Marvel Heroic RPG after-action report

I forgot, I never got to write up that after-action report for my Marvel Heroic RPG.

The characters were chosen some time earlier. Matt chose Cyclops, Chris chose Storm, and Alan chose Cannonball. So there we were, with Team "Team Leader."

To try out the system a little bit, we started with a Danger Room scenario: the team fighting ninja vampires on the rooftops of Neo-Tokyo. The players interacted in an interesting manner...seeing three team leaders interact was fun. XP were gained as a result of the small inter-party confrontations.

We started quickly picking up on how to manipulate the environment by dice rolls. I'd bought a big dry-erase board earlier that day, and jotted down valuable notes for everyone to see (what effects were in use, some stats for bad guys, that sort of thing). We found that keeping the board out there, and constantly writing out the effects we created for everyone to see helped.

We picked up with the mission: Cerebra picked up a new mutant coming into their powers somewhere in the midwest. The first part of the action started at a shopping mall, with a pit of darkforce growing in the floor. The group did a good job moving the civilians out of the area, disrupting the threat from the darkforce, and finding whomever was the cause. The run from the mall, with a young mutant in their arms, was troubles by a couple of black helicopters with anti-mutant folks at the guns. The choppers were defeated, and the new mutant was saved.

The players all picked up the narrative use of the dice quickly. There was only an occasional bit of prompting. If someone said they were attacking, I asked what effect they were looking for. This created a cool, action-filled set of scenes.

We had a transition scene, with the PC's meeting with the new mutant's parents. Storm went to give the "I understand you're going through a lot of changes," speech. Cannonball and Cyclops gave the, "We work at a really cool school...we even brought pamphlets," speech. It was a nice way to get the players to find their characters' voices.

No dice rolls in the transition scene. No one had taken any damage in the previous scene. It was cool, but in danger of going to far.

So, in come the Sentinels. And some Hellions. The fight was cool, with everyone pulling out the best opportunities to do cool stuff and create effects that stayed over the battlefield. Plot points were handed out, the Doom Pool was used to near exhaustion. Ultimately, the Sentinels were defeated, and the Hellions were sent running. The new young mutant agreed to go to Xavier's School, with the blessing from a very nervous, but appreciative, parents.

The dice rolling during combat was quick and loose. Thanks to Christine for having her laptop open, ready to confirm the rules we needed. The biggest wall we'd hit, I think, was how we were supposed to use our Plot Points, and how I was supposed to give them out.