I loved Guardian7's idea of rating the mods, sharing experiences, and how we modded them.? I am picking up the torch.
The next in the series of our community sharing their feelings and experiences for a published V&V module.
How useful was it?? How did you modify it for your campaign?? How did it play? and How well did the PCs enjoy it??
Share with us how is was to Battle Above the Earth
I liked the space station setting but have two reservations about the module.
1. The extraterrestrials were rather stock. I much prefer the creativity that went into the Capellans (From the Deeps of Space) and the Greys from the new tabloid office gameset.
2. The human villains who accompany the extraterrestrial invades have creative powers but don't have strong reasons to taking the sides of the invaders.
I completely agree that the human villains were not given proper motivitation for what they did.
I liked the body powers on the extraterrestrials but the rest of their write up was rather stock.
I really liked the inclusion of the Lizard Man character as a possible red herring.? In fact, I was incorporating the character in my campaign.
I had introduced a scientist who was supporting the team.? I was going to have the scientist create the formula/device that would turn him into the Lizard Man.
If I did the roleplaying correctly, it would be a NPC which the PCs would chase down and try to save.
I sorta borrowed The Lizard background from Spiderman and then was hoping for a superpower chase like so many Hulk stories.
Unfortunately the group disbanded before I could do more than have the PCs meet the scientist.
Out of all the modules, this one I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do when I was a player. But, since my GM at the time was all about messing with you, I will blame him. I have since used bits and pieces of this when I ran games, but the sour taste from my douchey GM ruined this one for me.
Like most modules, I've run this one a couple of times, though both times for this one were a LONG time ago. My friend first ran it for my high-school group, and don't recall much from that one (other than the fact that my character Nightstalker had a really cool duel with the villain Nightstalker). I then ran it in the early 90's for Justice Force (the first team in our current campaign). I also recently resurrected this one to do sort of a 'sequel' (nearly twenty years after the original) for the Guardians (same campaign, different group).
Here's the first time I ran it, for Justice Force:
#31 ? First Encounters ? The tabloid National Inquisitor contacts the team, offering a big donation to charity if they will look for their missing reporter Johnny Dugan, who disappeared investigating the story of the Wisconsin Lizard Man. Tempest, Spectre, Freeze, Kamikaze, and Microtitan, as well as reporter Sheila Baynes and photographer Kyle Stewart, journey to Big Rock, Wisconsin. They meet local storyteller Old Jed, who tells tales of a deadly Lizard Man that guards the large rock in the center of town and catches lone victims in the woods. The rock, which used to be worshipped by Native Americans, is reputed to be a meteorite that glows during some stellar phenomena, and anyone who tries to damage or move it supposedly falls under a terrible curse. The adventurers check out the massive, black rock formation and search for the missing man, but find only Dugan's glasses and a strange footprint in the forest. Old Jed leads the heroes and reporters in canoes down the Rock River to an old Indian burial ground. As they near Rock Island, the group is attacked by a squad of Logrellian Shock Troopers, who drop nets from above and target the civilians. The highly trained alien warriors are a fanatical fighting force, and as each are defeated they vaporize themselves with Personal Disintegrators. After a short but intense battle, a number of the attackers retreat. An unconscious Dugan is found nearby, and a brilliant flash of light and thunderous noise signal the departure of a Logrellian scout ship.
#32 ? Battle Above the Earth ? C.H.E.S.S. alerts Justice Force that an emergency situation has developed on Space Station One, the U.S.'s first fully manned life environ orbital platform. Security Chief Hugh Manning, head of the station, sent a coded message notifying authorities that a group of supervillains had taken over, captured everyone, and sent a high frequency signal back to Earth. Spectre, Tempest, Freeze, Mirage, Microtitan, and Kamikaze take a shuttle to the facility and enter without difficulty. As they move through the structure, they defeat numerous Logrellian soldiers, Anima-Man, Centurion, Mystic, Nightstalker, and R.I.N.G., and destroy their signal transmitter, preventing an invasion by the Logrellian fleet. The team also rescues Manning and the other hostages and puts the base back in their care.
You'll see that - as usual - I deviate very little from the published module.
Then (fairly recently) I went through the adventure and used Space Station One (and one of the villains) again (you may recognize other villains from other sources):
#289 ? Shootout on Space Station One ? Portal returns to Guardians Base and shows off her young twins, boy Tarnelan and girl Syreenla. Also present, Mischief asks Neutron for permission to use the Alpha site gateway to find a suitable safe home for her daughter; the Elderess are proposed as a possible alternative. Later, an emergency call informs the team of trouble on Space Station One. Kubera, Neutron, Quiasar, Scion, Battletron, Amber, and Phase infiltrate the facility on an A.R.T. shuttle, then find the craft the invading forces used. After disabling the enemy's vessel, they pull it away and enter through the airlock it was docked at. They are attacked by Wrack, Crater, Soulburner, Sequoya, Centurion, and Diamondstar, and an incredible slugfest ensues. Many of the toughest Guardians fall, but they are able to eventually overcome the villains. Scion, changed into a wooden statue by Sequoya, remains transformed for nearly a day. In the aftermath, Centurion's plans for vengeance on the Montuori Corporation are uncovered.
Former nickname Majestic
Have an ongoing V&V campaign that is now 34 years old
SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was recently looking over this adventure, and noted some things I didn't really pay attention to before.
1) The introduction basically railroads the players.
2) Also, how long do the players have to respond?? The National Inquisitor doesn't respond until 7 days after their last contact with Mr. Dugan.? Seven days is plenty of time for the search party to be included in the story.? But it also gives the Logrellians time to finish their takeover of the Earth.
3) The National Inquisitor is single-handedly responsible for nearly all of the newspaper articles in the library.? This isn't surprising, considering the local paper's policy of not printing anything related to the Lizard Man.? But it also suggests a "backstory" where the local paper has been tipping off the National Inquisitor when stories break for years.? This further suggests that National Inquisitor journalists in Big Rock is not uncommon.? This isn't really a significant point, except to say that players might become misdirected into believing a conspiracy exists in the town.? Of course, the GM might decide "Sure!"
4) In the police station, the sheriff is friendly and the deputies are unfriendly.? So this should automatically mean that the sheriff packed up and went on a fishing trip shortly after the search partying and only the deputies are present!? ?;D? I imagined a scenario where the players/journalists entered the police station and were promptly arrested with the excuse "We need to verify everyone's identity with CHESS."? Six hours later, the Sheriff returns to town and finds out the deputies have been playing cards with the vigilantes locked up.
5) I lived close enough to this event that I saw it on the local news at the at the time it occurred.? It gave me some ideas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizard_Man_of_Scape_Ore_Swamp
6) Wait...? Story of the century?? Seriously?? Half the player characters in any random team are probably extraterrestrials.? And each have probably given their interviews on international television (even in 1984 when this came out.)
7) The adventure doesn't address the "Level 5 Emergency" that has obviously occurred!? What is a "Level 5 Emergency?"? It's a made-up label I used to point out the elephant in the room: WE'RE BEING INVADED BY ALIENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? HELLO?!? Do the players just go home and wait for section two to begin?? Or do they run to CHESS, screaming at the top of their lungs? With Sonic Powers, no less!?? ?:o
At this point, I decided to stop my review.? I still remember (generally) the rest of the adventure: the players have a time limit to reach the space station and turn off the signalling device before the Logrellians can contact their home planet and commence with a full-scale interstellar war.? Er...? No.? Even in 2020, Earth clearly isn't ready for war on this scale.
My recommendation would be to alter the Logrellians motives.? I mean, talk about "stock?"? Enslaving humans?? Yawn!? How 'bout this, instead?? This is a Logrellian scouting party that is exploring our solar system's planets.? Stars with planets are a rare occurrence in our galaxy, as it turns out.? Their purpose is to mine them.? They're poking around on our planet to determine our capability to stop them from mining the other planets.? They're not looking for war.? But they're also not looking for permission, either.? Doing this also provides a motive for the human villains: wealth.
Edit: Added some spacing for ease of reading.? I also voted "An ok game, parts of it were iffy."? I think it has good potential.
Hmm... A few more thoughts:
To further define the human villains' motives, you could say that the Logrellians wanted to sabotage the United States/Soviet Union space programs (and China in 2020.) Their main goal will simply be to slow the development of space technology so that we're not so eager to travel to other planets and lay our own claims. Once they've strip-mined all of the planets in our solar system (in a few hundred years) then they'll be happy to leave us the rest.
Me and my son just ran a massive (around 13 hours, with between 8-16 players, 18 different players and 2 GMs) alien invasion storyline.
For it, we used a number of different alien species, one of which were the Logrellians, converted to MP. I found new art by Joe Singleton which looks very similar to their original look. I even kept in their personal disintegrators, which ended up causing a number of chain reactions (with as many as four of them being taken out by another when KO'd).
Former nickname Majestic
Have an ongoing V&V campaign that is now 34 years old
Oh, no! How did I miss this reply?! Nice! Was that V&V you were describing? Can you accidentally post some of Joe's work you used?
Absolutely! And yes, it was V&V (3.0, or MP).
Former nickname Majestic
Have an ongoing V&V campaign that is now 34 years old
I like the side trek with the lizard creature in Wisconsin!