't do it big bang can't do it
stupefying stun can do it you are fucking invulnerable
and that's here
you can take that eleven level is that uh... fucking again
i love speedster because the idea that is nuts the flash just starts using
is just suddenly you're unable to hit them because they're moving so fast
like it's bullshit
feeble mines you turn somebody into a rock
people mind is crazy on a failed saving throw they take five d six psychic
damage which doesn't sound like a lot but check this
the creatures intelligence and charisma scores both become
this creature can't activate powers use gear understand any languages or
communicate in any intelligible way
the creature can however identify his friends and follow them and protect them
if possible
uh... we had a character who started going around casting people mind on like
now people along if you had to guess how long would you think
how often do you think you could make a saving throw to like this i know the
spell i want to say it's one of the days
higher
but jesus we went from ten to a hundred
the only two numbers
uh... thirty days
so at the end of every thirty days this creature can
repeat its saving throw if it succeeds
it ends it can also be amended by
greater restoration or heal
it does not say it ends in their immune to it for another thirty days it just
says it ends
so if i just want to be that guy i can just
follow this person around in their day-to-day life and every time they
magically roll out of it once a fucking month
congratulations
you're a rock again
like the bucket snail me month at that where it's like your mortal as long as
the sale doesn't catch you speedster
can take feeble mine
the speedster
was he fucking do you run into their past in like removed like pull them out
of education they never went to school
but the focus that bucket shakes them real hard people mind that's
fucking nuts rattles things around the seas is anything else i want to talk
about and then you can go to contingency which is also fucking sick
bullshit
uh... mind blank
you just get to wipe somebody's mind for twenty four hours completely of all
information yeah
uh...
prismatic surge is basically i love prismatic it's chaos bolt but on
steroids to the nth degree
uh... is just a shit ton of damage of a random a couple of random uh... damage
types
all of them reverse gravity
fifty-foot radius aqua reverse underfoot cylinder
zero gravity if they fail their dexterity saving throws to grab on to an
object
uh... sonic lab
have fun with that uh... sonic clap using a device beller or a clapping
powerful hands together
you release a powerful burst of thunderous
each creature that can hear you
very well said
that can hear you not that you hit not that is within radius
neck and fucking here you
take a guess on what time you can use this on what action
but action bonus action
hundred twenty feet bonus action
on a failed saving throw
you hear this
hundred twenty feet you hear it you're not even in the room but you hear it
anyways
if you are fifty hit points are lower you are deaf and for a minute if you are
forty or lower
you are deaf and and blinded for ten minutes
uh... fewer thirty points if you are you are blinded
deaf and
stunned
for a fucking
our
uh... and if you are twenty hit points are lower
dead you are killed
instantaneously regardless of its current hit points a creature
not of the material realm is forced back to its realm of origin if it isn't
there already
i cannot return to the plane for twenty four hours by any means
it's crazy about using that in a city and there's like a building
nearby it's not let's think of the average hit points of a civilian yeah
probably taking tenor below
you walk into a fucking building and hit him with
sonic clap congratulations everybody within a hundred twenty feet of you
has just been murdered
it's fucking insane man
absolutely insane that needs to not be allowed
uh... he said it because we're always fighting like near people my god
fucking there's a timer mine in here there's regenerate which basically says
you touch somebody if they die
they come back with five d eight hit points
mind-blank and i talked about that going to what contingency does which can be
used with any of these powers at least i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i
on signature powers
but i basically did it to be regenerate myself
uh... contingency is my favorite
you can choose any non-signature power that has an activation of one time and
then can target you uh... you basically create a contingency plan you go fucking
batman mode
uh... and
you expect the power slots for this but the thing is this lasts for ten days
uh... so what you do is you cast it and then you do a long rest and then you get
those power slots back but you still have that contingency effect in place
so basically whenever your contingency thing happens uh...
that power goes off immediately so you describe the circumstance when you use
them so basically you say contingency so whenever water breathing so it works the
same way as preparing an action does in fifth edition
yeah so basically but i can say that lasts for ten days
so the one i used uh... was when i go down to zero hit points
i'm going to cast cure wounds on myself
and i'm going to fucking bounce up
and i was giving myself five d eight plus five health so if i went down i was
just coming back up to basically at the time full health for me because i was a
fucking
uh... uh...
it takes effect immediately after the circumstances met for the first time
and then it ends
uh... you can only use it on yourself though but
it's insane because you use those power slots before
the spell takes place
yeah i can prep myself to go into a fight and be like cool i'm giving myself two
lives
essentially
or any other broken bullshit alternatively i go down to zero cool i'm casting
whatever like my highest damage dealing spell is and i'm taking everyone down
with me
i love it
some of our signature powers are a little more broken than others
i love it
i mean
one of them which is kind of silly when you compare to any of the other ones i
just mentioned is ambrose disem dart
i mean it's still like ninety dollars
ambrose dim dart uh... yeah you hit something that's willing
and uh... they get ninety hit points back immediately
it ends blindness deafness any disease affecting them
it has no effects on constructs are undead
so
uh... bucket we're losing this fight were level eleven
merry christmas your ninety hit points yeah that's
that's fucking insane by the way this isn't like they
the it is as regain ninety hit points so skies limit on that to someone like a
character has a hundred twenty hit points in their ten
it's not just like they're at ninety they get ninety more hit points
and
goes crazy
yeah so it was those are signature powers is can talk about enhancements uh...
enhancements again any class can take any enhancement
which is really cool
some give you just bonuses to wisdom saving throws
uh... others like add
pluses to your an arm strikes there are some that allow you to gain more
powers from different classes
uh... some allow you to integrate weapons like into your body using cybernetic
enhancements
uh... like it's really cool they really they basically took features and then
made them relevant because you can stack them in really fun cool ways
like one of the miss chill body you have resistance all cold damage any
creature that touches you takes five
uh... takes damage equal to your proficiency and also has to make a
consaving throw
uh... all sorts of fun shit
is one of the mechanic than i haven't mentioned yet and then we'll talk more
campaign stuff before i wrap up the episode which is called heroic moments
it's another one of the unique mechanics of introduced
uh...
the way that it suggests doing it is that your car
yeah that your players essentially get to vote at the end of each session
uh... which i don't do it this way but your players get to vote on the end of
each session
uh... who deserves a heroic moment so heroic moments are basically
uh... did your characters do something that is heroic is it
making us like a self-sacrificing decision is it just like really on top of
damage did they
uh... lead in a really cool point that they come up with a really successful
strategy
and then at the end of your session you know okay who gets the heroic moment
and then your team can sort of like your players can elect who gets it it's like
a bardic inspiration and then you get a bardic inspo that you can use on any
role you want
and then you can store them depending on your proficiency level but
it's really fun
the way that i do it is uh... a little less limiting i will hand them out myself
or i will let the table like make a request in the moment to give somebody
a heroic moment as well because
i don't know i feel like you can get more than one in a day you can only store
one but you can
i'm not gonna like
everybody in the party
does some really heroic shit in a given session or i eat a day i'm not gonna cap
it to one person
like just because this person was heroic doesn't mean that person isn't
either so
it's just like another fun hero thing
um... be a bit of a courageous good behavior does that's pretty much everything
we have to cover mechanically in the source book without getting into somewhere
like super specifics it again all the mechanics of the same in terms of size
movements be at hit points all that fun jazz
i love it truly i think it's a great companion source book a great little
addition to fifth edition so you don't have to learn a whole new system i mean
you do with the way the powers work but once you understand how powers work
uh... like if you've ever just played a fucking warlock
yeah you're good you're good
and if you haven't played a warlock you should check out uh... our table talk
episode in season one
bro we're on camera you can't do that i have to do that
it's a requirement it's a biological function for those who are listening uh...
robert keeps the trash can underneath the table so he gets spit into it i have
permanent nasal drainage
it's on my medical file it's in my history
i have to spit
it can't basically all of the fun mucus he bullshit that you all get in your
nose
and that then drips down or you blow out
it goes down the back of my fucking throat
i've not
constantly
it never goes away
so um...
each shit respectfully i'm gonna spend on camera because i would rather not have
a glob of mucus sitting in the back of my throat then
uh... talk and feel miserable cell
fair enough
i don't know what i was talking about
um...
basically it's the same as playing a warlock
oh yeah if you haven't listen if you have a kind of like before listen to our
episode in season one where we talk about classes and uh...
and do a breakdown of them you can learn how play warlock fair
yeah pretty much so to end today's session uh... i'm gonna talk a little bit
about how i decided to set up my campaign based in the capes and crooks
system and then we'll also show uh... some of the fun stuff that madison has
made for our players the table and even some of my mpcs
i've told you a bit about the world and sort of the universe that we're playing
in
it's grounded and all that nothing and none of that has changed i'm not just
like gaslighting you
so it follows
right
not crazy five
we have to count every time like we don't play with together every saturday
falls five
heroes in the loosest terms possible so we have nightlight who's like a twenty one
year old
up-and-coming spider man you kind of character
uh... finding her place in the world that we have uh... the shadow who is
basically batman but a lot more brutal
was somehow and actually has powers so he's not fucking useless
uh... you've you've heard what nightlights powers are the shadows is
or the shadow
is his powers are i don't know how to fucking say that
basically the opposite of nightlight in some ways where everything it hers is
like in a light generated everything is
everything he has i'm having a stroke
uh... everything he has
his head right man space in shadow powers and everything is branded to be like
using the darkness which
fun fact basically means that he's only useful for half of the day
uh... but he gets buffs when he's in the dark so all of his powers are amped up
and he doesn't really fun stuff
he's also a telekinetic so that's the the role that he chose which means all
most of his damages psychic
so he's
really leaning into like this scarecrow fear toxin type of batman where it's
like it's psychological warfare but like
literal yeah i'm in your i'm in your fucking brain
that man meets venom meets scarecrow
yeah and then add like telekinesis to that
it's it's crazy it's a really cool fun mix but he's the character
who has like a really bad reputation
it's like in a world where every deviant who calls himself a superhero is
responsible for maintaining the reputation of superheroes because it is a
very new and still highly criticized thing
he is the black sheep that goes out in like
breaks people's legs in
literally traumatizes them to deal physical damage to them
uh... and does a lot of really fucked up batman fear-based things that basically
get villains in check
so he's he's a hero
uh... but the public doesn't necessarily view him like one
uh... dislike a lot of the public in dc comics doesn't view batman is one
he's a vigilante who breaks it in
racks up the bills when his batmobile goes through a building
you know i'm saying like it's the same level of okay you're not a fucking hero
but you can put on the costume anyways like what do you mean now you're just
beating up a poor person that's not yet that's not fixing the like infrastructure
got them yes
so his background is that he's a little bit older he's like thirty nine he's
forty he's uh... somewhere in that age range we never really narrowed it down
he's the most experienced hero out of all the people in our setting
he's been around the block for a while and he kinda it takes on
in a way a mentorship role within the group just having the most experience
and it's kind of like
this disgruntled batman
who never wanted a robin in the first place but then suddenly ends up with
like four of them
uh... doesn't know how to interact with any of them because he's been a solo
hero his entire career also think of like the robins didn't find him he looked
at them and was like
mine but then also didn't also didn't want the robins and then also didn't tell
the robin so it's just like we're like in a group and he's like what are you
doing and we're like it's just fucking go to the stories like
okay
it's like
a fox somebody up if they look at you though but also don't talk to me did i
get adopted without me knowing that you adopted me and then you also didn't tell
me that you're not but you also didn't want to adopt me yeah what's up man
is a conflicted character really fun care it's a bit like that batman but
absolutely hates robins but also can't not help but bring them in
uh... so that's him and then we have uh... volt who's a really fun character
uh... if you listen to previous episodes volt is the one that fucks up the
campaign in a mighty way
uh... i'm not gonna put that on the player is i still fully believe that
that was the character
basically makes a lot of really poor decisions go listen to previous
episodes where i break some of the
some of the worst moments we've had at the table down
his was a long one
uh... yeah i was threw up
uh... in that session where things got so bad that i had to do a full hard
reset uh... in our little one-shot fixing the timeline
in concept
he's like a sea lister so he's like the same level of experience at the
shadow has he's a little bit younger he's like in his early thirties late
twenties
uh... and is like a slightly more popular hero who works in
uh... uptown he doesn't work in the eastern fringes like the outside of the
the outskirts of the gym city in sapphire city
uh... he like works with more
positive like
uh... nice in neatly wrapped cases and is very pretty on the outside like where's
a white and gold suit blue and gold suit were in the middle of a change
uh...
and is like a speedster kind of and uses lightning powers and teleport
as a character is just kind of fucking crazy
and as a character like his powers is just as nuts as you think somebody who
teleports constantly is right like that you think about what that person's
mental state is that's exactly who he is he is like a mad scientist with the
ability to teleport
all in use lightning in a city full of technology
and with that comes a deep understanding of how technology works so again when i
tell you we have a very tech based group it's really a minute based
um...
and he also works for d r t which is like the f b i in also the standing
military for gem cities
which is just kind of like a fun undercover kind of conflict of interesting
uh... our other hero
loosely call him that because he's not really a hero yet
as uh...
sabastion
we call him by his first name because he is like an eighteen-year-old boy who
does not want to be a hero but is going to be because that is the campaign that
we are playing in
he just got a superhero suit and just picked his name
which is cause a which means wind in japanese
uh... his father is his panic deeply so and his mother
is asian only because he wanted the character to be
asian in some respects because he has a deep love for japanese culture is also
bendage of an it's not like an appropriation thing um... is an
archaeologist yeah so he he loves all of that but uh... his power so he picked
element controller for his uh... role
and
not his role his origin
uh... i don't know what the bucket role was
and i'll get a little i'm getting things mixed up in our main elemental person
yeah he's the element controller role that's the role that he picked
uh... so he wields the wind if you couldn't pick that up by cause a
uh... japanese wind he uses uh... he's also kind of a one of our more miscalculated
characters so
volt is very
and kind of rides the line between mystical and like material his powers
are also the inherited background so he was gifted
powers of
uh... immense basically electrical lightning powers i haven't talked about
it or exported in the campaign so i don't want to say it for a madison but
he's cool
is inherited also the person who plays that character listens
yeah in the person who plays i don't like out of that stuff is there people
that also listening campaign that are part of the campaign that don't know
what his origin is i'm believe that them
uh...
but sebastian slash causes one of the more mystical characters because instead
of just like wielding the wind we branded it as like he talks to
wind spirits and then sort of communicates with them and uses them to
pull off what his powers are so it's not just
i can wield the wind it's i can
talk and communicate with like this natural force that only i am able to
speak to
uh... which is a really cool spin on the traditional element controller
uh... like take and way that we see a portrayed a lot of universes
he cares about family first and foremost is family runs a shop in the shittiest
part of town
so that's kind of where a lot of the reluctancy to become a hero comes from
uh... his father is also like the number two ranked hero in the entire city
and is like known for being a mega asshole
so he doesn't live with his father anymore he lives with his aunt who runs
the mechanic shop so he's also got the mechanic background
that's kind of like the unwilling here with a lot of potential figuring it
out as they go
uh...
it's very like i don't want to be a hero because that puts my family at risk
and i'm friends with a lot of gangs and criminals in the area because that's how
i survive
literally told his father last session
go easy on the gangs dad
and his father is the number two hero in the entire city
and also an asshole goes
their gang sebastian which is like
that i hate i like i'm not team inferno but like
yeah is a fair point he goes now the gangs are alright his his best friend
ricky
ricky sanchez
ricky
has shot has created many people his own criminal empire
and we've watched doesn't want to drugs pulled a gun on nightlight
pull the gun on me immediately on our first official killer the campaign at
like multiple kills he just kind of uses guns like he teleports behind people
and then shoots them he's on like a fucked up coke in every upper you can
imagine as well as some uh... plot
and he's a best best friend he's like yeah but
is the idea is that like sebastian living in a really shitty part of town
uh... like makes friends with the people that you have to make friends with to
survive so that ricky is one of those people that like protects the shop
uh... make sure that like the gains that he's associated with don't like run
protection money and all that kind of fun stuff
uh... so that's a passion
political character
my my friends also from the same part of town which is wild to imagine yeah but
yours is like i'm a bro college student looking for an affordable place sebastian
is like
i i i i've been more or less grew up there
yeah so it's a little bit different in that way but it does not to take away
from like where she is it's just kind of different background uh... so we have
vaults we have sparsians as cause a we have nightlight yeah i mean i also get
i a little bit more of a description for night like that and talk about what
had chip and then you can finish yours and will close out with your character
uh... they have chip who's our android the one that i alluded to earlier being
fucking broken
so the role that he took is
exosuit
which is where i had to do a lot of thinking
what is an exosuit look like to a robot is it just a bigger robot
that you can step into is the littler robot
like is it i wish i was going to style mecca like what are we what are we doing
gone with just a bigger robot just a bigger robot
now i picked fucking nanobots uh... because a lot of the technology at
references in the source book is nano technology because we're in twenty ninety
nine and that's a thing that we have so his
uh... suit that he dons and off is basically
uh... a really advanced
uh... technological fucking we've a nanobots it's like i'd be an armor from
in game
if you can
if you know what that is or can imagine what that is
yeah if you've ever heard of this like little and everybody watch marvel
movies that's all i'm saying
not everybody does i understand that but everyone knows in game
not everybody
look up shout out to any of you that are listening or watching that have not
watched in game madison looks like a fucking fool right now i just learned
that it would never mind
i already talked about that
where i was like is so
chips origin is probably one of my favorites so he is uh... the way that
we start off with him
is that he is this really experimental under uh... like under wraps
uh... robot that is combat unit that is essentially being designed by d r t
uh... to be able to adapt to any deviation within the city
uh... if anyone's familiar with comics you'll very quickly pick up on this is
basically the sentinels
from axman
brats that are eventually become so advanced that they can respond in
overcome and adapt any deviation or any power that they
come face to face with and that's where
comes in so uh... he basically is the first prototype first of his kind
is on basically a shipment to be destroyed so that nobody can get a hold
of the technology and so that they can continue to make more prototypes without
like leaving the dirty laundry around
uh... and then that's shipping it's fucking yoinked it gets robbed
uh... because they have to go to the shipping dock which is a hop skip and
jump away from the eastern fringes where a lot of our fun criminal gangs like to
hang out
uh... so
they get spucking robbed
it gets robbed hard
and i got any of the grandfather who's uh... fucking jersey gangster
half-man half-shark that always is smoking a fucking cigar
robs the shipment for guns and ends up with a fun little surprise called chip
uh... they managed to turn on somehow by fucking with them enough and then he
basically gets booted is a newborn and instead of being this like programmed
murder bought because they fucked something up in him like bucket c three
p o to job is just as he's basically just see three p o but like just turned
on
so instead of having like this murder personality he's just a guy
he's a little baby that don't know nothing
he follows orders with anybody ask him to do something
uh... and is basically raised by a bunch of criminals like the movie chappy
he just gets raised by a bunch of fucking gangsters and that's his
socialization
uh... and then we literally pick up with him in her first session where he's
bodyguarding for cod father is all of our other heroes break in coincidentally
at the same time
in the car for the warehouse
and then he defects because he basically is fucking kidnapped i was
rereading my session one notes and the first interaction that nightlight ever
had with chip was when she was trying to de-escalate is during punching people
and is she's like hey
maybe we calm down
and uh... she gets fucking dog piled by multiple people and he goes i've got
this and picks up just goes
high little one and she goes no and kicks him and runs and that was the
first interaction yes chips chips cute chips uh...
the sort of the night eva tate to the campaign uh... which is kind of fun to
watch and explore is it's like getting to mold this little
not little actually he um...
is the strongest character i would say in the party off of
all i mean dot dot even marshaly this the powers he has to like he has a
ridiculous amount of broken range debilities uh... just the origin he
picked in the role he picked in the way he's built his powers
he is fucking stacked uh... his health is double anybody else is in the party
he can do as much damage as anybody else can
uh... he's got shield which can buff is a c two like twenty one started with a
twenty in constitution started twenty one
like he has a busted character which is what you would think would happen when
you have a robot that's partially made from nano technology yeah he can do
anything
so you know fingers crossed a party can turn into a good person
which is kind of what's happening he's got a friend couple digga man who i
haven't given a name
uh... and then going
sort of talk about your care as a matter of fact daisy dense uh... twenty one
year old uh... college student deeply in grossed in like fan culture she's a
huge huge superhero fan always dreamed kind of being one
uh... then she gets her own powers in his like i'm going fucking full send uh...
she doesn't have a lot of ties to sapphire city in the way that the other
characters to her families from another city
she ends up uh... kind of basically moving to sapphire diamond city
uh... yes
i couldn't remember was diamond or ruby it was one of the two
i'm not diamond city it is
it's one of the ones that says it exists in the book
there you go
uh... and she kind of moves it's kind of sad looking back she kind of like
moved to the city on her own at sixteen uh... it could she got her powers which
is pretty young
and it's been kind of like very like friendly neighborhood spider-man
building her own little like
she she's like
oh yeah i've been like a superhero like five or six years now she's been
rescuing cats from trees
big on social media really big on social media she went by really couple times
mostly because she's just like
no she's just fucking
like in the same way the redneck rap was like
going viral with all of her interviews of she's just like
there's no professionalism there very distinct personality to yeah she's very
like bubbly peppy uh...
and like loves what she does and so nightlight has her uh...
her little comic bookie powers and she's just so fucking happy to be there
yeah like the the hero in the campaign that wants to be a hero and enjoys being
a hero and tries to make everyone else be here oh it is like yeah there's good
in everyone
i don't care if you have a gun to my head
i know there's good in you kind of vibe uh... and then
she has uh... like her couple fun i'd say
i may be spun the bracelets for when she made friendship bracelets for every
character
uh... that she meets
pretty much
yeah which are what these are so if you want to talk about the the three
characters the nbc's that you've got bracelet sure i'll hit three mpc's
i'll also have mine so this is my blackout bracelet oh
i'm going to wrap things blackout uh... she has a secret identity
along with her other secret identity called blackout who's like an edgier
persona
uh... that she uses for like recon stuff
being another fun character facts so one thing that i didn't mention about the
shadow in terms of why his origin is is interesting is that his father is the
mayor of the city
and his younger brother is one of the most popular heroes in the city
and they don't like each other if you can
surmise
you know parse that one out
uh... like he's dark and brody has like black hair a beard he's a doctor
he just hates life but he's doing what he's got to do because that's kind of
what he sees his role as
and then you have uh...
jury
who is like is brazil lawn hair
this is me i can blue-eyed clean shaven like works out all the time in his
powers are like super cookie cutter it's basically he can fly he can go really
fast and he can punch people hard and he's like durable
even though that's never been proven
uh...
he like has daddy's money using like the mayor's money and basically putting
out comics of himself he has a super heavy personal p r team
uh... he's known all over the city he's not even that experienced of a hero
uh... but everyone knows who he is and everyone also knows who the shadow is so
like the contradiction between the two is kind of funny
uh... the other thing which is also funny is that the shadow is objectively a
much better person than juries
oh yeah juries like
frat boy douchebag in it for the fame in the fun
and the booze in the women
but also like being a hero is cool sometimes to yeah and then shadow is
like now like i'm genuinely in it to help people i just
think that i have to break people's legs to help them
yeah it's
very very fun dynamic to play with uh... yeah they just recently got into a
combat encounter slash session with one another and the tension is palpable for
sure yeah
is one of my favorite mpcs though jerry hundred percent
uh... and then we have parker
who it comes from new metro
is a bit of an origin story to that uh... which i don't think we have time to get
into but we will
next time we talk about the campaign basically best friends with nightlight
uh... is kind of like a z not nightlight with daisy is like a hero hater
kinda narcissistic in the way that some people like batman with the whole
contingency thing of like there's no one that has powers that isn't gonna go a
little wrong at some point
uh... it's the whole like
power corrupts absolutely
uh... and like he he sees any understands that there are people out
there that are doing good with their deviations and with their powers but at
the end of the day
there's a greater risk of them going sideways
then there is of them doing good
uh... and that's kind of where the fun like dynamic comes between
daisy
daisy is a superhero lover in is a literal superhero that is actively
hiding her identity from parker
parker doesn't like superheroes and he's like his version of justice is like
community involvement in the actively volunteers it like soup kitchens in
homeless shelters and
does advocacy stuff
so he's like
kinda harvey dent and uh... the batman begin movie uh... where it's like he's
the the right way he's the way it should go
uh... and what she's like to do you read the june about this cool new superhero
she's so awesome he's like uh... huh
okay so
vigilante small terrorist
it's not like it's it's that's and that's the right is like it's like she's
like
well okay
that's fine
those are strong words
this is bracelet is that he's got a green
i have this one which is uh... daisy and parker friendship bracelet so it
cute and then we have uh... more who's probably one of my favorite mpcs
alongside jury
uh... more is the inspiration for his character comes from a book series that
ever actually
uh... this something i should know before we finish this episode when i talk
about origins and uh... inspiration a huge inspiration for this campaign
especially locations in some of the mpcs
uh... comes from a book series online
uh... called the heroes rise trilogy from getting that correct
uh... the guy that wrote the books and preachers name is zackery levy or zack
louis something like that
that really is an actor
uh... idea i know that he's got a very similar name
anyways guys awesome hero uh... basically they're they're like little uh...
a o three flip books
kinda they're like choice games i didn't know i was playing dn d and then i found
out i was for multiple years
read the whole series it's super fun you get to make your own hero
a lot of locations named locations
in sapphire city uh... come directly from that universe
jury comes directly from that universe morphe comes directly from that
universe he's the protagonist of
the second series in this universe
uh... but his power set is basically
he is one of uh...
one of the many animal powered heroes
the deviance i guess i should say
in sapphire city around the globe
and they face a lot of discrimination because they oftentimes have the
uglier power set
like jury who is
clean cut he looks like a normal guy he's traditionally attractive his powers
are fun in very like pc
uh... is looked upon very differently than somebody who has like
a elephant trunk for a face and is disfigured because of the scales growing
under their fingernails
uh... like those are the people that get often the most mistreatment in the
city
uh... and morphe is basically like
the epitome of all of those things that could be
like really good
uh... so he basically wakes up every day with a new set of powers that are
directly linked to animals
some days his face is that of like a lion or cheetah
other days it's like a fucking doberman
next day could be a chicken
uh... and he can essentially turn any part of his body into
whatever kind of an animal party wants it to be in so he's an incredibly
versatile and potentially really powerful hero
uh... but he's kind of in the same situation with nightlight worries like
up and coming he's kind of on the
like lower than spider-man level and is just trying to find a way to make a
difference in his community in the eastern fringes helping
uh... the enemy the the any powers
uh... and so kind of his role in the campaign at this point in the city at
large is to be like a really positive role model in a really positive image
for
uh... any powers across the city
and is also a really good friend of nightlight at this point as they've met
uh... doing like a
kind of off the wall mission it somewhere
lost in the timeline in the campaign
i'll say those three got bracelets because they are three of uh... night
lights friends
uh... well friends loosely for jury say jerry's is strong friends is stretching
a little bit yeah
as a p o i
what personal interest of yeah for sure he's a person of interest yeah he's like
helping me here and also just wants to have sex
you know you know
she's twenty one she's gonna make that decision
uh...
but those are her three kind of like uh... her buddies so i made them all
bracelets her buddies
also i think we're gonna wrap it up here i think this is close to another hour
and a half episodes so uh... that is capes and crooks in a nutshell that sort
of the the way that i've taken the source book also just a source book in
general i highly recommended for anybody that wants to jump into a
pre-established superhero system for fifth edition
uh... it is incredibly moldable and is really easy to customize me
you've heard a lot of the changes that i've made to it bringing in different
pieces of different universes
cannot truly recommend that enough it's been fantastic so thank you all see you
next week
bye bye