Catalyst Castle

Gareth and I missed playing "Times Forgotten" campaign of the Mutants and Masterminds RPG last week, but we finally played out Issue #3 this morning. Issue #3 will be called "Battle in the Web of Darkness" because that's pretty much what it was about. It was a fairly short game, and it basically involved just a single fight scene.


In the last issue, Claas and Lynn were exploring the dungeons underneath Kingstown's massive cathedral. Issue #2 ended with them opening a door into a darker section of the dungeons where the ceilings, walls, and floor were covered in giant black spider webs. As Issue #3 begins, Claas and Lynn delve further into the darkness. Eventually they reach a place where the corridor splits. To the left, they hear the sounds of someone crying out. To the right, they hear the sounds of heavy machinery operating some ways away.

Claas and Lynn choose to go left, looking for Lynn's brother Larry. After traveling down another corridor, they arrive at a large open chamber. Pillars support a high ceiling. Across from the entrance they came in through there is another passageway, and there is a tunnel leading upwards through the ceiling. The chamber is covered in the same dark webs as the corridors, and littered with various medieval torture devices. On the far side of the room they spot Larry. His arms and legs are chained and he's held in a large water tank, with only his head above the water. The water boils around him as he tries in vain to use his powers, and he calls out for help.

Lynn immediately rushes to her brother's aid, but Claas takes a more careful approach, hiding behind a pillar and examining the chamber more carefully. He spots a shadowy figure descending through the tunnel in the ceiling, creeping along the dark spider webs. Claas grabs a couple of torches of the walls and uses his time-slowing run to move along the edges of the chamber, setting fire to the webs on the walls as he goes. Battle quickly ensues, as the shadowy figure on the ceiling moves towards Lynn and Larry, and three hounds come charging out of the other entrance to attack the intruders.

The shadowy figure can soon be identified as a man in black robes, bearing the same symbol that has been seen all over the cathedral, and also appears as the pendant on the necklace Claas wears. From his perch on the ceiling, this mysterious villain begins spraying black webbing at Lynn and Larry, threatening to entangle them. As Lynn struggles against the webbing to release her brother from the water tank, the man drops from the ceiling to inflict a venomous bite on her.

Meanwhile, the hounds chase Claas around the chamber until he comes to Lynn and Larry's aid. Lynn manages to drain the water from the tank Larry is in, allowing him to use his fiery powers. He begins hurling balls of fire at the hounds and their master, and engulfs his body in flames, frightening one of the hounds away. While Claas battles with the spidery villain, his fist begins to crackle with blue energy again. A final blow knocks the man prone, rendering him unconscious and dying with blue energy crackling across his chest where he received the hit.

Claas says that he believes there is more going on in this cathedral than is obvious, and wants to investigate things further, but Lynn and Larry just want to return to their own time. They begin to retreat towards the entrance. To be continued...


So, as you can see, the game basically consisted of one big boss battle. I was pleased that, in spite of this, Gareth said he still didn't get bored. I always worry that combat might become drawn out, but Gareth made things interesting by finding creative things for his character to do in combat. The only thing that disappointed me a little, was that I gave Gareth an opportunity to discover another one of Claas' powers, but he let the opportunity slip by. Oh well, all of his powers will come out eventually, it's just a matter of time.

I have to say that I'm a bit frustrated with how some of the characters' powers work in Mutants and Masterminds. Some of them just seem needlessly complicated. One power, for example, requires that the person using it roll to see if they aimed properly, then the target character must roll to see if they can minimize they effects of the power, and then the target character rolls again to see how much damage they take. It's hard to remember all of that. I practically need a flowchart just to make sense of it, and it seems like it ought to be able to be reduced to just a single die roll. Probably between now and the next time we play, I'll try to see if I can rework some of the powers so that they're more streamlined in how they function.