Gaming with the Kid: Fighting Crime Trying To Save The World (part 1)

I truly enjoy the SuperTeam Family blog.

The Powerpuff Girls, it turns out, aren't a pure rip-off of the Kryptonian power set. Each of the girls have their own unique powers -- and that's just from the original series. I won't go into the two other series that have aired since then.

In order to build the girls in the Hero System, I'd follow the following process:

1. create a base PPG template of powers
2. add in the individual powers and abilities of each girl
3. tweak the stats and complications for a completed character sheet.

1. the Base PPG template

Fortunately, www.writeups.org has DC Heroes character sheets for each of the girls:

• Blossom
• Bubbles
• Buttercup

These will not only help to build my base template, but will also help in the next step on how to add in the individual powers of each girl. However, not everything necessarily will be reflected in these stats, so I'd have to go to a Wikia page for an 'in fiction' explanation of those abilities.

2. Individual Powers and Abilities

It turns out that Bubbles has the ability to talk to animals, and that Buttercup is the fastest of the trio, and that Blossom has both fire breath and freeze breath. Thank goodness for fandom wikis which keep track of this sort of thing.

3. Finishing off the character sheet

I'll be honest in that I'll be trying to not only be faithful to the builds based on the two sets of source material above, but I'll also be balancing them against each other, point-wise. This is partially due to my longtime Hero System habits of wanting to know the point totals, but also to show my son how allocation of the same amount of resources can result in very different results... and different options for play.

Kult: New Apocalyptic Power?

When you read the copy of Kult, it's not unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that it somehow involves the Book of Revelation.

KULT: Divinity Lost is a reboot of the highly acclaimed and infamous contemporary horror role-playing game “Kult”, originally released in 1991. This, the 4th edition of Kult, features a completely new rule-set, and the setting is updated to present day. Escape your nightmares, strike bargains with demons, and try to stay alive in a world full of pain, torture, and death.

In KULT: Divinity Lost, the world around us is a lie. Mankind is trapped in an Illusion. We do not see the great citadels of Metropolis towering over our highest skyscrapers. We do not hear the screams from the forgotten cellar where hidden stairs take us to Inferno. We do not smell the blood and burnt flesh from those sacrificed to long forgotten Gods. But some of us see glimpses from beyond the veil. We have this strange feeling that something is not right—the ramblings of a madman in the subway seems to carry a hidden message, and, when thinking about it, our reclusive neighbor doesn’t appear to be completely human when we pass in the hallway. By slowly discovering the truth about our prison, our captors, and our hidden pasts, we can finally awaken from our induced sleep and take control of our destiny.

A real feel of the End Times, yes? And as a fan of the game from the first edition , I was more than a little bit surprised to see that it had hit the 4th edition with its latest release. Flipping through sections, pre-reading before a full read, I see something about gamemaster “moves”.

Now, moves are something associated with Powered By The Apocalypse games — and probably a system more approriate for the type of stories that seem to be suggested by the progressions and in-game fiction listed in the original copy that I owned. But my experience with PBTA is limited, so I am unsure how much of a fit this variant of the ruleset would be for gameplay.

But it does amuse me that the subject matter is aligned with the name of the system.

Gaming with the Kid

I wanted to get my kid into gaming. Not only is it one of my favorite forms of recreation -- I believe it taught me a great many things due to the nature of at-the-table game play, and all the reading and preparation between games.

And I had a plan.

Pokemon Investigators in Spaaaaaaaaaaaace!

He had demonstrated an interest in Pokemon... well, okay. He's a recovering Pokemon fanatic with near-encyclopedic knowledge of Pokemon up until he stopped following them. And he's still thrilled when we play Pokemon Go on occasion.

Plus, he really likes the Space Mice series from the Geronimo Stilton mega-franchise of books. To keep things simple, I decided we should play...

Ashen Stars meets Mutant City Blues, except instead of superhuman police, we have Pokemon Trainers-turned-Investigators sent out on Lazer-like missions, with a twist towards the Bubblegumshoe creation of a Solar System "neighborhood"!

But then I realized the work involved, and came to my senses.

Then he started asking me about how the Cartoon Network heroes might be able to take down Superman or any of the other DC animated heroes and I began to look at Hero 6th Edition. And that's where I am now. Figuring out how the decoupled HERO System, which I've never played, might be the gateway for my son's gaming interests.

Hello, old friend.