Here's a recap of the latest session of my Sentinels RPG campaign "The Alternates"! As per usual, there's a narrative recap (written as if it was in-metaverse) and then I go over the actual running of the game, and any lessons I learned as the GM.
If you're lost, you can catch up with the previous Game Recaps! You can find links to the first "Season" (the first 12 episodes) in the Recap for Game 12. "Season 2" will encompass Episodes #13 through #30. Here is the Recap for Episode 13, Episode 14, Episode 15, Episode 16, Episode 17, Episode 18, Episode 19, Episode 20, Episode 21, Episode 22, Episode 23, Episode 24, and Episode 25.
Brief Description of the Game: In the meta-verse (where Sentinel comics is a published comic book multimedia empire), there is a premium cable animated television series (in a style similar to “Into the Spider-Verse”), which itself is based on a comic series called "The Alternates." This RPG campaign represents that show, with each game session (ideally) representing one hour-long Episode of the show. The recap below is written in-metaverse as if it was an article on a popular website that posts recaps of episodes.
Player Characters/Protagonists:
- Cytoblast: Dr. Douglas Hemlocke can control plants, including transforming himself into a plant form, all thanks to his mystical knowledge and his ancient magical staff.
- Dr. Comet: Possessed by a demon that travelled to earth inside a comet, Dr. Diana Aster can magically control fire and ice, though her powers often go often out of control when her emotions flare up.
- Jersey Devil: A barely human cryptid of mysterious origins, "Mr. Leeds" is both man and monster, able to teleport by way of a parallel dimension.
- Kid Radical: A highly skilled autodidact with a strict code of behavior, Kid Radical has a superhuman ability for following trends and learning new skills, although it often seems like he can't quite connect with modern society.
- Quasar Kid: A superhero teen from the far future, Quasar Kid has a cosmic metabolism, super strength, and the power of flight, but he hasn't yet adjusted to being in "the past."
Recurring allied NPCs/Supporting characters:
- Starshadow: A retired intergalactic adventurer, Starshadow wields mighty cosmic powers, but he is now reluctant to use them.
- Bouncer: An invulnerable action movie star, Bouncer is also super-strong and capable of mighty leaps (hence the name "Bouncer"), but he hasn't been the same since the Oblivaeon Crisis.
- Night Knight: A costumed, armored vigilante who has taken over the protection of Rook City, despite the country legislating against super vigilantism. With a gravelly voice and endless gadgets, Night Knight has sort of picked up where the Wraith left off.
A Very Quick Story Synopsis: In an alternate timeline where Baron Blade was killed decades earlier (causing countless changes to the world of Sentinel Comics), the heroes of the Multiverse are almost all killed in the "Oblivaeon Crisis." The few remaining heroes, especially the Alternates, are left to deal with the villains and interstellar threats that still endanger the Earth!
Also, some important villain stuff going on - Unbeknownst to the heroes, Baron Blade has reappeared (after being presumed dead), and was secretly striking at the heroes during the last season. He has assembled a Vengeful Seven team, which is being lead by Hippocampus (the Hippo, except now he's super-smart). They are working behind the scenes on some sort of revenge plot.
I've also done some very amateur sketches for the game! You can see them in this Google Photos album.
And now, an imaginary recap of an imaginary episode of an imaginary television show about an imaginary superhero team!
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The Alternates Episode #26 Recap:
“Hit Me”
By Eddie Jaczerkowski
It’s time again for an exciting Alternates episode recap! This week we’re covering the very-revealing Episode #26, titled “Hit Me.” Let’s jump right in!
Episode Recap
This week’s episode opens with an everyday business man walking down the street in an overcoat. As he walks to cross a street, he steps right into an ankle-deep mud puddle. Disgusted, he pulls his muddy shoe up from the puddle and tries to shake it dry. He looks up to see a large truck barreling down the street. It hits a giant puddle in front of him and sprays him with mucky water. His face is covered in mud and he frowns unhappily.
The man, still soggy with mud, walks into a building past a sign that reads “Turtura Brothers Insurance.” Inside, he steps into a small office, hangs up his muddy overcoat, and sits behind a small desk. He removes his muddy shoe and sock and wipes his face with a towel from his desk drawer. His name placard is visible on the desk - “Benjamin Luck - Sales.”
A man with slicked-back hair and a cheap suit walks into the office. “There he is!” he says. “Mr. Lucky! How’s it going?”
“Mr. Turtura, uh, hi,” says Benjamin. “It’s just ‘Luck.’ Things are fine.”
“Look, Benji, you’re a great salesman. Your numbers are through the roof.”
“Uh, please don’t call me that.”
“But the adjusters are talking to me, and they’re saying your clients’ claims make up 95% of this branch’s payouts! How do you find such unlucky clients? It’s ironic, what with you being Mr. Lucky and all.”
“Uhm. It’s just ‘Luck,’ sir.”
“But look, we’re not saying you’re doing anything wrong, but these actuarial guys, right? They don’t like statistical anomalies, right?”
“Uhm. Yes, sir.”
“So we’re thinking maybe we move you from sales over to management or something.”
“Well, no, sir, I like sales.”
“Don’t say anything yet, you just think about it, Benji.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Right, right. But I’ll see you tonight at the charity thing, right?”
“Oh, uhm. Yes, sir.”
The episode then takes us to a community center with a sign out front reading, “Turtura Brothers Insurance Charity Casino Night.” Benjamin Luck walks in, where we find a “Roaring 20s” themed casino night. Benjamin hands money over to the woman at the front, who hands him chips and explains that any chips won can be used in the silent auction for prizes donated by local businesses, and that all proceeds go to the Turtura Brothers Fund for Underprivileged Communities, Kids, the Elderly, and Minorities.
We soon see Benjamin Luck with a martini and only two chips left to his name. He wanders over to a corner of the large room, where he finds a tiny blue man behind a blackjack table - everybody’s favorite gambler, Wager Master.
Benjamin looks down at his drink, and then back at Wager Master. “Someone put something in my drink,” he says.
“Nope!” says Wager Master. “I really am 3 foot tall and blue! My name’s Wager Master! I hear that you’re Mr. Lucky!”
“Uhm… it’s just ‘Luck’. Benjamin Luck.”
“I was just tooling around this place - this is really my kinda party. And I heard there was a guy here named Mr. Lucky! And I said to myself, I said, ‘I gotta play a game with Mr. Lucky!’”
“Uh… sure.”
Benjamin laments that he only has two chips left, and Wager Master assures him that it’s enough. Wager Master lays down a marker that says “Wager Master” on it, and tells Benjamin that his marker can be exchanged for “Pretty much anything that you would ask for.”
The two start a game of Blackjack in which Benjamin gets a 2 and a 4, and Wager Master - the dealer - shows an ace. Benjamin hits, getting a 4, and hits again, getting a 3. He sighs deeply, seeing he has 13, and that the dealer has a possible Blackjack.
“Well, uhm. Hit again.”
Smiling wickedly, Wager Master throws down another card - an 8!
“Oh!” says Benjamin! “Blackjack!”
“No, that’s not how…” Wager Master starts saying with a frown. But his frown turns back into a grin as he says, “Nevermind. Let’s see what the dealer has!”
Wager Master flips his card and shows a 9. Wager Master frowns. “It’s a soft ten. Dealer hits.” Wager master deals himself a 5, continuing to frown. He hits again, and gets the King of Spades.
Fuming, Wager Master’s face turns red and steam shoots from his ears.
“Fine, Mr. Lucky! Fine! What do you want for your prize?”
“I don’t want anything, Mr. Master.”
“It’s Wager Master! You get a prize! What do you want?”
“Nothing! I just wish I was as lucky as everyone seems to think I am!”
“Done!” says Wager Master with a crooked smile.
The cold open cuts to the blue-skinned Safe Bet (who we can clearly recognize as a blue Benjamin Luck) sitting at a computer. Every few moments, he cheers out loud at whatever he’s doing on the computer.
As the view swings around behind Safe Bet, we see that he is actually editing actuarial tables.
The episode then finds the Alternates standing outside an office in an industrial park.
“So this is it?” asks Quasar Kid.
“Yeah, the GPS data from the data core Recursor ejected shows he flew up here two days ago.”
Quasar Kid moves aside to show the business they are standing in front of is BetCo Incorporated Novelty Supply, the logo of which is a blue-skinned cartoon jester.
The team, in full costume, walk in the front door of BetCo. The secretary does not seem at all perturbed that costumed heroes have walked into the office. Indeed, she checks the schedule and walks them to the office of salesman Dennis Harris.
Harris speaks in a monotone voice, also not seeming to notice his potential clients are costumed heroes. In a montage scene, Mr. Harris tries to sell novelty products (whoopee cushions, rubber vomit, etc) to the Alternates.
During the montage, Jersey Devil explores the building, teleporting through shadows from room to room. He eventually finds a breakroom and a box of donuts. Quickly, he takes a bite of each one, then moves on to another room.
The episode cuts back to the meeting, where Cytoblast is talking to a potted snake plant on a small table, asking, “How do you stand this?”
Finally, Kid Radical (again, in montage) gives a presentation to Mr. Harris with a slideshow featuring words like “Synergy!” and “Game Changer!” and “Influencers!” When the montage finally ends, Kid Radical asks, “Can we get a tour of the factory?”
“Sure,” says Mr. Harris flatly.
The salesman leads them to the factory where various novelty products are made. As the Alternates talk to some of the workers there, it becomes clear the people in the factory are under some sort of low-grade hypnosis, and they robotically move through their work.
Finally, they hear a voice from the catwalk above.
“Oh, hey! The Alternates!” Safe Bet shouts from above them. “How’d you get here?”
“You named your company BetCo,” Dr. Comet tells him.
“It was a pretty safe bet you’d be here,” quips Quasar Kid.
A fight breaks out between Safe Bet and the Alternates on the factory floor!
It’s quickly apparent that some of BetCo’s workers are in harm’s way, so the Alternates turn their attention to saving them as well.
Jersey Devil teleports one worker into the breakroom. “Sorry about the donuts,” he tells her.
She opens the box of donuts and sees that each one has a bite taken out of it. “You’re a monster,” she says.
“I know,” Jersey Devil replies sheepishly.
The fight against Safe Bet is pretty crazy. The blue-skinned villain’s luck seems to cause the most unlikely things to happen. It’s not just that an attack misses, but instead when Kid Radical tosses a devil stick at Safe Bet, it hits a bird who flies into its path from out of nowhere. When Quasar Kid gets close to try and hit him with a punch, he trips over a loose electrical cord and sails past Safe Bet. When Dr. Comet tries to bury Safe Bet in ice, the ice cracks and breaks to pieces before it can touch her enemy.
As the Alternates struggle to connect any blows to the elusive Safe Bet, the episode cuts to a scene in another place entirely, where we see Starshadow encapsulated in a spherical prison of energy.
Baron Blade, off-screen and mid-sentence, says, “And that is when I realized that your powers were the key to bypassing the limitations of computing power! Once I have drained you of your powers, I can complete my masterpiece! Unfortunately, the process will leave you a lifeless pile of dust - a concept I believe you’re familiar with.”
“Wait… you think you can just siphon off my powers and unlock the secrets of quantum computing?”
Baron Blade walks in front of Starshadow’s prison - that’s right, Baron Blade with legs and arms and everything - and scoffs. “That’s right, Mr. Blackmoore. I’ve done the calculations.”
“It’s Doctor Blackmoore, Mister Blade. I’d love to see those calculations.”
Hands on his hips, Baron Blade glares at his captive. “Don’t be ridiculous, Dr. Blackmoore. I won’t be giving you any last requests.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Starshadow says. “Because it’s not going to work. It doesn’t even make sense at a theoretical level. I mean, are you using the Copenhagen Interpretation or what?”
“No. It’s about orchestrated reduction and the spacetime-separation of the superimposed states of the bits.”
“But that’s exactly the problem! The process would be non-computable at the quantum level, so how would you solve the problem with qubits? But it still doesn’t matter, because you’re assuming that my powers are connected to wave functions that are trapped inside this field you’ve created, but actually both my powers and the individual being that is me are quantum information encoded in the lower dimensional bound of the area of the space itself.”
Baron Blade laughs. “If you’re encoded in the two-dimensional bounds of the area of the space itself, then how do your powers alter quantum information outside the bounds of that volume?”
Starshadow crosses his arms. “If you don’t already know, I’m not going to tell you.”
“Why should I listen to you, anyway? You’re a second-rate scientist with no vision!” Baron Blade says. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Well, I guess we’ll find out,” Starshadow retorts.
“Well, I guess we will,” Baron Blade huffs.
The two stare silently at each other for a moment.
Back at BetCo, Kid Radical is studying Safe Bet, trying to evaluate the statistical probabilities of his powers. Once he thinks he finally has it, Kid Radical hurls his skateboard at the blue-skinned baddie... only to have it collide with yet another previously-unseen bird!
Jersey Devil teleports another factory worker away from the fray, into the breakroom, and immediately teleports out. The first factory worker, who Jersey Devil had brought there earlier, stands up in surprise. The newly arrived second worker gets his bearings, then spots the box of donuts on the table. “Ooo, donuts!” he says. The first worker shakes her head and says, “No, don’t open it.”
Back on the factory floor, Safe Bet has set loose several “Bet Bots” to attack the Alternates. These robots resemble the ones the Alternates have fought before, but painted up to be blue. They attack with a variety of deadly “novelty” weaponry - corrosive fake vomit, explosive whoopee cushions, and spiked spring snakes.
The Alternates take care of the Bet Bots, but are still stymied by Safe Bet’s incredible good luck, and lots of misfortune of their own. However, each missed blow seems to get closer and closer to striking Safe Bet. Finally, one of Cytoblast’s arboreal slams lands right in Safe Bet’s face. The blue-skinned villain staggers backward.
“Whoa, that actually hit me!”
Suddenly, the entire building shakes and shudders, and enormous noise comes from the far side of the factory floor. A door bursts open from the outside.
“We tracked you down, Safe Bet!” the booming voice of Freedom Train shouts. “Time to punch your ticket!”
Chaos erupts as the Guardians of Freedom - Ms. Rushmore, Freedom Train, Captain Constitution, the Arithmetist, and Isis - break into the warehouse. When the Alternates turn back to Safe Bet - he’s gone!
Within moments, the building is teeming with FBI agents as they execute a warrant on BetCo Industries.
The Guardians of Freedom and the Alternates have conversation, which is very tense at first. It turns out the Guardians are there to help execute an arrest warrant on Safe Bet, who is at the center of a complex organized crime operation. Once they realize the Alternates were also about to capture Safe Bet, Ms. Rushmore expresses regret that the Guardians came at a bad time, but is also clearly frustrated that the Guardians didn’t get their target.
Meanwhile, Jersey Devil teleports around the building, looking for Safe Bet and checking up on the FBI’s motives - he’s suspicious of their sudden appearance. He can’t find Safe Bet, and he concludes (telling the team later) that the FBI were indeed there to arrest Safe Bet and shut down BetCo.
The Arithmetist once again goes out of his way to chat with Dr. Comet, and casually talks to her about her scientific work. This time, in a clear show of her new leaf, Dr. Comet patiently tolerates the Arithmetist. Though she is clearly annoyed by him, she’s very polite.
Ms. Rushmore then has a series of questions for the Alternates about the threat from Baron Blade and the whereabouts of Starshadow, but the Alternates feign ignorance. They also talk about the nation of Mordengrad making a public denouncement of “Baron Blade,” and claiming that he is an imposter, but the Alternates tell Ms. Rushmore they don’t have enough information to know the truth.
As they are chatting, the audience can see Safe Bet casually sneak through the background, avoiding notice by luckily being out of sight at all the right moments.
Safe Bet finally sneaks into the breakroom of the office - now empty of any staff - and sees the box of donuts. Excitedly, he pops it open and sees that all the donuts have a single bite taken out of them. “Awww, damn! Just my luck!” Safe Bet exclaims.
The credits roll, and George Strait’s “Ace in the Hole” plays.
Final Thoughts
First thing’s first - Baron Blade has a body, apparently! After a season of only hearing his voice or seeing him on a screen, we finally see him in the flesh, talking to Starshadow. Of course, this could be a red herring - an illusion, a robotic twin, etc. The writers and producers of this show love to throw out distractions and misdirections. Of course, it might be that I am just trying to hold onto my own “Baron Blade” theory - that it’s Hippocampus manipulating all the events and using the Baron Blade identity to achieve his goals.
Watching Safe Bet in action was amazing. He didn’t really try to fight the Alternates, but rather he let them fall all over themselves attacking him. Some of the action in this scene was my favorite in the whole series, to watch things coincidentally fall into place to protect Safe Bet at all the right moments.
But wait... is Safe Bet so lucky that he made the Guardians of Freedom show up just at the moment when he could make his escape?
This episode didn’t do a whole lot of advance the plot of the season, but we found out a bit about what the Guardians of Freedom are up to, and the scene between Starshadow and Baron Blade, though brief, was very interesting.
We got another fight against a member of the Vengeful Seven, but what we didn’t get was any additional insight into Baron Blade’s identity, or his plot, or the goals of the Vengeful Seven. There are only four episodes left this season - I feel like they need to get going with the reveals!
Of course, I guess they could be saving all of that for Episodes #30 or something, but here’s hoping they won’t!
Be sure to join me next week for a Recap of Episode #27, “Encore Presentation (12-inch Club Remix).”
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Running the Game!
No birds were harmed in the making of this episode.
Oh no! Where have we been? It's been a few weeks since I posted a Recap, and that's partly because I'm behind on my "pretend work" (i.e. The Alternates) due to distractions and stuff. We also took one week off. But still, we played Episode #27 this week, so I am a week behind! Plus, I have a mostly-finished "Fictional Metaverse Fictional ComicCon Q&A Panel" about half-written and I promised that. Hopefully, you'll see a few more Alternates posts in the next few days so I can catch up! These things do take a lot of time, though.
ANYWAY. Safe Bet's "Health" was made out of luck. So basically, even though the PCs were "damaging" him in the mechanics sense, I constantly narrated it as near misses, etc. Finallly, when Cytoblast does connect, it wasn't because Safe Bet was "Out" (of Health), but rather that he got low enough that he knew his luck had run out. It was a fun way to run that villain, since the short description of his power is, "The less likely it is to happen, the more likely it is that Safe Bet makes it happen."
So... is Safe Bet so lucky that he made the Guardians of Freedom show up just at the moment when he could make his escape? Oh yeah he is. Or, perhaps a better way to describe it as, "Yeah, the universe bends itself around Safe Bet that much."
It's kind of a point of humor for me that some of the Vengeful Seven are ridiculously powerful - Safe Bet, DJ Doctor Dancefloor, Atomic Dawn, and Hippocampus in particular - but for a variety of reasons, they are C or D-List villains. Safe Bet is too silly, DJ Doctor Dancefloor lacks vision, Atomic Dawn lacks control, and Hippocampus... well, we'll find out a whole lot more about Hippocampus in Episode #29.
In the meantime, thanks for reading!