small town hero preview

PREVIEW

Small Town Hero-Preview

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Small Town Hero Written by Al Seeger

C. 2011, Point of Insanity Game Studio

http://www.poigamestudio.com

Cover art by Dave Peterson Interior artwork used under license from Louis Porter Jr Design’s Image Portfolio

Series.

Welcome to a preview of Small Town Hero, an

upcoming super hero adventure from Point of

Insanity Game Studio. The adventure has been

written with no particular system in mind so

running it will require some advance

preparation. Small Town Hero is intended for

newly created characters, but you may alter the

content of the adventure as you see fit

depending on the level and needs of your

campaign.

The encounter presented here is the first major

event in the story. It involves a low level villain

named The Puma leading a group of thugs in a

bank robbery. If your super hero campaign is

based on a game created for a licensed product

(such as Marvel or DC Comics) then feel free to

substitute Puma with a villain of appropriate

power level. However, this encounter is generic

enough that it can easily be inserted as a minor

event in an existing super hero campaign.

One final note…

Since this is a preview the finished product

might differ slightly depending on how the rest of

my work on Small Town Hero unfolds. The

finished version of Small Town Hero will include

an optional prelude encounter and several

optional side adventures as well. No estimated

release date yet but I’m hoping to have it ready

by March of April 2011.

Happy Gaming!

Al Seeger, Point of Insanity Game Studio

http://www.poigamestudio.com

About the setting

The backdrop for this adventure is a small town known as

Stonewell. It is a middle class town with a population of

9000. Not far from Stonewell is a large city named

Washington Point (population 550,000).

Any material related to Stonewell has been written as

generically as possible. Some parts of the adventure and

supplemental material refer to events and places related

to American history. This does not mean the adventure

needs to take place in the United States. The game

master is free to place this campaign anywhere he wants.

Ideally, the adventure should be set in a small town of

around 7000 –10000 people located a short distance from

a major city.

The finished product will contain two supplemental PDFs

to flesh out the setting in more detail. The first one will be

“The Player’s Guide to Stonewell.” This PDF contains

general information about Stonewell that can be

considered common knowledge and may be distributed to

your players freely. The second PDF is “The Game

Master’s Guide to Stonewell” and contains some of the

secrets and urban legends of the town as well as notable

personalities.


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The first major event in the story assumes there is a lone character

(preferably one with innate superpowers or who happens to be

carrying a few small gadgets on him) who is at the bank when a

robbery takes place. Another way to handle this encounter is to

have the characters find out about it through a contact at the police

department or by monitoring a police scanner.

This encounter will involve a group of five robbers and a minor

super villain who goes by the name of Puma. The bank robbers are

nothing special and should have the statistics and abilities of the

average street thug. Each carries two handguns with 12 shots each

and two spare clips. One thug will carry a 20-ga. shot gun with 8

shots in addition to the handguns.

Puma should be about the same level as the characters. His main

powers are superhuman agility and enhanced jumping ability. His

costume incorporates a set of cat-like claws. These claws should

inflict about as much damage as a short sword or similar sized

edged weapon. Puma is a skilled fighter but will prefer to send his

minions in first to soften the target up before he gets involved.

THE PUMA


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You are on your way home when you remember

you need to stop at the bank. While waiting

your turn in line a group of three masked men

storm the lobby! One of them fires three shots

into the ceiling and demands everyone get

down. The leader of the group approaches the

teller with gun drawn and demands money. The

next few minutes seem like an eternity but then

the wail of police sirens fill the air! The lead thug

mutters a few choice profanities as three squad

cars pull up outside the building. He looks at his

fellow bank robbers and nods. The lead thug

snatches a toddler, one thug grabs an elderly

woman, and the third thug picks a young boy.

Their intention is clear-human shields!”

How the encounter plays out from here depends

on what action the characters take. If the party

confronts the thugs then they will react as

expected-by opening fire. The GM must keep in

mind that any attack made against one of the

thugs has a chance of hitting the thug’s hostage.

The toddler will die if hit once. The old lady and

the boy can take two hits before dying.

However, the young boy isn’t going to allow

himself to be a victim! He has a yellow belt in

Karate and when the opportunity presents itself

he will attempt to escape his thug by biting his

arm and stomping on his foot (no damage but it

will allow him to get out of harm’s way). The

distraction will allow the closest character to the

thug to make a free attack.

The police outside the building will hold their fire

once they see that hostages have been taken.

Their primary concern will be the hostages’

safety. Soon enough though they will have their

hands full! Read the following at an opportune

moment:

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“Out of nowhere a black van speeds into the

parking lot! As it stops the man in the driver’s

seat rolls down the window and fires at the

police with his handgun. The back door opens

and a thug with a shot gun rolls out and fires

twice, taking down two of the six officers on the

scene. A third man, this one dressed in a

masked costume with large claw-like hands,

springs out of the back and with blinding speed

pounces on another one of the policemen.”

What happens here depends on the number of

players and their positions. If the party is inside

the bank then the thugs and Puma will wait until

they get outside before attacking. Now that the

getaway vehicle is here the thugs inside the

bank will attempt to get out of the building as

soon as possible.

Since Puma lacks long range attacks he will

focus on commanding his thugs. If threatened

he will attack, slashing away at those who come

too close.

The remaining three officers will try to reach

their wounded comrades and get them out of

the line of fire so their wounds can be treated.

After three rounds two more squad cars with

four more officers will arrive along with a team of

paramedics to treat the wounded. Any

remaining thug not already engaged will try to

hold back the officers with suppressive fire until

they can get to the van with their loot and

hostages. If all the thugs make it to the van they

will head west since that is the fastest way to

get out of the city. The region to the west of

Stonewell is largely rural, so there will be less

traffic to deal with. The thugs’ van has several

clips of ammunition in it so if the chase goes this

far they will have plenty of bullets to fire at any

pursuing heroes. If they have hostages they will

attempt to push them out of the van as a way to

slow down the characters.


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Wrapping it up

This even ends when Puma and his thugs either

escape or are defeated. Naturally, the police will

be very grateful for any aid the characters have

given. If the characters managed to capture

Puma alive they can try to interrogate him but

he will say nothing except he was robbing the

bank for money. If asked about the claws on his

costume and his superhuman abilities he will

deny he has such things and the interrogator

must be crazy!

If a character with the appropriate resources

does some research he will find out Puma’s real

name is Antonio Sanchez. “Puma” is the

nickname he received while playing high school

football. He was once a gang leader in the city

of Washington Point and has spent time in and

out of jail for various minor crimes. It is unknown

how he got his superhuman abilities and where

he obtained his costume, as he did not display

such things before.

Here’s what happened: Antonio was approached

by a member of an organized crime family and

offered one million dollars in exchange for robbing

the bank in Stonewell. All he had to agree to was

getting a shot before the robbery took place. He

was told the shot would increase his reaction

time. In reality the shot was an experimental drug

designed to turn ordinary people into powerful but

easy to control super humans. The drug’s effects

vary wildly depending on how the individual’s

body reacts to it.

In Antonio’s case it increased his agility and

jumping ability. The drug’s side effects, combined

with hypnotic treatment and subliminal

suggestions, cause Antonio to not be aware of his

new powers or his costume. Therefore, when

Antonio denies having super powers or a suit with

cat-like claws a lie detector test will show him as

telling the truth because his mind has been

conditioned to forget he has such things. Nor

does he remember the encounter with the

organized crime family. He honestly believes

himself to be just a common street thug. The truth

has been buried so deeply in his brain it will take

a mind reader several hours to find it!


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Where to go from here…

It is perfectly acceptable to play this encounter as a one shot event with

no significance to the overall scope of your campaign, but in Small Town

Hero this will prove to be only the beginning of a deeper and more

sinister scheme. So, if you wish to use this event as a starting point for a

new campaign here are some ideas to get you started.

In the coming weeks there will be several more attacks by low level

super villains. These opponents will share one thing in common-they

were all given their powers by an injection that made them susceptible to

mind control and brain washing. With careful investigation the characters

will be able to trace the source of the problem to an organized crime

family in Washington Point (or another major city of your choice).

During the course of the adventure the characters might run into a man

named Dr. Mikhail Lebed. He is a retired physics professor who lives a

quiet life on the outskirts of the town.

However, there is more to Dr. Lebed than meets the eye! He is originally

from Russia and was forced to work on a variety of top secret projects

during the Cold War. His inventions included things like mind control

devices and suits of powered battle armor. Eventually he defected from

the Soviet Union and came to settle in Stonewell. Dr. Lebed still serves

as a secret government consultant in matters of technology and if

approached correctly could serve as a mentor to characters that use high

tech gadgets to fight evil.

small town hero preview

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