Heroes at last

The UTOPIA Project ended tonight.

As war between the program factions tore Utopia City apart and metahuman awakenings began to spike, the PCs made their way toward the hospital, killing an SEAgent on the way, where the sextuplets here being kept. They reached the hospital and bluffed their way to the children. After some deliberation, they decided it would be better to free the children rather than take the place of their minds and whisked them out of the hospital. The children were informed of their situation, and four of them, upon understanding, fled UTOPIA. The other two began to rampage, and it took the PCs a while to talk them down and convince them to leave. A short time later, The Hidden urged the to keep awakened ones in UTOPIA, as at the rate they were awakening, the Resistance could not intercept them all, and the results of a real-world unchecked superhuman outbreak could be catastrophic. To stall for time, the PCs tracked down several rogues and convinced them that there were prisoners at UDO headquaters who needed freeing. Searching the building and finding only the isolation/reprogramming rooms, True Thomas encountered Hanson and restrained him until they could regroup. Hanson, upon being interrogated, warned them that unless the rogues could be captured and reconditioned, UTOPIA was on the brink of necessitating a total wipe, far gone beyond even the time of the SEA's dissolution. As they deliberated, the four still-loyal UDOperatives returned to report that they had killed the final SEAgent and recaptured the rogues the PCs had brought with them. Hanson, however, having seen what the city had been put through in the past week, had decided that the old methods were, in fact, the more effective (a sentiment with which certain party members did not disagree), and brought UDOperatives to the isolation room. There he made the mistake of ordering them to bring the PCs in with them, at which point the PCs bull-rushed three of the four UDOperatives into the room, knocked out Hanson and the last operative, and freed the rogues before they could be reconditioned. They returned outside to an obliterated and, for the first time in days, quiet, city. They rounded up all rogues remaining in the system and, with the help of the Hidden, began orchestrating an orderly departure from the system. As they began, Sok noticed the UDO headquarters beginning to turn to black. UTOPIA was being wiped after all. They finished the evacuation as quickly as they could, The Hidden being the last to leave at the same time as UDO HQ vanished and the rest of the world began to darken. Knowing there was no longer any hope of escaping, the PCs sought out--and found--a burger restaurant that had not been entirely wrecked. Duke Ballistic rolled well on his cooking check, and as the programmed world fell apart, they were able to enjoy four tasty hamburgers.

"Your last moments are delicious."

The ending is a bittersweet one at worst. Yes, all of the PCs are dead without hope of revival, but they refrained from taking over several metahumans to escape into the real world and, through means direct and indirect, destroyed the old SEA. Utopia City will be recreated under the supervision of a new, slightly edited SEA, but dozens of metahumans have been freed, increasing the odds that UTOPIA will eventually fall.

The End.

The Matrix Exploded

The UTOPIA Project is nearing its conclusion. Here is a recap of everything I have been too lazy to previously describe:

• Aizen was replaced by Duke Ballistic, a basic powerhouse.
• The PCs were taken off active duty during a damage control period, and other programs filled in for them.
• While dealing with one Count Maledict, the UDO replacements were ambushed by unknown metahumans, and the PCs were called in as backup. After a long and vicious fight, Maledict was subdued, but one of the metahumans, an invisible one, escaped. The PCs were restored to active duty.
• A few days later, the PCs are split up to deal with a city-wide wave of crises organized by the SEA. Equinox was ambushed and captured. The others tracked him to the SEA hideout, where they managed to steal a copy of the UTOPIA-Scan program they had been using to monitor the city and rescue Equinox (with the help of the invisible mutant, for reasons unknown to them).
• Equinox, however, had had everything revealed to him by the SEAgents, and their arguments had swayed him back to their side. He split with the party.
• The PCs returned to headquarters, where they shared the revelations of Equinox with their superior. Knowing that awareness of UTOPIA contradicted the whole reason the UDO had been created in the first place, he escorted the PCs to a chamber where they could have their memories reprogrammed. The PCs, understandably, ran like hell, and within minutes they had gone from government-run peacekeepers to wanted criminals. Proteus was sniped in the head during their escape but just barely survived.
• They escaped through the sewers and took refuge in Equinox's old house, where they ran into The Hidden again (the invisible one), who sensed that he might be able to recruit the PCs in the fight against UTOPIA. When they agreed, he promised to look into ways to get them out. The PCs went back to the sewers to hide until they heard back from him.
• In the days to come, the conflicts between the SEA and the UDO, fueled by the PCs flight and Equinox's defection, broke into an all-out war, ravaging Utopia City. At one point, the PCs got pulled into the center of a battle between a radiation-controlling SEAgent and a UDOperative with a literal Hyperspace Arsenal. They thoroughly crushed the Operative, at which point the Agent thanked them and took off. The PCs dragged Arsenal back into the sewers, where they shared the true nature of UTOPIA with him. Aware that, knowing this now, he could not return to base without suffering a wipe, Arsenal begrudgingly stayed with the PCs as they returned to Equinox's house to eat.
• Inside, The Hidden met them again, having discovered a way to bring the PCs into the real world. The method, however, required them to completely wipe out the minds of several metahumans, making The Hidden reluctant to even bring it up. Before they could resolve the moral pros and cons, the lot were discovered by a squad of SEAgents, led by none other than Equinox.
• The resulting battle leveled over two dozen residential blocks. Arsenal, forced to decide where his loyalties lay anew, sided with the PCs and was fried for his troubles. Sok and True Thomas were knocked out (although they escaped death) by an SEAgent's electric cannon, but ultimately every single Agent was killed, Equinox included. The session ended with The hidden remarking on the effect this would have on the continuing street war between the SEA and UDO and the PCs, obviously UDO no more, gave themselves a new team name: The Balance of Power.

Mutants & Masterminds is begin!

At last! An actual chance to get to know the system beyond reading the books!

Today was the first meeting of my campaign: The UTOPIA Project. Basically, the PCs are a local branch of super-powered peacekeeping force called the Utopian Defense Organization. Only one member of the party knows that they are the successors to the disgraced and dissolved Systemic Equilbrium Agency. What nobody in the party knows (yet) is that my campaign is based on The Matrix (Hey, come back! I've done plenty to make it my own!); nor do they know that they (and their predecessors) are programs. I'll talk more about the setting as a whole in future updates.

Cast list:

Sok Thorgrimson: A former army member and the only one without any powers.

Equinox: A shadow controller with black ops training and and ex-member of the SEA. He is the only one who knows that such an organization ever existed.

Aizen: A powerful telekinetic with telescopic vision.

Proteus: An extremely versatile mimic.

True Thomas: A warrior of the gods with a magical spear and a portal device.

The PCs' first assignment (Sok was not present initially) was to deal with a powerhouse-type mutant trashing up downtown and ranting like a conspiracy theorist nutjob. Finding him wasn't hard, and despite his prejudices against the party ("You're working for THEM!!!") they managed to talk the mutant, who identified himself as Crazy Train, down. Questioning him, they learned he had been told that everybody in the world was really a brainwashed metahuman, except they could only use their powers if they could wake up, which is what happened to him, and the party wasn't real at all. Party reaction: "Ooookayyyyy. Who told you this?" Crazy Train briefly described the people he had been talking to (grey on grey on grey with grey accessories), but in the middle of the interrogation Aizen spotted the beginnings of a bank robbery a half-mile down the street. Equinox stayed behind to question Crazy Train further while the others ran off to handle the robbery.

Upon seeing the PCs approaching, a lookout promptly alerted those inside, one of whom responded, "You've gotta be kidding! They told me they'd be busy!" At which point it clicked for the players that Crazy Train had been set up as a distraction. A fight quickly broke out, resulting in a higher death toll than I'd anticipated; the party got off without a scratch, but some were more inclined to use lethal force than had been approved by the UDO, and poor handling of a hostage situation led to three civilians dying by shotgun. Sok arrived shortly into the fight, and Thomas used his portals to evacuate the building.

In the meantime, Equinox had convinced Crazy Train to take him to where he had met his informants. Crazy Train led Equinox in the direction of the robbery/fight, pulling up short and observing, "Huh. There they are now." Two extremely grey men stepped out of car and ordered the party to return to base immediately and report a failure or else. Equinox immediately recognized the two men as SEAgents and concealed himself in Crazy Train's shadow before they noticed him.

The ensuing super-brawl...did not go as I anticipated. On the one hand, I learned that I can afford to go much harder on the PCs with the significant fights, as they won decisively (in fact, they caused more harm to themselves that their foes did). On the other hand...it was a fiasco for the Utopian Defense Organization.

Proteus, who had copied Crazy Train's powers and picked up a shotgun from the first bank robber he incapacitated, fired at Agent Sleeper with no effect. Sleeper, in fact, rolled fantastically well on his Toughness saves for most of the fight, although his jets of knockout gas were not so effective. Agent Fritz resisted Aizen's attempts to grab him telekinetically, faked him out, and fired a blast of electricity that sent Aizen flying over the city block. Sok stayed inside the bank and used the last robber he had knocked out as a human shield before finishing him off with a shotgun. Thomas, in the most impressive stunt of the session, used Sok's car to knock Fritz through a portal whose exit was 400 feet up...and finished driving through himself, landing on the Agent. Miraculously, the car was not completely smashed to pieces, and a quick flurry of Hero Point expenditure kept him from breaking half the bones in his body. Proteus charged Sleeper and punched him across the street, making a large wall dent right next to the hole made by a robber previously launched by Aizen. Equinox attempted to snare Sleeper in his own shadow (unsuccessfully), causing the agent to suspect who might be on the scene, while Crazy Train decided, "Screw this! I'm outta here!" and took off. Aizen, deciding he needed a weapon, lifted...the top two stories of an apartment building. Cue screams of, "SOMEBODY SAVE US!" from the abducted and occupied section of building. Equinox tried and failed to use his powers to KO Sleeper, revealing himself in the process to both agents, who failed to hide their recognition of him. Proteus grabbed the totaled car and broke it in half over Sleeper's head to surprisingly little effect...forgetting that True Thomas was STILL INSIDE. He went flying out, and upon recovery, started using his portals to take the barely-conscious Fritz back to base. They did, however, wind up in the path of Crazy Train, who ran over them quite easily in his bid for freedom. Fritz managed to pull himself together just enough to fire another electric blast at Thomas, who dodged and portal-manipulated Crazy Train into trampling Fritz again, knocking the SEAgent unconscious. Sock charged and punched Sleeper to no effect, Proteus clobbered him again with the remaining half of the car (rendering it smithereens), sending Sleeper the rest of the way through the wall (making that side of the building very unstable) to collapse in a pile of rubble. Aizen, who had climbed onto the roof of the bank while still holding the apartment section some 150 feet above him, threw it at the now-distant Crazy Train...forgetting that, due to the two stories' weight, he could only throw it ten feet. Cue massive piece of architecture with civilians inside falling 150 feet onto Aizen's head, crashing through the roof of the bank, falling another 50 feet with him now inside, and then collapsing on top of him under its own weight and damage. Aizen got off luckily in merely being knocked thoroughly unconscious; all the tenants were killed. Equinox asked Sleeper who their assistant was, only to get the response, "Let's think about this logically. Who is the only person present who has displayed the ability to move large objects without touching them?" Equinox then knocked out Sleeper, but not before being threatened, "You should not have gone over." At this point, everyone started heading back to base by different routes (Thomas with Fritz in tow), except for Equinox, who searched through the rubble to find Aizen...and executed him with a knife through the back of the neck for his murders. He then called base directly to give his report. Upon hearing that SEAgents had been involved, their superior's (Douglas Hanson) response was one of shock and, initially, denial. He would not, however, hear a word of Equinox's suggestion that Aizen had been planted to sabotage them, stating that such an occurrence was even more impossible that the SEA's continued existence. Overall, he was very displeased to hear about the collateral damage both in buildings and lives, and as he hung up Equinox caught him muttering, "We can't have another wipe. Not again."

Although the individual SEAgents on the scene have been defeated, taken into custody (Crazy Train escaped and remains at large), and--unbeknownst to the party--completely deleted from UTOPIA, their mission was ultimately to discredit the UDO. And with the party responsible for 3 ruined buildings, 2 criminal deaths, 3 hostage deaths, and 20 bystander deaths, that mission, contrary to what I anticipated, was a resounding success.