Enarr

Gotham City: The Gordian Spring

The Gordian Spring

According to a yearly report published by the Gotham Globe, Wayne Industries had been the single largest employer in all of Gotham City, just as it had been from the turn of the century up until the stroke of midnight on January 1st 2022, when Wayne Tower had exploded into a ball of green flame, killing hundreds of workers, poisoning thousands of citizens, and putting thousands more out of work.

Responsibility was proudly claimed by none other than Gotham's very own clown prince of crime, The Joker, who was apprehended by The Batman before being placed in police custody. In the months since, he has been undergoing rehabilitation in Arkham Asylum. In his wake, however, the city's southernmost and largest landmass, Miagani Island, has been in a state of emergency.

But none in Gotham City have felt the impact of New Year's Blaze more sharply than the city's landlords, who have simply had no choice but to evict their tenants out of the increasingly scarce properties they had been occupying. Mayor Sebastian Hady's broken window policing has done its utmost to fight the spread of vagrancy taking root but the police can only persuade so many itinerants not to make the situation worse. The jails are overpopulated and the city has had no choice but to make temporary accommodations in the low security wings of Blackgate Prison.

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The Gist

In this game, we'll be taking on the roles of members of supervillain gangs in Gotham City. Usually when my friends and I play superhero games, we play global sandbox games where you can be any canon character and do anything. This isn't that. Instead of going for that sort of breadth, this game is meant to drill down into what it's like to take part in the scheming and politicking within a supervillain's gang.

For the most part, you guys will be playing original characters. Desparate men and women who have found themselves taking on incredible risk. To keep things simple and tight, we're only going to be playing two gangs for the time being. I really want this to be about the tete a tete between the members of each faction as they scramble to meet their independent goals while cross pollinating and, one way or another, complicating the operations of the other since both outfits will be rubbing elbows operating on the southern Miagani Island in the Old Gotham district, a few months after the collapse of Wayne Tower.

Nobody's going to be playing the Batman or any superheroes, though they'll probably play a role in the finale. Inspired by a couple older roleplays my friends occasionally run, this is going to be a seasonal affair running for about three months. If things go well, we'll take a break for a while and make plans for the next season, probably with different criminal organizations. Players are extremely welcome to bounce off of each other and drive your own plots as long as they tie into the overall goals of your team. Try to keep it snappy.

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The Factions

Motivations for any individual player character would likely vary greatly but try to keep in mind what kind of person would be valuable to each of the following supervillains. If you have any ideas for other factions and what their organization might look like, feel free to make suggestions below. I just thought these seemed like some low hanging fruit that might be fun.

The Joker: Having just broken out of Arkham Asylum an hour prior, The Clown Prince wants to know that you've been stockpiling resources, like chemicals and weapons, for the upcoming ten year anniversary of the first time he fought The Batman. The Joker's crew would likely involve a mixture of fighters, engineers and scientists recruited by offering the opportunity to be truly free for the first time in their lives. With sky high turnover, The Joker's organization is rather unstructured beyond the fact that insubordination is usually frowned upon. And nobody wants to see a sad clown.

The Penguin: Coming from old money with lots of fingers in the political pie, Oswald Cobblepot largely facilitates transactions between other criminals as a mediator, though he has been known to offer protection from external criminal elements. While he personally has a security detail at any given time including hired muscle, his retinue includes a rainbow of businessmen, spies, and thieves. The Penguin's associates tend to operate through proxies and blackmail in one of the more multi-tiered and long standing operations.

Killer Croc: Waylon Jones is one of the more simple criminals operating in Gotham at the moment. He had once made a bid for kingpin status but it cost him an arm and a leg. Actually, two arms, but who's counting, anyway? His crew consists of blue collar working class joes taking on simple work, like stealing building materials and selling them to Mayor Hady's construction company at a discount. His operation is one of the more intimate organizations to be found on the island, familial and straightforward, though still illicit.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

God of War is an incredible game and I don't really know anyone that thought it was 'just OK'?

@Dion

My little brother, who plays far fewer games than I, has taken the week of Ragnarok off to play it upon release based entirely off the strength of the first game. We did not grow up playing the series. It's just super solid.

I'm too old

<Snipped quote by Dark Cloud>

I hope so. I feel slightly uncomfortable roleplaying with younger crowds, especially if romance is involved which, let's face it, it's inevitable most times.

At 32 I feel like anyone younger than 30 is a child, idk why. A lot changes when you turn 30 lol

@catnyxx

I get that. At 23, most teenagers I know feel incomparable in terms of relatability and life experience. But a lot of the friends I've had here are in their their thirties. I don't think the format necessarily seems attractive to that many youngsters. It felt a little old fashioned when I started here ten years ago.

Favorite Things of 2022

The Ten Best Things I've Touched
In 2022

Ladies and Gentlemen, it has occurred to me that we're more than halfway through 2022 already. Shocking! I know. So I've taken a minute to compile a list of my favorite things (books, video games, and comics) I've interacted with throughout the year, though not necessarily things from this year. Please feel free to drop your ten favorite things below, too, and lemme know if you've been into any of these. I'd love to get your opinions.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is my first proper Castlevania that I've beat front to back. It's a bit lackluster in the intro but the real fun comes from stealing superpowers from the souls of your slain foes and toying with the weapons and armor bits you find around the castle. Unfortunately, the clothes you equip don't change the appearance of your avatar (Soma) but the weapons fortunately do have different sprites and animations.

Crash Bandicoot 4 is the first Crash game I've played in over five years but after ten minutes I was hopelessly addicted to smashing all the boxes and getting gold stars. The way they challenge you with the old school difficulty and reward you with a new costume every time you complete a level really spoke to me to the point that I couldn't really tear myself away from it for a week.

Death or Glory (Rick Remender) is a crime story about a gal whose automotive hijacking exploits bring her in conflict with human traffickers. It's violent and suspenseful, creative and just as much fun as anything else Rick Remender ever put out but it's short page time makes it extraordinarily easy to recommend. Really, I adore Remender's style and the way he depicts his protagonists as ultra slick street rats reminds me of the way I thought of myself when I was a teenager.

God of War is a simple story with immaculate production and crunchy action and great drama. While I didn't really enjoy grinding experience to get through the skill tree, I did adore the parts of the endgame where I'd bounce off of a challenge and experiment with my armor, gems, and moves. Really, it's the first time I've ever appreciated developers dropping RPG elements in my action game.

The Hunter (Richard Stark) is sparse, terse and does things in its own time. That said, things do have a way of happening in an instant and with little ceremony about them. While I don't necessarily like the present day actual plot too terribly much but the way it kept the IV trickle of exposition going really made it a lot more entertaining than it otherwise would've been. I'm aware that Stark wrote a million other books but I'm having a lot of trouble imagining how bad the protagonist Parker's life can get fucked up on a regular basis to keep a steady trickle of books sharing a formula coming out. But that's kind of the cool thing about them being written. I don't have to imagine how it would happen. I just gotta read them.

I Am Not A Serial Killer (Dan Wells) is the bittersweet coming of age tale of John Cleaver, a teenaged sociopath, as he stalks his town's local murderer and comes to appreciate what it means for a man to put other people's concerns ahead of their own in the most surprisingly heartwarming story I've read in years.

The Quarry is both one of the messiest, most spasmodic things I've ever beheld, and one of the most immaculately beautiful games I've ever seen thanks to its stylistic choices that result in a surprising amount of gore. I've played all the Supermassive games and this one is my favorite, even though I played it on launch with all the bugs their games usually have. Its easily worth the sixty dollars for a day with friends and family, by my estimation.

Prince of Thorns (Mark Lawrence) has the distinction of probably being the darkest fantasy book I've ever read. If you're triggered easily by sensitive subject matter, this book isn't for you. But if you want extreme suspense, overwhelming odds, my favorite worldbuilding conceit, and fancy a rat bastard hero whose improvisation is impressive but still basically believable, then the trilogy will serve you well. It's endlessly clever without being pretentious and epic without having a very large scale at all.

Revival (Stephen King) was the first time I read a Stephen King book and thought "I get why this guy is where he is". It's a book about faith, farce, nihilism, and rock n' roll. Having gone through The Shining and Salem's Lot before it, I finally found that I have enough life experience to appreciate the older protagonists of King's classics but this one just felt a lot sharper to me than anything else of his I'd ever touched. I think of it as his version of Frankenstein except there's no animated corpse chimera anywhere in sight, just the tropes of a mad scientist grubbing for a fistful of heaven and finding himself insufficient for his own divinity. After this got done, I immediately scrambled over to The Dead Zone and The Outsider and found two more books that could just as easily take this slot.

The Road (Cormac McCarthy) is basically The Last of Us without zombies. It's just the story of a father, son, and the road they travel down. In spite of basically being a series of unfortunate events, it really makes you appreciate the simple beauty of being able to take a warm bath and having someone to share a can of beans with. I'm really stoked to read Suttree and his other works one of these days.

Variety Hour: An Absolute Comics Roleplay

The simple trick to getting a bullet around impact resistant glass in broad daylight is to walk passed it and throw it as quickly as humanly possible or even quicker if you've got the arm for it. Unfortunately for everyone in attendance that day, they were joined by one man who could do exactly that. So it didn't matter that the state of New York gave Wilson Fisk three heaping helpings of life in prison. He was still getting the death penalty.

"Everyone get down!"

New York's finest flushed into the courtroom like bacon grease sizzling down a drain pipe but The Kingpin's brains were already over easy on the sun baked maple floor. Weapons were drawn but they dared not shoot a single bullet. The last thing they wanted was to be the guy who shot the judge when it came time to ask for their promotion.

Every guard behind Bullseye lay crumpled and dying against the marble walls, reduced to a series of red smears on a failing paper. As the courtroom filled with the fetid tang of shivers and helplessness, the boys in blue collapsed in on themselves like a house of cards built in a pig pen.

"Hey, Foggy!" the marksman mocks through the sobs, "Shouldn't Daredevil be here by now? What's the matter? He hasn't gone yellow again, has he?"

Go away, you psychopath! Foggy imagined shouting. But his short nails only clipped shorter as they sought for the seams in the floorboards to offer him asylum. He held his breath as still as his ribs cradled his heart while biting back the wretched taint of unease.

"Eh, I'm just fuckin' with you. If you ever need someone to do your nephew's birthday party, though, gimme a ring. The economy these days is something else. No such thing as too many sources of income."

And like that, he left the way he'd came, through the backdoor with a trail of bloody footprints. Nelson sat idle until he was photographed, drug out of the room, and badgered for a statement.

"Do you think that supervillain interference with due process should be a major concern for ongoing trials in the city of New York?" a reporter asked, camera crew crowding in.

"I'm sorry, I've had a very long afternoon and need some time to myself."

Some kid with a branding deal cut in, asking "What would you say to Bullseye if he were in front of you right now?"

"Look, Bullseye is nothing special. The only thing that's going to kill me today is sleep deprivation." As Foggy Nelson slinks across the street, briefcase in hand, he thanks heaven for the sheets of rain that came to power wash the paparazzi out of his personal space.

"Hey Nelson!" a pair of lung-shaped cigarette ashtrays roared through the downpour. "Wait up a minute." Ben Urich trotted up with a terrier's gait. "What happened in there? He called you out."

"I guess he was just hoping that our friend would come out and play."

"For your sake, I'm glad he didn't. You know how that guy likes to toy with his food."

Daredevil: The Bar
Prologue

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

CROSSFIRE

"What did you do?"

It was the first thing she'd said to him all month. Maybe not. But definitely the first thing that mattered.

"You know what I did, mom!" Chris' voice cracks, spilling down Busiek Boulevard like a can of beer. "I got a date tonight. That's what I did."

In the privacy of an empty intersection, he empties a can of Febreze into the back seat. There's no way he was messing this up, not that he could say exactly what this was. Actually, on second thought, it was nice. That's what this was. Really. Freaking. Nice.

When he got to Letitia's driveway, he wasn't sure what to do. He could wait for her and risk waiting forever or he could go up to her door, like a man, and tell her father exactly what he was going to do with her. Which was...

Before he could remember what manner of devilry he'd perform on Letitia's hypothetical father, her silhouette flickered into place as the front door flashed open and shut. The next thing he knew, she was in the passengers seat and had her cool, sleek hand shepherding him into a warm, chaste, cheek kiss.

"Hey Mister Christer, are you ready to have the best night ever?"

He was not.

As she innocently coddled his forearm, he felt an unholy heat festering in all the folds his clothes hid. He couldn't tell if it was sweat or brimstream that boiled out of his pores. But as she awaited his response, looking into his eyes, breathing minty breezes at him, he lost feeling in his fingertips. As she swallowed his exhalations, seeming to flush fresh oxygen right back into his face, the car grew pregnant with promise of a coming plume of smoke and

"Absolutely," he shifted into Drive, processing the first kiss he'd ever received. "I've never been more ready. What do you wanna do when we get there? I don't really go to parties." It was true. The last party he'd gone to, he had accidentally fused a pedophile's nylon waistline into his flesh. Unsurprisingly, he hadn't been invited back. Or if he had, he'd been too busy being in a detention center to notice.

"Welllllll," she started, "I just want to get to know you, really. I've heard a lot about you but I thought it'd be nice to hear the inside story from the man himself. That, and," her pistachio cheeks warmed to a chartreuse shade, "I might think you're kinda cute? Maybe."

"Oh," he struck his thumb against his kneecap like a spent match, "uh, thank you. You're very pretty yourself, Ms. Green." The one thing that definitely needed to happen, he thought as he parked as close to the house as he could, was that he would need to return this car before it turned into a pumpkin. He'd take her home. "I wish we'd gotten here earlier so we could park closer to the house."

"Yeah, it'd be nice to be able to make a quick getaway if cops show up or anything like the other day."

"Last I checked, the town only has four officers to round everyone up on staff tonight. Unless they came back from their mini vacation early on account of The Rock Show the other day but that seems pretty darned far-fetched given that my dad is one of them and hasn't gotten back yet. Besides, at this point, it's not like they could do anything if there was another issue besides wait for the ASA to kill the party. Nothing but--" Chris' rant was cut off at the knees by Letitia's giggle.

"I didn't know you were smart."

"I'm not smart. I'm just a criminal."

"Keep talking like that and you're gonna steal my heart." Chris' cheeks ignited like a gas station in a firestorm. At that, he exploded out of the car, hoping she wouldn't catch sight of his blush, slinking around, and popping her door open. Fizzing out of a blown out stereo down the street, the *now iconic* city-saving remix of Machine Gun buzzed anthemically like a fruit fly in his ears.

"Hey, Henry's playing pong with some skater girl!" Letitia prompted, apparently picking up on the gospel cross-pollinating across the manor. Interesting, Chris though. He wouldn't have imagined that the place could carry a coherent message through the steady percussion of sin and hedonism that stood before him. He'd set a good example by being here. Not drinking. Not doing drugs. Not having sex. Someone had to not do it for others to follow. Letitia held him tight as she drug him right up to the table, in spitting distance of Elle. Ready for the show.

"I believe in you, Henry," Chris said, attempting to fit in before correcting with an "umm, I also believe in you, Elle."

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

CROSSFIRE

Suicide is the third leading cause of death amongst all teenagers. Chris hadn't had the easiest life, having spent a recent bit of his time twiddling his thumbs in the slammer, but he knew that that wasn't how he was going to go out. Unfortunately, as a mangled mess of imported oil and metal crashed into the asphalt next to him, he had a hard time deciding if his passing would be ruled as a car accident or a homicide.

As the beast turned from him, he turned tail and hightailed his hide out of harm's way, scurrying around the corner and contenting himself to watch. Turns out the guy had fire resistance. That was on Chris. He should've been aware that hellfire never had left the slightest hint of a harm on ol' brimstone. Somebody with skin, though, that he could be useful for. Skin burns and blisters and scars and nobody likes having that done. It just so happens that this here beastie boy was built different from day one.

As the music played, Chris finally broke free from his petrification and shimmied back to the relative safety of a different direction. The way he saw things, he could try using his brimstream to create pressure and make cars explode but the fact of the matter was that he lacked the forthright precision and majesty of force that his lizard companion had. May as well go be useless someplace else, he thought as he stumbled away from the fray, back to the coffee shop while he waited for a better idea to brew. No sense in burning down the neighborhood. The ASA would just love that.

King of the Hill: Boiled Mountain Dew Electric Boogaloo II

This is happening? Okay

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

1%

Chris felt the tension in his blood simmer down when he plugged his beloved cellphone into the outlet. The frothy coffee drink in his gullet left an uncertain aftertaste, like some combination of freshly chewed fingernails and dollar bills.

2%

Should he message Letitia? He should probably at least say something, he thought. Or maybe that'd seem a bit desperate. He felt his stomach rumble. Maybe he should've gotten something to eat.

3%

A quick press of the power button brought his phone online and, like that he was off to the races. He fired up his KaZaA collection and blamo, he and his earbuds had a nice little minute to themselves. His stomach rumbled again. But he couldn't really be that hungry, could he?

"Oh," he realized. He wasn't hungry or anything. Someone outside just had their bass cranked up unreasonably high. Their prerogative, he thought before turning up his own volume.

2%

The outlet wasn't feeding him juice fast enough. Fretting with the cable, he tried unplugging it and plugging it back in. The dollar store cables couldn't really be that low quality. Could they?

1%

"Motherfucker," he hissed as he bit into his tongue when a searing wave of salt crashed on his back, coinciding with the alien bass drop. Ripping out his earbuds, he spun around to take a look at whatever klutz had spilled their little snack attack on his back. No klutz at all. That was on purpose!

Chris had barely sorted his earbuds back into his pocket when he saw Henry Olin, a bona fide leviathan, going head to head with a giant rock monster, just like the book of Revelation had foretold, except the feet weren't made of clay and, for that matter, didn't seem to have any feet in the first place, and it didn't have much of anything to do with anything in the book of Revelation.

Dumbfounded, he looked around at everyone hiding under the tables, considering doing so himself, amazed at his own lack of situational awareness. It might be best to just sneak out the back and continue walking home. He didn't have his leopard hunting gear on him, not that he thought it'd do much good, and he didn't really have the sort of strength or durability that Olin did. The last thing he needed was to be interrogated by the ASA for shit he had nothing to do with.

There was, after all, a much more obvious course for him to take, after all. But if he did coat the thing in his blazing hot brimstream, it seemed extremely risky that everyone else might be caught in the

CROSSFIRE™

But standing around while Henry was casually murdered by a rock monster didn't quite sit right with him. He had to do something. Even if it was something stupid. Diving over the Mooncash counter and into the kitchen, he found himself a bag of sugar, unsleeving a stack of cups, and made a thick mess with his brimstream in a process that took an uncomfortably long minute but, after stirring the concoction together, he had fashioned several round bricks full of highly sticky, flammable material. Maybe capable of slowing the stone beast down. Probably not. But accidentally immolating Henry was probably better than watching him die.

Sneaking through Mooncash's shattered front door, Chris crept into the street behind the sluggish melee, as Henry grunted "BUSY. HELP." However, by the time Chris actually made it outside, the beast had made its way towards Saturday Comics, which it disrespected more thoroughly than the people whose regular patronage had kept it afloat. In an attempt to see what would happen, Chris rolled his sugar mix and cast the incendiary cocktail at its feet, igniting it and creating a repugnantly saccharine smokescreen with a fire at its heart, melting asphalt onto the beast's base.