All-In Design Journal #1
John Polojac, who contributed Spare Parts to the Wild Cards adventure anthology All-In, wrote a couple of articles to provide all you game masters out there with information and inspiration when running games in the Wild Cards universe.
This first article discusses how to make your games feel more like the novels and how to take small characters and ideas and turn them into something larger and more important.
All-In Design Journal #1: There Are Eight Million Stories in the Naked City…
The people and places in the Wild Cards books have histories behind them. This is part of what imbues the stories with an air of verisimilitude. The joker newspaper vendor is actually an alien envoy. A self-styled dime museum in the city’s worst neighborhood showcases artifacts culled from the careers of legendary heroes and villains. The Reflector, one of the most formidable aces ever to walk the planet, was once Snotman, a joker so pitiable he was an outcast among outcasts. The space beneath the city was home to a were-alligator, his live-in girlfriend (who controlled all the feral animals in NYC), and an edgy feminist songwriter turned living subway car. A call girl named Veronica became an ace vigilante, one who helped end the threat of the Jumpers.
The very city of New York itself serves almost as a supporting character in the tales, the various environs of the teeming metropolis providing the stage for the major players of the stories. Manhattan is the ace capital of the world, ground zero for wild card chic. The Jokertown ghetto is almost a separate world, peopled by exotic creatures both terrifying and fantastic. Walking through a Jokertown door may lead to paradise or some hellish domain . The existence of wild cards has a pervasive influence on the entertainment and politics of the city. Wild Cards hot-beds such as Aces High, the Crystal Palace, and Dr. Tachyon’s Clinic serve as catalysts for numerous adventures. These are the places where rumors are passed, mysteries are uncovered, and feuds or alliances are born.
Game Masters wanting to replicate the feel of the stories in an M&M Wild Cards series for their players should play up the potential of locales and (seemingly) minor characters. Have the heroes discover what they originally thought was no more than a bit of color added to typical backdrop material is actually the springboard to whole new adventures. Let an NPC introduced as a bit player suddenly assumes center stage, with a storyline built around the individual. To this end, let use examine the ways GMs can employ select elements from the upcoming All-In anthology in the manner.
Stories can easily be spun out of unique places in the Wild Cards milieu. In the Spare Parts segment of the All-In anthology, two original Wild Cards establishments are introduced, the Top Deck and the Outer Limits. The former is a hot spot where aces and celebrities congregate. It serves as a replacement for the Aces High restaurant, which closed years ago in the continuity of the series. The Top Deck is trendier and less dignified than its’ predecessor, attracting a “hot” young celebrity clientele given to licentious behavior such as drug use and bawdy conduct. The second new site is an adult nightspot which serves as a rival to the more established Jokertown strip club Freakers. The Outer Limits is both mainstream AND less reputable at the same time than the older club. Unlike the more senior Freakers, it is also open to jokers as well as nats. Neither locale plays an irreplaceable role in Spare Parts, but storylines can be spun out of both. The following are based on the contrasts between these new enterprises and the older businesses:
A physically and spiritually renewed Hiram Worchester decides to revive Aces High, hoping to make a comeback after the various tragedies which befell him in the course of the books. But the financial backers he lines up start to back out of the arrangement after a campaign of threats and vandalism against them. Ace powers have clearly been involved in the intimidation campaign. The obvious suspect is the owner of the Top Deck, which has largely taken the place of Aces High. The nightclub’s management has the cash, the ace contacts, and the requisite lack of ethics to harass Mr. Worchester’s associates, but are do they really see the aging Fatman as a enough of a threat to do so? Perhaps so, but Mr. Worchester has plenty of other enemies as well-jokers who haven’t forgiven his slaying of Chrysalis, petty criminals Hiram put away during his short costumed-hero career, and even aces Mr. Worchester snubbed at his old restaurant. A mystery is born, awaiting investigation by the heroes.
Tensions between Freakers and the Outer Limits escalate into violence, sparked by the upstart stripper bar enticing Freakers dancer to cross over and work for the new club. Fights break out between staff members, when Outer Limits dancers ridiculing their Freakers rivals as freak-show attractions for nats, while the older club’s women deride their competitors as “part-time prostitutes”. Joker patrons accustomed to admittance to the Outer Limits suddenly resent being denied at Freakers, leading to neighborhood wide protests; particularly militant types begin targeting the original adult club’s nat patrons. Anti-joker nat-supremacist groups begin retaliating, and soon all of Jokertown is on the verge of riots. The heroes have to step in and quell the factions with a combination of diplomacy and intimidation.
Voila! Two adventure ideas borne out of settings which play only passing roles in the story itself.
Likewise, characters introduced as throwaways in one Wild Cards tale often ended up reappearing in prominent or even starring roles in later escapades. In addition to the three examples given in the intro to this article, Dr. Bradley Finn, Carnifex, and Mr. Nobody all started out as near-ciphers; Mr. Nobody did not even have a name in his first appearance-he was just the poor sap who spent decades trapped as the Great Ape, an oversized cinematic primate. This is not to state the GM should consider the back story of every hapless bystander or low-rent thug who appears in the course of an adventure of course; sometimes a mook is just a mook. It likely is not necessary for a GM to consider the story potential in a nameless doorman or the Mafia stooge whose chief job duty is fetching double espressos for the boss.
As a case example of this sort of thing, consider Mandy Lane, AKA Fun-Time Fanny. Fanny is a joker dancer at the Outer Limits, whom the PCs interact with only briefly. While there is vital information to be gained from Ms. Lane, the character is utterly incidental and could be easily replaced. But though Fun-Time Fanny can be no more than a throwaway NPC whom the heroes never meet again, she could also end up as far more
In the narrative, Fanny is provided with a back-story; she is an ex-teenage prostitute who has since (somewhat) cleaned up her act. She dances in a burlesque comedy routine at the Outer Limits to finance nursing classes at City College. Her joker status consists of chalk-white skin and several exaggerated and out-of-proportion body parts. Again, the character never need be developed further, but several elements from the character’s back-story lend themselves to building hooks. Consider:
As a wild card-afflicted nursing student, Mandy is likely training for a spot in the Jokertown Clinic, as other hospitals would likely find reasons not to hire her. Perhaps she already works there as a student nurse, bringing Mandy into contact with several prominent wild carders, such as Dr. Finn and Troll. During her time on the streets, she undoubtedly met other runaways, homeless people, and prostitutes. She could be connected to Bagabond, Chalktalk, or the ex-“geisha” Veronica. As an adult entertainer who has “been around the block”, Fun-Time Fanny may have inside knowledge on the sinister activities that go down in the neighborhood’s shadier clubs (Freakers, Squisher’s, and maybe even the Joker’s Wild).
Here is one possible scenario built around Fun-Time Fanny:
A grotesque serial killer is on a tear: his (or her, as the case may be) M.O. involves kidnapping prostitutes (and ex-prostitutes) and placing them in lethal traps. But before the comparison to a certain movie villain goes too far, there is a twist. The killer deactivates the traps remotely if the women agree to be exposed to the wild card virus. This almost always results in their deaths anyway, as ninety-percent of those affected draw a deadly Black Queen. A few victims have survived as disfigured jokers. None has yet drawn an ace. This particular batch of the virus seems more virulent, with none of the women exposed proving immune. The press has dubbed the murderer the “Turn of the Cards Killer”.
Fun-Time Fanny contacts the heroes because she believes she has important information. During her duties at the Clinic, she heard rumors about a break-in resulting in the theft of Dr. Tachyon’s research on the virus. Shortly thereafter, the abductions and murders began. Mandy Lane knew all the women from her time as a streetwalker, though she hadn’t seen most in years; several had moved on to establish “straight” lives, as Mandy did. This didn’t keep the killer from finding them. Fun-Time Fanny figures she is on the serial killer’s list, that he must be an old “customer”. But why hasn’t she been attacked? Is it because she is already a joker, or has her radically altered appearance simply kept Mandy from being recognized so far? To complicate matters, Fanny has already complicated her old friend Bagabond. But Bagabond is behaving erratically, directing her feral pets to attack “johns” almost at random. What really is going on? The adventure has begun.
Magnifying the roles of minor characters such as Fun-Time Fanny can also serve another purpose. Game Masters might elect to run Wild Cards series which mirror the books in another way: assume different characters depending on the scenario. They might be Justice Department aces in one adventure, members of the Jokertown neighborhood watch in another storyline and Center for Disease Control agents tasked with containing a wild card outbreak in a third exploit. This effectively recreates the feel of the stories, which feature rotating casts. In this type of game, Fun-Time Fanny could serve as a PC.
Though Fanny clearly is low PL in M&M terms, she is not entirely without potential as a heroic protagonist. Though limited by her oddball physique, as an exotic dancer, Fanny must have a degree of athletic ability. Ms. Lane possesses at least minor performing talents. She retains limited underworld contacts, fighting ability, and survival skills developed during her time on the streets. As a student nurse, Mandy Lane has basic medical skills. If the GM so decides, the character might even be imbued with a deuce power.
There you go. Another of the eight million stories of the naked city, just waiting to be told.
