Logs 1-12: Heroes Unlimited Part 1: Super Hero Society

January 2017 Challenge! For this month I challenge myself to write out reflections about my non-D&D RPG experiences. I still roleplay, but D&D took over my gaming interests years ago. Before getting to my awesome D&D reflections, I want to go back through my equally phenomenal non-D&D experiences. I might need more than a month to give them their due, but I want to try to squeeze them into 31 days and see how the experience goes. Wish me luck and check back at the blog each day because I plan to tell some interesting stories.

Logs 1-12: Heroes Unlimited Part 1: Super Hero Society During my childhood I loved playing pretend and I even remember making my own board games with one of my cousins. In middle school my friend BD tried to get me to play RPGs and, unfortunately all I knew about roleplaying games came from the mainstream media accusing Dungeons & Dragons of containing satanic elements. My parents forbid me from playing D&D, which BD’s family found strange; after all, they named one of their cats Tasslehoff. BD showed me his non-D&D gaming systems: he owned BattleTech and several of the Palladium Games books (RIFTS, Ninjas & Superspies, and Heroes Unlimited). I tried BattleTech, which I plan to write about later, but Heroes Unlimited won out as the game that stuck with me. BD explained the Palladium RIFTS concept of a multiverse with interdimensional travel; as an avid reader of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, I was already familiar with interdimensional conflicts.

Unfortunately, the sheer number of RIFTS books intimidated me. They created a vast multiverse with details of many planets, aliens, and organizations. I wanted to start fresh with something simple. Plus, as a kid, my $5 a month budge failed to provide me with the means to acquiring all the materials to play in an officially-created gaming universe.

“No problem,” BD let me know. We started gaming with BD as my first storyteller/GameMaster (GM for short). He created a game based in the real world, our world; in fact, our adventures began in our county with adventures in shopping malls and nearby cities. We used what we knew. With the Heroes Unlimited book, we made my first character - a bionic (cyborg) superhero. My middle school mind came up with the cheesy hero name Exo-Man and the character existed very much as a ripoff of RoboCop with Wolverine-claws. We told one of our friends, RW, about the adventures and he joined us.

Back then we used simple drawings on basic paper to represent combat situations, with a letter or number written down for each person involved in the situation. We never dreamed that products such as detailed 1” squared battle maps might exist some day; by the way, I recommend products like those shown on DMDavid’s blog, to people who play RPGs today: http://dmdavid.com/dd-fantastic-locations-and-map-packs/ - many of those maps remain on the market in used form via various online websites. Paizo also offers spectacular new maps through their website: http://paizo.com/pathfinder/accessories/maps

Years ago I found a file with some notes about our middle school adventures. Based on those notes and my memories, I give you my best attempt to recreate the details of our Super Hero Society. As a disclaimer, I must admit that my memory may be off on some details, but I will do my best to present the events as I recall them...

JerVerse Adventure 1: Exo & Quazi Origins

Exo-Man’s RoboCop-esque origin story involved him waking up after a horrible accident with a private security/technology company informing him they saved his life by giving him bionic implants, but now he owed them and needed to complete missions for them to repay his debt. They sent him to rescue an Australian weapon-tech specialist/mechanic named Quazi that had been captured by some bad guys. Quazi became Exo-Man’s [non-player character a.k.a. NPC] sidekick.

JerVerse Adventure 2: Exo & Quazi v. The Enemy Helicopter

Macro-Tech sent Exo-Man and Quazi to retrieve stolen blueprints from another company. Exo had to take down an enemy helicopter, but the duo ended up victorious.

JerVerse Adventure 3: Exo & Quazi v. The Crime Masters

Exo and Quazi fought the super villains called the Crime Masters who tried to take over a passenger train. The heroes saved the day.

JerVerse Adventure 4: Exo & Quazi v. The Nuclear Threat

Macro-Tech sent Exo and Quazi to stop a possible nuclear threat halfway around the world. Exo got to fly a jet, though he ended up playing chicken with an enemy jet; he and Quazi ejected to save their lives as both jets ended up destroyed.

JerVerse Adventure 5: Exo, Quazi, & Tiger v. Looters

A new hero who called himself Tiger (who had animal-morphing abilities) joined Exo and Quazi when they went to stop the looting of a nearby shopping center. At first, Exo thought Tiger an enemy, but the new hero helped save the day and joined the team; they decided to call themselves the Super Hero Society (SHS for short) [even though superhero really should be just one word].

JerVerse Adventure 6: Adam Axe & Blue Beauty Origins

The origin of Adam Axe involved a police officer named Adam who found a mysterious box in the sewer labeled “do not open until 1999.” He opened the box and found a mystic battleaxe with a red handle and the letters “AA” inscribed on it. When he touched the weapon, he received a vision of the Legend of the Red Magic Battleaxe: The legend told him of the need to return the item to a monument on the planet Htrae by the turn of the century or else both Earth and the sister planet Htrae would be destroyed. The axe also gave its wielder the ability to fly, to shoot out either lightning bolts or fireballs, to use a healing touch, and to create a mystic shield to protect himself.

Adam’s first adventure involved rescuing the kidnapped Canadian superhero Blue Beauty. In investigating the kidnappers, Adam ended up in jail and breaking out; while on the run from the law, he encountered Exo and Quazi; together, they rescued Blue Beauty. She told the group about the experiments done to her that caused her mutations (turning her skin blue, giving her the ability to fly, and transforming her into a person of extraordinary beauty).

JerVerse Adventure 7: Arch-villain Comet Revealed

The evil villain that opposed Macro-Tech and had been behind the kidnapping of Blue Beauty turned out to be the alien called Comet [with powers similar to Marvel's Fantastic 4's Human Torch]; with Adam Axe gone on vacation, Comet sent a truck after Exo and Tiger that exploded on the highway. Robots swarmed the heroes, trying to kill them and destroying everything in their path. Comet got away while the heroes stopped all of the robots.

JerVerse Adventure 8: The Death of Adam Axe & The Burning House

Adam Axe, while on the return flight from his vacation, found himself attacked by a ninja assassin; their battle caused the plane to crash into the ocean and killed everyone on board. Meanwhile Exo, Quazi, and Tiger fought a mutant in a burning house; they survived, but the enemy died in his own fiery death trap.

JerVerse Adventure 9: Super Hero Society v. Thieves & Uberbot

Exo, Tiger, and Quazi attempted to replace Adam Axe with a guy who called himself Crazy Cowboy; unfortunately, the new guy died while helping the team stop a jewel heist. After that, Comet sent his new Uberbot after Exo and Quazi, who were lured to a warehouse and forced to fight the robot.

JerVerse Adventure 10: Quake Origin & Comet’s Army

A new hero arrived to join the group, a mutant named Quake who had the ability to control the earth. He joined Exo, Quazi, and Tiger when they went to New Mexico to investigate the disappearance of Macro-Tech’s secret facilities; at first they fought some local punks, but the true villain turned out to be the group’s arch-nemesis Comet. Comet had a massive army of robots in the desert; the group engaged in an epic battle in which they stopped the robot army and Comet got away again, after severely injuring Exo-Man. Exo ended up stuck in the hospital for a while.

JerVerse Adventure 11: Super Hero Society v. Comet

Quazi rescued an alien woman from a crashed ship. She announced herself as Argonia Arc; she and her brother (who disappeared in the crash) came to earth to retrieve the legendary red battleaxe and bring the weapon back to their world of Htrae. Quazi told her what he knew about Adam Axe and the plane that exploded over the ocean.

Once Exo healed up, the team came together with: Exo, Quazi, Tiger, Blue Beauty, Quake, and Argonia. Together they retrieved the red battleaxe, but Comet waited in ambush. As a team, they finally defeated the supervillain. Unfortunately, they lacked the resources to get the legendary magic weapon back to the planet Htrae because they didn't have a working spaceship. Comet’s attacks had decimated the Macro-Tech corporation and they were forced to shut down the company.

JerVerse Adventure 12: Super Hero Society Epilogue

The United States government offered the Super Hero Society members official jobs working with a national superhero team that Blue Beauty had worked with in the past. Tiger, Quazi, Blue, and Quake agreed to join the government team. Exo and Argonia set up their own private investigation team, though Exo decided to drop the alias and go by his name Jay.

Mysto, an alien from Htrae arrived one day; he contacted Jay and Argonia because he detected the mystic red battleaxe in their office. He told them he could take them back to Htrae in his huge starship Olympus. Jay, Argonia, and Mysto ended up fighting aliens on their way back; a villain known as Divinity wanted to stop them from returning the axe. Argonia’s body was destroyed, but the team transferred her mind into the ship before she died. Jay and Mysto found the temple with the monument to return the axe.

Reflections

I learned a lot from my early gaming days. BD saw my excitement at making characters and actually asked me to create NPCs and scenarios along the way; he cleverly slowly transitioned me into the storyteller role. The character Tiger acted as a GMPC for him while I helped our friend RW come up with his backstory; I created the Legend of the Magic Battleaxe and NPCs like Blue Beauty. By Adventure 6 BD made me an assistant storyteller and, eventually co-GM. I ran the entire epilogue series of events since the battleaxe and Htrae were my creations.

One lesson I learned was that some players refuse to stick with one character. RW joined us as Adam Axe, for whom I helped create amazing lore and backstory. In looking through the Heroes Unlimited book, RW got excited about different powers and abilities and thus abandoned the character. Oh the frustration! BD and I asked what he wanted us to do with his former PC and either he told us to kill him off or BD just decided that would work better for the group. Thus RW briefly played Quake with mutant abilities, but again wanted something new. After that RW played Mysto, which allowed him to try out some alien powers.

We used some cheesy names for things, we stole ideas from different comics and movies, but we also created some really interesting lore and adventures all of our own imaginings. And yet, for some reason, when we matriculated from middle school to high school we stopped roleplaying for awhile. BD and RW involved themselves in band and other activities while I found myself joining up with the school’s speech and debate team.

We clearly missed gaming because we often talked about how much fun we had. One day, during my second year of high school, some of our other friends started asking about our RPG adventures and wondered if we could start up again. They asked me to act as GM and I accepted the challenge of creating new worlds for new characters to explore…