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, Episode 25, Episode 26, Episode 27, Episode 28, and Episode 29.
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!
========================
The Alternates Episode #30 Recap:
“Supermassive”
By Eddie Jaczerkowski
The Season 2 finale is upon us! The main plot of arc of Season 2 - the “resurrection” of Baron Blade and the machinations of the Vengeful Seven - is mostly resolved, and new mysteries are introduced. Let’s get right into it!
Episode Recap
The cold open of the season finale is a flashback to the "Mad Bomber" event in this timeline. Baron Blade sets bombs in Freedom Four headquarters. After setting the last bomb, he sneakily exits the building. Baron Blade finally boards a rocket, escaping Earth and docking with a space station in orbit.
A camera on board the space stations tracks the Baron as he paces nervously inside. On the screen, Legacy and Starshadow arrive at the orbital station and confront the Baron, who appears to be having some sort of breakdown. Finally, Starshadow disintegrates the Baron.
A hand reaches into view and turns the screen turns off. The hand pushes a button on a phone, and a voice comes over the speaker. “Hello?”
“The Baron is dead,” says a man with a thick Eastern European accent. “Initiate the Lazarus Protocols,” he says.
A hand reaches out and takes a large tape from a computer drive. The hand types some commands into a terminal, and “SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED...” appears on the screen.
Dr. Vitruvius walks casually away from a bunker in a snowy mountain, and the bunker explodes behind him. He reaches a waiting helicopter and climbs inside, alongside several members of the Blade Battalion.
“Take me back to Mordengrad,” he says.
-----
As the episode begins, the Alternates begin their descent to Mars, and make contact with the Wagner Mars Base, and are given clearance to land. They notice the base is mostly dark, and they wonder aloud what’s going on. When they reach the base, they are greeted by Dr. Benjamin Chima Obi, one of the skeleton crew still maintaining the base.
Dr. Obi explains that, after the Oblivaeon Crisis, the Wagner Mars Base was mostly mothballed as funding dried up. A few experiments are maintained by the doctor and another engineer, Jack Woolsley. Dr. Obi takes the Alternates to meet Woolsley, and they discuss whether or not the two crew of the base have seen any sign of incoming rockets or any activity on Mars whatsoever... but the two crewmen shrug. They haven’t seen anything.
As the Alternates start in to asking a few more questions, the whole complex shakes as a deep rumble erupts from Mars itself. Dr. Obi rushes the Alternates to a laboratory performing seismic measurements (“To find Marsquakes!”), where he is able to triangulate the epicenter of the activity.
Bouncer informs the team that the Alternajet is out of fuel, but Dr. Obi offers to lend them a rover vehicle that can get them to the epicenter within the hour. They take up the offer, suit up for being out in Mars atmosphere, and hop on board the rover.
-----
Meanwhile, back on Earth, at Alternates HQ, the aquatic alien Gommesh is sitting on a couch reading a woman’s magazine titled “Sophisticate.” There’s a tapping, and he looks up from the magazine, confused. The harsh reptilian voice of Grosshak erupts from out-of-sight. “What is that tapping?” Grosshak asks.
“I don’t know,” says Gommesh. He stands up and listens intently, finally walking over to a nearby window, where a pigeon can be seen sitting. He opens the window, and the pigeon flutters in.
The pigeon clearly has a helmet on its head like the one Hippocampus wears. In its mouth, the pigeon holds Kid Radical’s “tracking pog.”
“What is that?” asks Grosshak, who has entered the room in a fluffy pink bath robe, holding an unpeeled banana with a big bite taken out of it.
“A girb? Dirb? Dird?” Gommesh says, searching for the word.
“Is it wearing a helmet?” asks Grosshak.
“Yes, clearly,” says Gommesh.
“Is that normal?” asks Grosshak.
Gommesh looks back at him silently, clearly not knowing for sure. They both turn to stare at the pigeon.
-----
Back on Mars, the Alternates have reached the epicenter of the seismic activity. They search around and find an old hatch set into the crust of the planet. They are able to open the hatch, and they climb down a ladder inside.
At the bottom of the ladder, they find themselves in a 60s or 70s-era underground base. Bare light bulbs and old wiring conduits line the hallways. The Alternates slow make their way through the corridors, but they soon encounter an old hefty video screen, and the Baron’s face appears on it.
“Leave at once!” he insists. “I seek justice against a man who tried to kill me! You have no jurisdiction here!”
The Alternates argue with The Baron shortly as he insists he is within his rights and that they are trespassing, until finally Kid Radical says, “I don’t need morality lessons from an 8-track tape. To Hell with this!”
Snaking through the hallways, Quasar Kid is able to use his own cosmic powers to track Starshadow’s location. He also realizes what “The Baron” is actually planning.
“Team,” Quasar Kid informs the Alternates, “The Baron simulation is going to use Starshadow’s power to collapse the Moon into a microsingularity that will suck the Earth into it!” The team moves quickly, soon encountering a large blast door, sealed by a keypad lock.
As the team approaches the door, “Baron Blade” steps out in front of it, shouting, “I am Baron Blade!”
Before they can react, another Baron Blade appears. “I am Baron Blade!” he shouts.
Soon, the corridor is full of Barons Blade, each saying, “I am Baron Blade!” as the Alternates start a battle against them.
As nearly a dozen Barons Blade swing swords and blast rays at the Alternates, the team tries to figure out the door code - Quasar Kid tells them that Starshadow is definitely beyond that door. The room becomes a confusing mess of Barons, ice blasts, arboreal slams, cosmic punches, radical devices, and Jersey Devil poofs. Eventually, there’s even one Baron fighting another Baron!
Jersey Devil eventually poofs away and finds an old, abandoned office where someone has written the door code down on a piece of paper. He poofs back, and Kid Radical is able to use the paper (by turning it right-side-up) to figure out the lock and open the door.
The team rushes into the next room, while Kid Radical opens a nearby airlock, sucking all the Barons Blade out onto Mars while the Alternates escape.
Inside “The Baron’s” inner chamber, the Alternates see Starshadow still trapped in an energy bubble, with energy flowing out of him into machines that surround him.
Nearby is “The Baron” himself - a cylindrical robot on wheels with a large video monitor on top.
“How dare you!” shouts the electronic voice of the robot!
Disgustedly, Quasar Kid kicks the robot over onto its side. The robot buzzes, then quotes the T.S. Eliot poem, “The Hollow Men”:
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
The Alternates turn off the machine and free Starshadow. He thanks them, and collapses onto the floor.
The Alternates discuss what “The Baron’s” fate should be, with Jersey Devil ready to disconnect him immediately. Instead, they decide “The Baron,” being sentient, should be given over to Mordengrad, his homeland, to meet his fate.
-----
The episode then cuts to a snowy mountainscape where a bunker pokes up out of the snow. The bunker flies the old flag of Mordengrad, and the flag of the original Blade Battalion. Inside, we see Dr. Vitruvius walking down a long corridor as Blade Battalion soldiers salute him along the way. Finally, he enters an long, empty hallway and approaches a large bulkhead door at the end. He presses a button, and a robotic voice responds.
“Voice identification required,” the voice says.
Dr. Vitruvius clears his throat. “I am Baron Blade,” Dr. Vitruvius says. His voice sounds exactly like Baron Blade’s voice. The doors open.
The credits begin, under the song “Take a Bow” by Muse.
But halfway through the credits, the music and credits pause, and we get a bonus scene:
In a dark industrial space, we see a crucible full of molten metal. A figure in the darkness throws pieces of the Recursor power armor into the crucible, one by one. The pieces bubble and melt away to nothing. Finally, the Recusor helmet is thrown into the red hot liquid, sinking down moments later. The camera pans up the shadowy figure in the light of the fire - it is Parse, her face grim in the flickering light of the forge.
The credits resume. When they finally end, there’s also a post-credits scene!
In a massive warehouse, a woman in a new Mordengradian “Luminous Legion” uniform pushes a cart with a large wooden crate through a room stacked high with wooden crates. She finally reaches an enormous doorway where two more members of the Luminous Legion meet her. They take the crate inside.
Inside the large room, members of the Luminous Legion are wiring up a series of old electronic devices - massive cathode-ray tube monitors and towering computers with blinking LEDs. These are clearly pieces of “The Baron,” which the Legion is hooking back together.
A monitor powers on, and a staticy image of “The Baron” appears on the screen. An distorted electronic voice shouts, “I am Baron Blade!”
“Hello, Baron,” says the Luminary, as she walks in front of the monitor. “I regret to inform you that you have been found guilty of sedition, endangering the welfare of the Homeland, and impersonating a government official. You are therefore imprisoned here for the good of all Mordengrad.”
“How dare you!” the Baron’s voice echoes through the chamber. “I am Baron Blade!” he shouts. The Luminary exits the room, and a massive door comes down and seals, as the Baron shouts one final time - “I am Baron Blade!”
The credits finish.
Final Thoughts
Reactions among fans have been very mixed since the revelation of “The Baron” as a simulation gone wrong. This is one of those things that always plagues television shows (and movies, and other serial narratives) - when writers set up a secret and a big reveal, only some of the fans are going to be happy about it, while others (who had their own theories and ideas about what should or would happen) will be unhappy. There were no new surprises about “The Baron” in this episode, so fans who disliked that reveal might have disliked this episode, too.
Let’s do some rapid-fire comments:
- The fight scene between the Alternates and the dozen Blade-Bots was awesome and, at many points, hilarious. The Barons were all slightly different, which made it a lot of fun to watch.
- I love the pigeon in the intelligence helmet (the showrunners have revealed her name is “Bird-Brain”), and rumor has it that we’ll see her again in Season 3!
- Everyone loves to quote T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Man,” and it sounds really cool, but aside from, “Hey, I’m dying!” I’m not sure what the writers were trying to convey with “The Baron” quoting it here. Maybe it was tongue-in-cheek? I don’t know.
- Parse was Recursor? What?! The last we saw of her, she was in a vegetative state! How did she come out of it? “The Baron” says something about Recursor owing him - what did The Baron do for Parse? This is really intriguing, and I hope they don’t just drop it and walk away. We need follow-up on this “Recursor-as-Parse” story hook!
- Why in the world is the Luminary leaving “The Baron” running in some basement somewhere? That seems like a terrible idea. Just turn off the simulation! We have to assume it would be much safer if that guy was just shut down! Unplug him! Come on!
Also, here are some remaining mysteries that the Season 2 finale did not address:
- The fate of Faye Diamond/Nightmist
- What the cybernetic remnants (ghosts?) of Unity and Omnitron-X are planning
- The precise origins and goals of Operation Pipeclamp
- What’s happening with the Superpower Anti-Vigilante Enforcement Act and the legality of heroism
There are no doubt more, but those are my top priorities, personally.
And my final question - what’s up with Dr. Vitruvius? I think most of us agree that the “I am Baron Blade” line at the end of the episode is a red herring - he’s probably not been Baron Blade all this time - but that doesn’t answer who he is and what his goals are. I think we can agree he’s not really looking out for Mordengrad, and his work with Operation Pipeclamp doesn’t really suggest a loyalty to America, either. So, assuming Dr. Vitruvius is out for himself, what are his goals, and where did he come from? “The Baron” mentions rescuing him from a Russian prison, and that seems to be the earliest thing we can say about him. He remains a mystery, but his appearance at the end of this episode suggest that we’re going to see more of him in Season 3, for sure.
That’s it for Season 2! Thank you for reading our recaps! We’ll be back next season to recap every episode of The Alternates, so we all hope you’ll come back and read those, too!
Eddie Jaczerkowski is a staff writer who loves comic books and writes about television.
========================
Running the Game
I don't have too much to add here. Running a fight with 12 different Barons Blade versus the Alternates was very fun.
There was actually a puzzle (Challenge) for the door that was sort of like the board game "Mastermind" with clues being revealed based on the level of success for each Overcome action. So let's talk about puzzles!
OMG, puzzles in RPGs is a funky topic! Some players are bored. Some players hate puzzles. Some players love puzzles. Unless every player at the table is at exactly the same level of puzzle-love and puzzle-ability, you are definitely going to make some people unhappy, uncomfortable, or unentertained.
My solution is generally "Make the puzzle easy enough for anyone to figure out, but gate it behind game mechanics." So, the basic concept of Mastermind - that you need to make a pattern that matches some secret pattern - is easy to figure out given enough clues. At a certain point, the correct pattern becomes obvious. There are, of course, better ways to guess patterns and organize a strategy for doing "test patterns" to reveal the correct pattern. But setting that aside, it's a pretty easy puzzle.
So, when each player made an Overcome, I'd have them make a "guess pattern" (we used symbols in Google Drawings instead of colors) and then, based on the level of success, I'd tell them certain symbols were correct, in the wrong position, or not present in the "secret pattern" at all. It really just came down to a number of successful Overcomes, and the scene ended once they got through the door. I think the players enjoyed it.
Anyway, that's my "puzzles in RPGs" suggestion. I've tried all sorts of things as a GM, and I've found when I just throw a puzzle in front of the players, someone just fiddles around on their phone, one person does pretty much all the work, and the others just kind of sit by. But if you have die rolls reveal information, or you otherwise take it in turns so each player has to do something, it works out much better. This is especially true if the puzzle is incomplete without the additional information.
Additionally, I'd say not to worry about making the puzzle "hard." I think of most video game RPGs, where you encounter a puzzle - it's either some sort of jump puzzle (which is very hard to replicate in a tabletop RPG, as far as interactions go) or it tends to be a very easy game about matching symbols or moving tiles or something which just consumes a little time and interrupts the redundancy of killing fools for XP. The same idea works well in tabletop RPGs - puzzles that are ultimately very simple, but which are solved using "skill rolls" or other interactions. The players don't have to feel dumb to have fun - let them feel smart and pat themselves on the back.
That's all for this recap! Thanks for reading!