“Correct! However, did you know it’s possible to mix genres?”
The list of genre worlds flashed up on the wall to the left of Lily. From Age of the Powered all the way down to Windswept Hearts, he did indeed know them all. The words flashed and merged as she spoke, along with images over the nearby walls to show exactly what amalgam she went on to describe.
“We can create the perfect blend of genres to cater to any taste and fancy. If you’re a Cthulhu mythos fan, we can blend The Terror Within with Mystery Noir for a weird, horrifying experience. To create a steampunk world, we merge Swords and Sorcerers with Mystery Noir. We can create cowboys and aliens, super-powered pirates, cyborg demigods, and anything your heart desires. Have you discussed your initial choices with your girlfriend?”
“Oh, ah, she’s not, not my girlfriend. Just a friend.”
“Of course,” Lily said, in a way that didn’t exactly mean ‘of course,’ but he didn’t press.
“I had thought… I love superheroes, though, man, STELLAR VOYAGER. I’m a serious Voyer.” The thought of speeding through the city at super speed, or flipping around and carving up the bad guys with swords was too much to resist.
“Super-powered science fiction? Remember that everything is possible.”
“For now we’ll keep it simple. Superheroes. Ah, I mean, Age of the Powered.”
“Decisive. I like that.” She touched the wall where it said Age of the Powered, which lit up and showed images of guests blasting dinosaurs with laser beams, flying toward an oncoming meteor, and hanging upside down to kiss the beautiful heroine in a downpour. Derek started bouncing on his toes again. Giddiness overtook him.
She gestured again, and the choices expanded. Now, beneath each choice was a pair of skills, with four pips beside each.
“As this is your chosen genre, you’ll get an automatic rank one in the skills for Age of the Powered, which as you can see are Command and Athletics. You’re automatically more skilled at telling people what to do, and moving with pizzazz and flair!” The first empty circles beside those skills filled in black. “Inside the gameworld, we use the latest technology to assist you in doing whatever you desire, and if that’s jumping and flipping around the city, the game helps make it real.”
“However, as you can probably guess, those aren’t the only two skills in the game, and not the only two you’ll be using while in Age of the Powered. Each of the skills in the game has its uses even outside the genre we’ve assigned it.”
She stopped and regarded him. “How are we doing so far?”
“Great! Oh my god, this is a… this is a dream come true!”
“You’ll have another twelve skill points to assign, but don’t worry. After your initial feel of the story simulator, you will have a chance to reassign your skills before heading into the park proper. After your second set of selections, those choices will stand. For now, just touch the skills you’d like to have, and ask any questions you like. And, to keep the challenge level up, we impose a maximum rank of two at character creation.”
Derek stepped up to the wall and began tapping. He had a pretty good idea of the superhero he wanted, though he wondered where the superpower choices were. He went for Skirmish, some Wreck, and definitely Fortitude, Will, and Resourcefulness. Before he knew it, he was out of points, and the system flashed red at him to inform him he needed to cut back on a skill in order to put one somewhere else. Ugh, they always did this in games.
He settled on Athletics 2, Skirmish 2, Wreck 1, Fortitude 2, Will 2, Resourcefulness 2, Command 1, Study 1, and Prowl 1. Still, there were a lot of skills with no dots at all.
“What happens if I don’t have a skill?”
“Why don’t we try it out?” she asked.
A wall opened, and beyond it was a vast metropolis currently being terrorized by a titanic robot.
Chapter 3 - A Giant Fricking 1950s Super Robot!
Zap! The boxy shape of the mechanical behemoth blasted a helicopter out of the sky. Pow! The robot booted a tank into the fortieth floor of a gleaming skyscraper.
“Woah!” Derek shrieked. That robot looked like something designed for a movie out of the 1950s, which considering the year was 2094, it made it that much cooler. Everything was so real.
Lily gestured him through the door. “Go on, don’t be shy. The city needs a hero.”
Derek hesitated. “I don’t even have a superhero name yet though.”
“We haven’t started a Full Campaign yet so no worries there. Go on, you are just playing with your TITS. Getting a real good taste of what’s coming. Nothing that happens in this match will have any effect on your rating or ranking in the system. Why don’t you try out something you aren’t skilled in?”
Derek rolled through his character sheet in his helmet display. It was time to see what happened when he used a skill he didn’t have.
Alright– I’m fighting a robot so robotics, robotics– nope, nothing there. But Computers is here.
“I have no skill in Computers. But, like, what can I do with it against this robot? Is there a way to hack it?”
Lily laughed. “In the game you are going to have to find these things on your own but often robots have a command console somewhere.” Her hand wicked out, a remote control grasped within, and she plocked in a bunch of commands with fast and dexterous fingers. A computer console rose up from the ground, a fat holographic diagram of the robot dead center in its display. There were a lot of garbled labels and a cursory probe with his finger showed that it was a touch screen.
“So, now what?”
“Well, try to hack or stop the robot!” Lily said. “Start pushing on buttons.”
Eeny meeny miny moe, Derek thought, pushing one of the garbled display options. Dice rolled into his heads up display, and two digits flashed– a 10 and a 1.
“Sweet!” Derek exclaimed. “I got an 11, so I did it, right?”
Lily laughed hard, running out of breath in short order. The robot merrily continued to destroy the metropolis as she did so.
“Oh you sweet summer child. For any other skill roll, you’d be rolling a ten-sided die for each dot you have, and you take whatever number you roll. Here you don’t have any, so when you don’t have a skill the program rolls two ten-sided dice and assigns you its lowest value.” The ten had faded out, and the one was flashing in front of a reddish pulsing background. Below it read FAILED. “You failed critically. On the plus side, you’ve gained a Plot Point. You’ll be able to spend that at your leisure if you want to re-roll in the future. However, according to my GameMaster tab you accidentally unlocked the Robot’s manufacturing failsafe meaning that, soon enough, it will seize the factory that spawned it and start mass-producing minions. You just turned a monster attack into a super villain origin story!”
Derek shook his head. “Damn, well, at least I know not to do that again!”
Lily tapped a few buttons and displayed her handheld screen to him briefly. “Don’t be so sure of that. I’m going to change your dice rolls with an administrative edit and let’s just see what happens, shall we?” She tacked her fingers over her screen, rapid fire, and both die rolls changed to ten. The robot slumped over and its command console cleared. Both dice were now flashing green, with the words CRITICAL SUCCESS beneath.
Holy crap, I can understand everything!
“That’s what a critical will get you, whether you’ve got nothing, or full ranks. There are other factors in play as well, such as your physical and mental condition, the emergency level, etc, but let’s just say that having a zero in a skill doesn’t mean it can’t be used heroically, super buddy. And, damn, let me just add that I can see why Meredith brought you to the park,” she added, looking him over briefly.
“Yeah? Is it like a legendary?” Derek asked. “Does it give me special abilities?”
Lily gave him another slightly wrong smile. “Something like that. So, now, it is time for you to solo play with your TITS. If you get stuck on anything just yell ‘paus
e,’ then admin, and I’ll hop on in to help!”
Derek took a deep breath and just turned in a circle, enjoying the surroundings. The city about him appeared absolutely real, though the heads-up display overlays were getting on his nerves. The sleek flying cars combined the futuristic missile look of sci-fi tropes with quad drone propellers. He got technical readouts on his display. The land vehicles here weren’t exactly cars because they hovered several inches off the ground. These too had greenish halos and technical readouts, including Tier, and Speed ratings that didn’t yet make sense.
People periodically gained green halos with their names above them, and the designation NPC, for non-player character. They would probably have one or two stock lines to say over and over… but maybe they didn’t. One way to find out.
“Hell, why not?”
He strolled over to the nearest NPC, a balding professor type in a tweed jacket and thick spectacles. The guy was in the process of gaping at the downed robot, but after a few moments turned and gawked at Derek.
“You… you’re the… you saved us!”
Several others nearby noticed, turned, and began to surround him, raining down ‘thank you’s and ‘you saved us’s.
“Uh… all in a day’s work for…” He looked down at himself and found he was clad in a forest green bodysuit with black gloves. “Ahh… Captain Hammings.” Oh man, so lame. Worst name ever. Facepalm moment.
“Captain Hammings! Thank you so much!”
The professor seemed pensive, and pushed his glasses back up onto his nose. “The danger’s over. That robot collapsed, but I sure hope nobody got hurt.”
Of course! Derek took off running toward the hulking remains of the robot. Here was a good chance to use some of the skills he actually had. As he sprinted towards the enormous robo corpse, he noted several smaller robots crawling over its surface. Repairing it?
Several new commands popped up on his Heads Up Display, including the Study (1), Survey (0), or Resourcefulness (1). Apparently he was too far away to Athletics them. He reached out and tried to tap on Survey. He was just trying to get a quick idea of what was going on, so this seemed like the best course of action…
The two ten-sided dice again clattered around in the corner of his vision, and popped up 6 and 7. The six flashed yellow, indicating… something. Oh, SUCCESS!
“With complication?” He muttered. “What the heck does that mean?”
A circle appeared beneath the dice, divided itself into a six-segment pie, and read ‘Robot Reactivates.’ One of the pie wedges flashed to life and settled on red.
“Well crap.”
However, technical readouts came into being around the scuttling little spider bots. Apparently they had one health level each, so that was good. However, they were shocking the enormous robot back to life. One of them had a panel open and was in the process of click-clacking command keys.
“I sure wish I could shoot the stupid things.” Maybe… at the bottom of his HUD, he tapped on the green figure with the black gloves, and up popped a whole new menu, including three cards: one read FLIGHT, sporting an icon of a super person soaring through the sky, another read BLAST, and the third read X-RAY VISION. Beneath, it read Ability Points: 12/12.
“No. Way. I can fly.”
He could fly.
And fly he did. As soon as he said the words, no tapping required, he lifted off the ground, awkwardly at first, but after a couple of twists he got the hang of it and began to shoot towards the spider robots. He had no idea how it was happening in the real world, and it hardly mattered. He was flying!
Now to blast these little buggers. He pulled up the superpowers menu again, then thought better of it. His AP now read 11/12, but that was a question for another time. This time, he just put his hands together and went “Pew pew!”
The game totally understood what he was after. A freaking laser beam shot out of his hand. Derek screamed delighted laughter. The game rolled his Wreck skill, only a single die, which ended up with a 4. His laser bounced harmlessly off the huge robotic body, near one of the spider bots. It didn’t even matter, he’d shot a laser blast! Below the dice, another pie wedge filled in red. Robot Reactivates flashed red once, and his AP was down to 10/12.
“Buzzkill,” he muttered.
“Come on, Captain Hammings!” Somebody shouted below him. “You can do it!” Somebody added, “I want to have your baby!” Which seemed a bit much, but he’d take it, maybe with some x-ray vision later. Derek waggled a mental eyebrow at the idea, then focused back on the task at hand.
Invigorated, he tried another “Pew pew!” This time he blasted one of the spider bots off with a resounding Wreck roll of 8, which was apparently still a partial success, because a third clock wedge beeped to life. Stupid clock. The spider went flying off the robot with a trail of smoke, and people cheered him on below.
He bent toward the robot and flew in close. It was time to use the skills he’d sunk real points into. He landed without issue, wound up, and put his right fist straight towards a robot about the size of a golden retriever.
The Skirmish and Wreck commands appeared, and he said “Skirmish!” under his breath. It worked! The little command box flashed, two dice were rolled, and one of them was a ten. Beneath the dice it now read COMPLETE SUCCESS. In front of him, the robot crumpled, and he felt the impact of the metal against his fist. It actually kind of hurt! It had to be the haptic bodysuit.
It wasn’t that bad; later he might adjust the haptic settings. Three more robots remained. He spun to face them. Two had moved into flanking positions, while the third and final one kept typing at the huge robot’s console.
“Pew pew!” He shouted at the top of his lungs, pointing at one of them.
His Wreck roll came up a dismal 1, but now the game froze and offered him up a choice: Gain a Plot Point? Was in a box, while Spend your Plot Point to re-roll? was in the other below it.
“Spend it,” he told the game, and the dice clattered again. This time it came up a six. His laser beam (now he was at 8/12 Ability Points) cut the robot in half, while in his HUD a fourth pie wedge filled in red. Successes with Complication could bite his butthole.
“That’s it!” he shouted, and swiped at the menu. He chose Athletics and charged past the spider bot facing him, to instead go after the one trying to revitalize the dumb robot Lily had killed for him. The dice came up 2 and 9, a complete success, and a confusing sequence of flips happened. Meaning somehow he flipped and vaulted and spun. Or the system spun the whole gameworld around him in a dizzying array of moves. He wasn’t sure. Either way it was absolutely the coolest he’d ever been in his life.
He muttered ‘skirmish’ one more time, and rolled up a high enough number to obliterate the second to last spider bot.
He was gasping for breath. Thank Ditko and Lee for all those trips to the gym after that car accident just out of high school. He would keep up with this game based solely on the fact that he’d been pumping iron four times a week since that year of physical therapy.
The last reactivation robot seemed paralyzed with indecision: come after him, or try to bring its master back from the dead? He ended up making its choice for him, by blasting it with his laser hands.
So what if it took three shots and he was halfway out of Ability Points?
Chapter 4 - Gear, A City, and A Noob
Lily ushered him back into the stark white room where he’d chosen his points and his AR helmet over the creepy injection. She was beaming at him with a smile that felt more and more fake the longer he saw her do it.
“How was everything?” she asked.
“Absolutely the most amazing thing I’ve ever done.”
She nodded. “Sounds about right. And that’s just the beginning! Now, before we reunite you with Meredith and get into the world proper, are there any questions you have that you’d like to clear up?”
“Only about a thousand. Where’d the superpowers come in? I didn't choose them.”
“In
deed. The powers are part of the Gear system. We generally feel that a quicker introduction is better. If you hadn’t found your powers, TITS would have hit you in the face with their use. You’d have been shown.”
“So…”
“When you enter, you’ll have the full range of starter options for Gear, including super suits, should you choose Age of the Powered for your main campaign line. A great question.”
He pondered what else to ask, but the only thing that came to mind was the fact that his knuckles were aching from punching the robot. Was it real or just the AR suit? “What is it? The gameworld I mean. What’s it made of?”
She gestured back toward the city he’d just left. “I’ll just turn off the AR overlay.” The moment she did, the whole city appeared to be made of white blocks. The buildings huge white blocks, the people smaller ones, and everywhere seemed to flow with white speckles. The room now appeared to be about the size of his house, rather than a limitless horizon brimming with skyscrapers. She tapped at her tablet again, and the whole city appeared again. “What you encountered was partial reality overlaid with textures and colors in your AR visor, while the rest is projected over a backdrop.”
“Wait. What? How the heck does that make any sense?”
Lily laughed. “You ask too many questions. I could tell you stasis field, motion enhancers, cerebral motivators and the whole nine yards but that’s just technobabble. Let’s just say that it works and, more than that, it makes dreams come true.
“Speaking of dreams come true, why don’t we get you back to Meredith. If I’m alone in here with you for too long she’ll have my ears, or at the very least give me a black mark on my next review. What do you think, Derek? Are you ready to be a real superhero over a real metropolis? Are you ready to join the main campaign? Or do you just want to keep putzing around here?”
Derek looked down over his super suit, his firm muscles bulging through the fabric, enhanced no doubt by the AR overlay or some other mumbo jumbo. He made a fist and watched it crackle with energy.
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