Disclaimer
I lost my detailed notes from these adventures years ago and I’m guessing for some of these details, but I want to provide a coherent story with these logs so I’m piecing it together as best as possible from my remaining notes.
Logs 225-300: Heroes Unlimited Part 9 & 10: Dragon Secret Society, Campaign for Earth, and Final Connections
I only agreed to GM again if I could scale everything back 1000%. Instead of the zany sci-fi adventures we were used to, I set our new game in the modern world with the players taking on the roles of college students who were recruited into a secret society.
Since I don’t have detailed session logs from these adventures, you’re going to get a summary log again. Our players for the first year of the secret society game included: NH, MW, LH, CF, AJ, LV, JFP, CW, AF, JP, JP’s friend Jessica, JW, and TV. The second year of the secret society game included: NH, CW, KG, LV, JFP, MR, MW, AR, JW, SD, and AJ; most of the time it was down to a core group of about 5-7 people.
JerVerse Adventure 225-263: Dragon Secret Society
The main characters included: Johnnye Morgan, Martina Jackson, Lawrence Pierce, Tristan Silver, Nathan Smith, Val MacLauren, Cami Wyrick, and several others (whose names have been lost over the years). The group’s characters were all students from “Ivy League” places like Yale or Harvard, but had been transferred to a seemingly normal state school in north Texas after joining into The Dragon Secret Society. Inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the Hellmouth, I made their new university a special place that attracted danger.
Their secret society sent them on missions. Sometimes they were investigating mysteries, sometimes they rescued people, and sometimes they were committing crimes. Since we used the real modern world as the basis for the setting I had fun setting up encounters in places we all knew. They were involved in car chases on the roads we use all the time; there was a shoot out at a gas station most of us used. They also went on special assignments to places like New Orleans. At one point I think they were dealing with a cult and weren’t sure if the enemies were actually vampires or just people who thought they were vampires.
Pop culture helped inspire some of the adventure sessions. I used famous people as secret members of their organization, or at least allies/assets. The bands Rage Against the Machine and Alien Ant Farm both got involved in plots. With Alien Ant Farm the group had to save a girl named Annie; they were “Smooth Criminals.” There were actual machines to rage against. I also really enjoyed using the internet and books/maps to turn real world locations into adventure encounter areas.
Through the course of the adventures, the characters developed special powers or found magic items that empowered them. They also continued making important friends and allies in the secret society and politics. Sometimes their networking resources were just as much, or more powerful, than their super powers.
JerVerse Adventure 264-300: Campaign for Earth and Final Connections
The second year of the secret society campaign turned into something much larger as the group had their characters take over global politics, deal with a threat to the entire planet, and they found out I had a twist surprise for the last part of the campaign; the secret society characters were actually connected to the larger RPG saga universe.
Johnnye Morgan, Martina Jackson, Lawrence Pierce, Nathan Smith (a.k.a. Deathstalker), Val MacLauren, and the others were joined by Luman Cross and Jack Tycho (a.k.a. Mephiston). The characters arranged to take over politics, with their secret society promoting its own people into the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States.
In their new position of global power, the group learned of an alien threat to Earth. There was an unavoidable apocalypse coming with aliens planning to destroy the world. The group managed to use their resources to find a way to magically shield Earth and swap it out with a fake placeholder Earth. It was very complicated at the time, but they managed to achieve success with each part of the plan and the magic items worked for them.
What ended up happening though, was they put Earth into stasis and fooled the rest of the universe with their plan; some of the characters were in stasis, but others ended up being petrified and later restored to themselves. Their actions linked back into our RPG saga; Mephiston turned out to be the father of Darius Jobe. Johnnye Morgan was soulmates with the little fiend Quizanel (who was really the ancient god-being Bel). Martina Jackson was Femme; Femme’s long-lost memories were actually shielding her original existence as Martina. The Femme body, it turned out, was just a disguise.
The secret society version of Earth was removed from stasis in the RPG saga timeline’s year of 7,778. The secret society characters met up with the old RPG saga characters and we continued having adventures in the larger universe. They had more Universal Council meetings, they dealt with strange alien enemies (including a return of the Keymons), and they planned out the retirement of their characters.
Al, Feli, CM, and Xedus wanted to make sure the future would be safe from Zahadoom before they fully retired from adventuring; they worked with Temptrick to trick Zah. Since Zah had an immortal-fairy-cosmosian body, they tricked him into teleporting inside of somewhere; he was unknowingly stuck in the HI cylinder that he had once used to imprison Al. They convinced Zah that he was living in his own special universe (a third universe since two already existed), but it was really an HI simulation. To make sure the HI-cylinder would never be found and used to free the supervillain, Al tucked it away in the second universe and sealed off all connections from the first universe to the second one.
The End.
Reflections
Planning and running the secret society sessions was a breath of fresh air for me as a storyteller. In creative writing classes, instructors recommend using what you know; the realistic feel of the campaign made my job easier. Sometimes planning could be as simple as me being in line at the bank thinking about how I needed an idea for an encounter and looking around going, “They could be in this bank when someone tries to rob it.” Or I might be at a concert, with hundreds of people crowded around, and I would think - this would make for a challenging place to try to follow a suspect or enemy.
I was really relieved when my players liked the surprise twist - that our secret society adventures for two years actually linked back into the main RPG saga storyline. NH was especially happy to see how Femme’s returned memories played out. Remarkably, without knowing the plan, NH had planned Martina Jackson’s personality the same way she played Femme.
The RPG saga’s last session ended in August of 2003 because I felt I needed to move on. Back then I really didn’t think I’d have the free time or energy to run a game for the foreseeable future because I felt I needed to devote myself to my new career. I had enjoyed my decade-long RPG saga with all of players who came and went throughout the years, but I had to let it go (for a while).
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