The Wicked : Wicked Heroes

04/05/2014

The Wicked

Wicked Heroes

Had a chance to run John Wick's Wicked Heroes for the first time.  This game, unlike most superhero games uses cards instead of dice as its resolution system.  This was to be one of the 12 new games I were to try this year.   Even more awesome, it was also to be the first ever table-top role-playing game experience for Darius, a friend of ours.

Maria Maya Fatima Lim, played by Che

18^th birthday, Filipino-Chinese exchange student.
Naïve tourist, diligent, sexually oblivious
United States, Boston (Harvard Business School)

Blessing: Personal Universe
Motivation:
DO NOT BRING SHAME TO FAMILY NAME – 5
Finish School with full honors – 3
Not let anyone bully me – 2
Make Them Like Me - 2

Haru Bhakta, played by Darius

Fresh graduate, Indian
Photographer, based in India
Bollywood paparazzi
Introverted, curious, likes to work alone

Father:  (prominent)  Pradeep
Generations of Indian Silk
Mother:  Waheeda

Blessing:  Omniscience
Motivations:

Prove Worth To Parents – 5
Gain more Knowledge – 4
Help Others -3

Maria Fatima is talking to her mother via Skype to tell her that she has aced her finals when her Blessing kicks in for the first time. The whole world seems to halt time just as she subconsciously wished there was a way to "stop time and enjoy the moment longer."  This event bothers her enough that she decides to head out and try grabbing something at a near by convenience store.  There, however, she encounters a man holding the place up and when she inadvertently startles the man, she gets shot in the chest.

Elsewhere, Haru is spying on some kind of local necrological ceremony happening by the Ganges when he realizes he can see some dark robed figure among the mourners.  This shocks him enough that he loses his balance, falls, and sadly lands with his back breaking as it smashes into his camera.  He awakens in the hospital now crippled given the damage he had suffered to his spine.  He starts seeing glimpses.  Visions.  They seem to answer questions he poses.  He struggles to grasp what they mean, but the depression of losing the ability to walk blinds him to what the Blessing can give in exchange.

But as their stories unfold, Fatima loses herself in what she misinterprets as divinity bestowed upon her.  And Haru confuses his visions as dark fates rather than as answers to questions he poses.  In the end, Fatima becomes the epicenter of a cult that forms around her as her influence transforms any within her vicinity to become willing, blind obedient slaves.  And Haru, while on board a plane, sees visions of it crashing and confuses solutions to stop it as proof that death is inescapable.

In the end, it becomes clear that Blessings can become Curses when the recipient did not want them - or is not capable of handling them - in the first place.