Team-Updates #1: RPGs of Various Sizes; Spotlight on Winter
Hey pals! Fiona here. Welcome to the very first Team-Up Moves Team-Update! We’re going to be sending these out when we’re between runs so that nary a week will go by when you don’t get something from us.
And hey! Now we can talk without having to agree on the same post-Twitter hangout spot. I’m… I’m still working through my feelings. And having to re-think um… our entire promotion strategy.
If you’re on Mastodon, we’ve created an account as @teamupmoves@dice.camp! Feel free to chat with us through there. We’ll still be @teamupmoves for as long as there’s a Twitter to be on, of course. Just not sure how long that will be.
Run #5: Our Mundane Supernatural Life
Did you hear our run of Our Mundane Supernatural Life? Stephanie and I rarely play games face-to-face and have never tried recording that way, so that made it an extra-fun experience for us. Here’s what our setup looked like:
(Note the cameo from Mutant City Blues on my microphone riser.)
Am I wrong about Steph’s handwriting? You be the judge.
By the way, Storybrewers has a free demo version of Our Mundane Supernatural Life that you can try out, though we heartily recommend getting a physical copy for all the little dry-erase boards and the complete ruleset.
You can listen to both our AP and our backmatter here: Team Up Moves #5: Our Supernatural Life
Run #6: Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game
Right now I’m working on editing the AP episodes for Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game, which will be our 6th run and theoretically out next week. (“But Fiona,” you ask, “are you going to have time, what with American Thanksgiving?” to which I reply “I AM BAD AT TIME MANAGEMENT OKAY.”)
Pals this run is shaping up to be 100% amazing. Sentinel Comics is a return to the Superhero Business big perils and big fights that we last saw with Champions, but with a very spiffy character creation process and somewhat more streamlined gameplay than that classic.
Coming back to explore that contrast with us is our pal Ian Gregory, who you heard in Champions as Derek “The Human Slingshot” Wrobel. Also joining us is Ceci “New Arcadia Yes All Of It The Whole City” Mancuso, who you heard in our very first run, Anyone Can Wear the Mask, playing New Arcadia. (Yes, all of it. The whole city.)
These episodes have some likely and less-likely heroes coming together, including one character whose very presence will have a huge, lasting impact on not only New Arcadia but the rest of our shared universe. (We’re nerds. It’s great.)
If you want to get your ears ready for Sentinel Comics, we highly recommend both the System Mastery episode on Sentinel Comics and, also featuring Jef and Jon, the Character Creation Cast Series 42 on Sentinel Comics [42.1, 42.2, 42.3].
New Arcadia Spotlight!
Each of these newsletters we’re going to write a bit about the people and places of New Arcadia. This is my opportunity to go on too long about my little characters in ways that maybe don’t work in the show. Consider this a kindler, gentler 10 minutes of NPCs talking to each other.
Of course there’s no one I’d rather start with than Winter. You know her as the voice on the comms for the New Arcadia Superhero Dispatch Organization, though she’s hardly the only dispatcher. She just happens to keep being on shift when we record.
As a dispatcher, Winter is responsible for directing the heroes of New Arcadia to where they’re needed, giving them important context for their mission, and providing information from the NASDO’s extensive database of supervillains and supernatural phenomena.
When she’s not working, Winter can be found at the trans board game nights that Banter runs over at A Roll or Two or screaming her face off at a Warehousemen home game. Once a month during the summer, she volunteers at New Arcadia’s Grandsmeddow, covering its impressive sledding hill with snow for New Arcadia’s kids to play in.
And yes, though Winter does have what she refers to as “Elsa powers,” she has not so far been cleared for field work by the Dispatch Organization. She says she prefers the desk job anyway, since she sits quite close to the Limitless Coffee Machine and her chair has really, really good wheels (the rollerblade kind), and it has nothing to do with her superheroing psych evaluation rating her susceptibility to seduction by female supervillains a “liability of unprecedented scale.”
More Superhero Games!
We have just taken receipt of Spectaculars from Scratchpad Publishing, an absolute unit of a game and easily our largest RPG by volume. We’ll be giving this a shot in the new year.
(Little Box game, meet big box game.)
Green Ronin has been reviving Mutants and Masterminds recently, and you can get a great deal on PDFs of the books with Bundle of Holding’s Earth-Prime Bundle. They also have a Kickstarter to reprint the Deluxe Hero’s Handbook for Mutants and Masterminds, though by the time you read this it may have finished.
Mutants and Masterminds is next on our list of seminal RPGs to try out. Listen for that in the first half of 2023.
What We’ve Been Playing and Reading
Fiona: I’ve got a campaign of The Watch in full swing, about to finish its first act. Tonally it’s a new space for me, but I’ve been working on developing some sinister and unsettling things. GMing it is a real leap of faith: if you trust in the Mission moves at the beginning of the session you will get enough story hooks out of the consequences to keep going for a long time. Let’s just say that one should be discerning when searching the battlefields for limbs to re-attach.
I’ve been really into Poison Ivy (2022) by G. Willow Wilson, art by Marcio Takara. I don’t tend to read a lot (or… any) DC books but since watching the Harley Quinn animated show on HBO I’ve fallen hard for Harlivy. The Poison Ivy solo is very much a different tone (our girl’s doing some light… specicide) and Takara’s art is phenomenal for it. Not to mention that every few pages Wilson just twists the knife. Highly recommended.
In other gaming, is anyone else completely taken with Marvel Snap? It is a very fresh take on digital collectable card games (e.g. Hearthstone, Magic: the Gathering Spellslingers) and I have not been able to get enough of it. It’s really accessible and interesting and varied. The last time I picked up Hearthstone a few months ago I felt like I was playing against the same boring deck over and over again. Not so with Marvel Snap.
I would grade their Squirrel Girl a B+. While I do appreciate the squirrels, the unbeatableness isn’t coming across. (Yes, I do have opinions on all board and card game implementations of Squirrel Girl, and yes I will share them if even slightly prompted. Five Minute Marvel’s is the best.)
If you see someone named Chktt-Kit playing a janky Jubilee deck, that’s me.
Stephanie: The Masks campaign I’ve been GM’ing will hit its one year anniversary soon. When I don’t know what to do I ask myself what Fiona would do. Last week my heroes returned from our several month-long cross-dimensional adventure to find a Halcyon City that’s leapt a year into the future: our Protégé is remembered as a hero who almost saved the city from a volcano disaster (that’s right), our Reformed is wanted for questioning in connection with that same disaster (not her fault), and that same Reformed’s steady girlfriend has just been seen holding hands with our heroes’ faithful softball-playing friend.
Among my favorite books to read this year, Ryka Aoki’s novel Light from Uncommon Stars is definitely the one with the most Team-Up Moves. A violin teacher has made a deal with a demon to find the right young genius for a sacrifice: that genius turns out to be a trans girl who ran away from home with only her instrument and a bedroll. Maybe they can save each other? They’ll need help from the intergalactic refugees at their fave donut shop, though. Also almost everyone’s Asian American, and everything’s in California, and there are puns. John Lee Clark’s book of poetry How to Communicate has puns too, and wit, and disability politics that should interest people who like to read mutant comics: Clark is DeafBlind, and one of his poetic forms involves double meanings you can only totally grok if you also read Braille.
And in the comic book world: I thought I’d never get over Vita Ayala and Rod Reis ending their run on New Mutants, by far my fave of the Krakoa-era X-Men books, and I probably never will get over it, but you know who’s writing them now? Charlie Jane freakin’ Anders, whose new New Mutant named Escapade is the most delightful walking, leaping, flying metaphor for trans teen experience that I have ever seen in any medium. At the moment she’s been captured by a gross cult that vivisects mutants to give themselves powers they certainly do not deserve: I, for one, am emotionally more than ready to find out what happens next. [Hard same. —F]
Let’s awkwardly leave it there! If you like what we’re doing, leave an iTunes review or tell a friend. You could even forward them this e-mail!
Do you know of a game that you think we should play? Email show@teamupmoves.com or mention us on Twitter or Mastodon. We love all superhero stuff, but especially games that convey a particular point-of-view. Self-promotion is encouraged!
Do you want to be on the show, or know someone who does? If you love a particular superhero game or a particular type of superhero story, let us know at show@teamupmoves.com or those aforementioned socials. If you have links to places you’ve been recorded either playing games or talking about things, send those, too, though they’re not required. We especially encourage folks who have different social or cultural backgrounds from the two of us.
Do you want one or both of us to be on your show or stream? We probably want to be on it, too! Get in touch. Let’s talk.
– Fiona & Stephanie