the Swamp Doctors

To me this sounds like a good band name, the Swamp Doctors, it's also a current group name my new players have adopted for themselves. I've just started a new campaign today with a group of almost all new players, and it's awesome.

This was one of the best games I've ran in a long time. It was fast-paced with plenty of dramatic successes and failures.

The new game is modern fantasy and were using the Villains and Vigilantes system with some modifications and house rules. Most of it is every day earth, but with an underlying tone of darkness and supernatural elements. I gave the players the option to choose some of their powers as well as roll some randomly. They either came as innate magical qualities, spells, or devices of some sort.

Here's what we ended up with:

-This is my girlfriend Rachel's first full campaign. She's playing as a siren with sonic powers and seduction-like mind control. She also has the skills of a master thief.

-Doug used to GM for his old group, he's possible more excited about this game then I am. He's playing as a well-groomed business executive who's both telekinetic and telepathic. He's also a burn victim and is terrified of fire. With heightened intelligence he gets just a shit-ton of skills to train in.

-My buddy Danny has been wanting to play for a while. As far as I can tell, He's some sort of Werespider with blade-like arachnid limbs that can erupt from his back. For his weakness he chose a fear of hospitals, doctors, and medicine in general due to the fact he was forced to have surgery that gave him magical eyes that induce fear and shoot lasers. He's also a detective.

-Danny's girlfriend Katie is also playing. She's essentially a mermaid without the tail with poisonous fish spines and the ability to breath underwater. She can't be separated from water for too long, however. Her other weakness is electricity and she's also trained in a lot of treasure hunting skills.

I tasked them with stopping a zombie apocalypse in the middle of the New Orleans French quarter. In V&V hand-to-hand attacks can be difficult without training so most of the zombies weren't a problem for the players.

They had to spend a lot of time figuring out how people were becoming infected. This lead them to a hospital where they decided things would be easier if they stole scrubs and pretended to by doctors to get a hold of an ambulance.

The player's finally tracked down a voodoo cult in the middle of the swamp who was responsible for spreading infection throughout the city. This is when things got tough for them. There were several cultists with swords as well as the brainwashed twin sister of the NPC who gave them the quest.

This cult was being led by a decrepit voodoo priestess being kept alive by fusing herself with the plants of the swamp. The priestess also had tow pet alligators defending her. One of them bit Katie and dragged her unconscious body underwater. Thankfully she can't drown and the water helped wake her up.

Somehow the player's managed to separate the grandmother from her roots and vines, killing her in the process as well as ending the infection and causing the structure they were in to collapse right after they escaped.

As reward I was going to give the players a vehicle of their choosing, but instead they chose to pimp out the ambulance they stole which is way cooler. They also deciding to leave the city of New Orleans for a while, and wait for the heat from the destruction they caused to die down.

I'm excited for the ensuing road trip game coming up. I think they will be going to the mountains or the coastline. Either way I have some planning to do.