The current ongoings of my Aeon teams. But first, some notes for the overview of all teams.
The State of the Aeon Campaign
- I finished up part of the technology file for Aeon itself. It clocked in at around 10k worth of words. Sigh. I don’t miss this part of speculative settings. At all.
- I took a six week break from running. Four weeks was to bypass the mess of the holidays and the other two were because of some health reasons of my own (I’m fine now). I should have just tried to run because I ended up losing some players – though the loss of most of them was because of their own personal issues.
- I lost +Emily Smirle as a active player onB-Team because the times we were playing were messing with her sleep schedule. She’s still part of the project and I plan on bringing her as a guest player on at least one of the teams. She’s awesome I miss hanging out with her. 🙁
- I lost +Daniel Dover as an active player on D-Team (for now). Hopefully mid-summer brings him back. Daniel’s a great guy and I’m genuinely fond of him and how his mind operates. That doesn’t even much what a great player he is.
- I lost +Pk Levine as an active player on C-Team. 🙁 His work load is kind of crazy and he can’t commit to a stable timeslot on his own games, much less mine. It sucks, but hey, we get the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game this year because of it.
- I lost the replacement player for Emily in B-Team FOUR times due to various issues. It’s like the Defense Against the Dark Arts teaching position. There is a curse on it. I cannot get a replacement player (and hey, Em is irreplaceable anyways). So for now I’m keeping both B- and D-Teams at four players. I think the last D-Team session went far more smoothly because of this.
- I gained an excellent replacement player for C-Team, +Andre Troche . Dude’s a natural fit with the group in my opinion and his superpower is basically “I’m the ultimate team player,” which rocks.
- I started a “think tank” of people interested in the Aeon project, but where were unable to play. I’m really glad I did this because it has enabled me to get a lot done world-wise I might not have otherwise done. They’ve been a massive help in getting the Aeon wiki up and running and I don’t think I could have gotten it at its current state without them.
- I put out a call for three guest players, lost one, ended up with two. One has a fully finished character background and character and the other is still working on it. I’ll likely pull for another one in, but that’s going to wait a while.
- A-Team “ended”. 12 game sessions and three seasons later and my players felt it was time for something else. I agreed. We might come back to it later, but for now the new cast of characters will be the “V-Team” (V is for Valiants). More on that later
- Setting bible for Aeon reached a ludacris 77k words. Most of that is handling high point totals, character traits, rules to smooth power use, new powers, new Sorcery spells, chi skills as powers, etc. I’ll start in on the world-building part once I finish the tech available (glob help me. I’m almost done).
- The converging of games has begun for the B- and C-Teams. They’re already working on the same problem from different angles. I hope that in the next 4-8 weeks they’ve got Blue Skies wrapped up in a nice bow so that we can get to the main plot. Crossing over games was not as easy as I thought at first – there are some problems I’ve smoothed out thanks to players saying “Hey, this doesn’t work.” and me responding with “You’re right. Let’s fix it.” I’m rather decent at the player’s checkerboard (what I call weaving plots for players in a way that it seems like they made the choice on their own), but now I’m I’m playing on STAR TREK checkerboards. One action by a PC here directly affects a PC there. I’ve had to keep more notes on this and I’ve worked up a more comprehensive “murder board” to keep track of the information in a useful way.
- I started a Discord server just for my players, myself, and those involved in the Aeon project. So far it’s been quite useful and we’ve devolved a couple of times into non-Aeon topics, bu that happens.
State of the B-Team
The B-Team opened up Season 4 with two-fisted action and all barrels blazing. they want to take Blue Skies out after seeing the future that the giant company helps create firsthand. To do this Director Legend aka “The General” has transferred part of the Cavalry (the PCs) over to an AEGIS taskforce designed to undermine, counter, and dismantle the Blue Skies Defense Contracting LLC. The players have been whittling away hard at Blue Skies and stuff that happened months ago is finally starting to take effect. Last game they figured out half the board of (unnamed) directors and infiltrated (via the Commander’s SEAL allies) three different branches – including one they didn’t even know about. Then they lost contact with one. When the game ended they were going to go kick in a door because here comes the Cavalry to the rescue…
You can read about the B-Team’s current exploits from this page.
Details
Scale: National and limited global (the B-Team works out of New York City for AEGIS running ops around the world currently)
Basic Campaign Concept (season 3 to present): Metahumans working with AEGIS to deal with the growing threat of the ominous Blue Skies corporation.
Point Range: 900 points to 1,800 points.
Roster
The B-Team consists of 4 players and
Eamon Finnegan (played by +Kyle Norton): Kyle has continued to make Eamon Finnegan one of the more interesting characters in Aeon. He’s got strict morals, but he’s happy to split legal hairs. He’s powerful as hell and can literally crush you like a bug, but doesn’t want to do more damage than necessary. He’s a hero. It shows. Also, having a lawyer on your hero team is like a hidden layer of chocolate. You don’t know you need it until you bite into it. Seriously. Legal skills are like money – they are their own superpower.
Ezekiel Le Strange aka Technomancer (played by +Christian Gelacio): Chris’s previous character was destroyed via interaction with a crystal skull during the early part of Season 3. Chris made another character and decided to sort of fill the same roles he’d done before (blaster and gadgeteer) but in different ways. Technomancer is more metahuman-y than Arc Light and is the current example of a “trion” (a metahuman with three power foci) with ESP, Hyper-Intelligence, and Technopathy as his powers. He’s also a helluva of an archer (on par with Hawkeye or Green Arrow) and makes use of his gadgeteering skills to deliver unique and special payloads to foes. The other members of the team are a bit wary of him after he created Ultron (not really) and unleashed a fusion-powered chainsaw (’cause obvious reasons). Still, he’s been dang useful to the team and works well with everyone.
Galatea aka “Natalie” (NPC): The physical manifestation of Eamon and Ezekiel’s powers. Galatea is a working Kyberic Refractor with sentient thought. This allows her to mimic any power she can see and detect Kyberic signatures with ease. As a synthetic being akin to an android (hell, she is one) she has a hard time understanding people, but was given a very strict “morality matrix” thanks to the combined efforts of the B-Team and especially Eamon. Galatea works very hard at pleasing everyone and this is likely to cause problems later.
Ian Owari aka The Commander (played by +Douglas Cole): Doug has continued playing his role as team leader and hero to the hilt. After the end of Season 3 and presenting him with an awful choice: what his character’s heart felt or what the world needed. He choose his heart. Did he just destroy the world? Doug (not the Commander) certainly thinks he might have. Stay tuned and see if he’s right.
Kei Toyotomi aka Onyx (NPC): Sister to Katana, Onyx is a powerful terrakinetic and a master of Akijutsu and other samurai martial arts. Nominally, she’s a brick, but is also a shaper who can mix it up with the best of them. Her and Galatea have become close in the last few months.
Murui Ao aka Zephyr (played by +GodBeastX): Zephyr has grown considerably as a character in the last few sessions. His twin (aka Phaton) ended up staying in the future helping Maria, while he went back to the present. Zephyr ended up nearly killing himself via a failed roll when performing a slam and it was both entertaining and eye opening. Glad he took Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction; Collisions only).
Saya Toyotomi aka Katana (NPC): The Commander’s waifu. She’s also a dangerous metahuman with the ability to manipulate space, relocate her senses elsewhere, is a capable magic user, and has some kind of magical sword and armor. Katana pretended not to understand anything but Okinawan, but turns out ot be conversant in multiple languages. She prefers to work with her sister on the Cavalry’s “home team” and likes to play housewife (something she’s remarkably good at) when not working to secure the city.
Tracy Billingham aka One Helluva Secretary (NPC): Tracy is a metahuman with an unusual power. She can duplicate herself up to twenty times (including herself), but not while anyone is physical present and observing her. If an observer sees her in this duplicated state she collapse into a single being. Combined with her above average intellect and natural fastidiousness and she makes an amazing secretary. Her abilities allow her to take care of all the paperwork for the B-Team in its entirety, apply for more grant money by navigating the bureaucratic nightmare of federal funding, act as a comms operator for team members, and keep their offices perfectly organized. The PCs bought her as a mutual ally and she’s as much part of the team as anyone else.
Picking Over The Bones
The B-Team remains one of the strongest teams I have,, at least partly owing to the fact that it’s been ran the longest – almost a year now – and has 40 sessions under its belt. They gone through a bit losing two of the original characters on the team, but have come out of it in one piece. They’re laser focused on dismantling Blue Skies and have been putting all their energies on that. in true comic book fashion, I’ve taken to separating the team by PCs and NPC, with the former doing “active” foreground stuff and the latter doing “active” background stuff. This allows for the Cavalry to continue day to day operations in the MAPS program to protect the Bronx and whittle away at Blue Skies. It also allows them to pull in people they may need when going on a big op. B-Team is quickly closing the gap with C-Team and hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be at a good point to start swapping players (temporarily) between teams.