Comic Female Conundrum RPG

The usual.

It's about 1:00 PM. Yesterday, all of you checked the lists of games to be GMed today. There will be about a hundred game tables, most of them superhero games. One of them called your attention, it said:

TABLE: 57
GENRE: Superhero
PLAYERS: 5 to 7 preferred, but can accommodate more or less
SYSTEM: Homemade, devised by myself
IN SHORT: Are you tired of the same old, same old dry rules mechanics, boring descriptions, and powermongering players? I've taken upon myself to bring the ROLE-playing aspect back to my RPGs, where the player feels like he actually IS the character, and suddenly everybody is playing for keeps. I will make you feel like you're there, and you will never forget. Experience in RPGs isn't needed, though. Just imagination and an open mind.

So, you all head for the area where a hundred or so cheap metallic rectangular tables surrounded by cheap metallic uncomfortable-looking folding chairs are. Most games will be starting about 1:30, and people are filling up the vacant chairs.

When you get to Table 57, you only find one person there, and he isn't sitting at the head of the table. He is a very thin guy who looks to be in his twenties. His hair is long, reaching to his shoulders, dark-brown and dry-looking and has premature white streaks. He wears glasses and his face is long. (That is me!!!)

He smiles a somewhat garish, tooth-baring smile. "Oh, hi. Er...our GM said he will be right back. By the way, my name is Rene, nice to meet you". He sounds a little nervous, and there is an accent to his speech, a bit like Spanish.

Troy: I sit down and introduce myself to Rene. I then ask him, "Have you been playing a while?"

Before Rene could get in a reply, another guy suddenly appears at the table. He's a bit older looking than Rene, actually forty-eight, but doesn't look much more than forty, if that. Stocky but not fat, he's of medium height and with short, sandy blonde hair. One possible give away to his age are the bifocal glasses he's wearing. "Hi, guys! My name's Steve. Have I missed anything yet?"

Rene takes some time to answer, typical of the somewhat tongue-tied shy. "Ah...no, nothing much. Our GM said he would be along shortly." It seems like Rene wanted to say more, but didn't knew quite how. "Oh yes, nice to meet you, Steve, Troy...yes, I've been playing RPGs for quite some time and..." Rene stops talking in mid-sentence when someone approaches the table. He is a tall man, apparently in his thirties, long dark hair in a ponytail, round glasses, unremarkable half-handsome features, wearing jeans and a dark-grey shirt. "Hello, name's George," the man says in a deep voice. "I'll be your GM." He looks at Troy, Steve and Rene with a mischievous glint in his eye. "I kind of hoped for more players, but you will have to do. Well, we can wait a little longer, it's early, maybe more players will come." He isn't carrying ANY books or dice, and that is pretty unusual, only some paper sheets.

George sits. "Meanwhile, you could choose your characters." He spreads the character sheets on the table.

Tentatively, Rene picks some of them to take a look. Each one has a fairly complete list of attributes, powers, skills and background traits in an unknown game system and also a pretty good and realistic-looking drawing. "Hey! They're all...women!" he says in a loud voice, soon blushing a little.

After a few moments, a guy in his late twenties walks over, he is about 5'7" and has broad shoulders and by some would be called out of shape. He has dark blonde hair that is slightly receding, and grey eyes that are behind a pair of ray ban sunglasses. He is wearing a pair of jeans that look comfortable and a black t-shirt with Gambit from X-Men on it. Over one shoulder is a black leather satchel with a pin with the words Vampire in a gothic type on it. He takes a sip of his Dr. Pepper he was drinking and walks over to the table. He nods to everyone as he removes his sunglasses. "Sorry I'm late, hope I can still get in on the game. My name is Allan."

George looks Allan up and down. A smile forms on his face and he gestures to a chair. "Of course! Take a seat, Allan. I'm glad to have one more player. By the way, my name is George, I'll be GMing for you."

George then turns to Steve, Troy and Rene. "Yes, you will be all playing female characters. I hope that won't be a problem?" He adjusts his glasses. "I've found that people role-play better when they role-play characters very different from themselves and have to rise to the challenge. Besides, it will be essential for the adventure I have planned."

Rene blushes a bit more, but finally manages to say, "Ah...it's all right by me, I guess."

Troy looks over the characters. "Huh, you're right. This wasn't what I was expecting. What the heck." After looking through the characters, he chooses Black Cat. He's always appreciated her talents, and the fact she has a nice body doesn't hurt, either. He looks to see who everyone else picked.

Rene looks to the character sheet in Troy's hands with the picture of the feline femme fatale from Marvel Comics. "Cool choice. I'm still unsure about who I'll pick." He is shuffling through a thick pile of character sheets when suddenly he looks at Allan. "Oh, want to take a look?" He offers half the pile for Allan to peruse.

Allan nods to George as he takes the character sheets from Rene. "I agree, role playing as someone different from yourself is fun as well as a challenge." He looks through the character sheets handed him. "So I guess this is going to be a Marvel Super Hero game? Hmmm, who should I choose? Black Widow? Or one of the X-Babes, like Rogue, Psylocke or Jean Grey?" Flips through the sheets more. "Hmm, or maybe Mystique or Elektra. I really don't know for sure who I want to play." He holds up the sheets. "Hey, if anyone hears anything they like, let me know."

George speaks up, "No need to restrict yourselves to the Marvel Universe. The adventure will take place in a kind of amalgam world, anything goes."

Rene is seated besides Allan. "I'm not sure, either. Since Troy chose Black Cat, it might be fun to have a bad girls-only group, or maybe it would be better to go for variety?" Rene looks over to some of the sheets Allan is shuffling through. "Hey, could I be Psylocke? I always liked her," he tells Allan.

Allan looks over at Rene. "Sure, one less I have to chose from." He laughs. "Yeah, a group of bad girls might be fun. Even though I don't see Black Cat as a bad girl. So, are we all gonna have powers or just be normals with awesome skills?"

Steve finally looks up from the pile of sheets he'd been looking through, and cuts off George's reply. "Some of you may think playing female roles is a bit strange, but I think it will be a lot of fun. It seems like a totally different perspective. And I agree, it should be a good challenge. Okay, I know you all seem to want bad girls, but if Troy can do Black Cat, I want to do a DC heroine. And am I ever glad the sheet uses the original Barbara Gordon as Batgirl and not the newer one. Babs as Batgirl had a lot more fun with a bat utility belt and stuff, instead of the heavy hand to hand combat Cassie likes in the new book. Troy's Black Cat started as a bad girl, but changed to a heroine. So if you guys don't mind an outright heroine like Batgirl, I'll be all set."

Rene raises his head, he'd been reading Psylocke's sheet. "Hm... now that you have mentioned Batgirl, I... I don't know... I like Psylocke all right, but I hadn't considered the DC Universe..." He looks at a particular sheet with a small shy smile in his lips. "If you will be Batgirl, perhaps I could be Catwoman, I'm not sure though."

"Hmmm, who to play, who to play..." Allan ponders as he looks through the sheets. It seems more and more like instead of narrowing the field, he is actually expanding his list from which to choose. "So let's see, anyone have any ideas as to whom on my long list I should play?" He glances down at the character sheets he has been going through which now include Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Kitty Pryde, Artemis, Wonder Woman and Hawkwoman. "Staying away from looking for any really out there characters like Witchblade and anything from Chaos Comics."

I always thought Kitty Pryde was cute. You should probably play as her. Troy grinned as he studied Black Cat's stats. Platinum blonde hair... heh. Her hair is WHITE Marvel. Now let's see, hmmm yeah, I like this a lot.

"Ok since I don't seem to know who I want to play. I'll just pick one at random." Allan laughs as he pulls all the available sheets together, not taking Psylocke or Catwoman from Rene who is considering them. "Well I guess the fates will decide who it is I'm going to play." He does his best to shuffle the sheets without looking at them. "Ok lets see." He cuts the stack in half as best he can and takes the one on top and puts it face down. "Well that would leave you then Rene."

When Allan turns up the sheet he sees a drawing of a pretty shapely blonde woman in body-stocking, fishnets, leather jacket and high-heeled boots. It's Black Canary from Justice League's fame!

Rene still looked indecisive. "Sorry, I don't want to delay the game's beginning any more," he mumbles. He knew who he really wanted to play. He didn't knew if he could manage a decent job of roleplaying her, as there couldn't be someone as different from his own personality, but what the hell? "I will be Catwoman!" The picture on the sheet portrayed her in the Jim Balent costume, the VERY tight purple suit over a exaggerated voluptuous body, high black boots, long gloves and whip.

George gathers the unused character sheets, clears his throat and says: "Very well, now that everyone has chosen, we can begin by setting up the initial scenes." George looks right at Troy, his round glasses reflecting light in a somewhat unnerving way.

"Black Cat, it's now nightfall and you're just waking up in your New York apartment", there is something strange in the way George calls Troy "Black Cat", like he utterly believed him to be her.

He turns to Steve: "Batgirl, you're working at Gotham City Public Library, in your Barbara Gordon identity," he says in his deep voice that seems to completelly hold the four players's attention.

To Allan: "Black Canary, you're all ready to go out on a patrol with your boyfriend, Green Arrow." Perhaps it's their imagination, but they can't hear anymore the hubbub of the other game tables, the world is completely silent, except for George's voice.

Rene thinks it's kinda weird that George don't appears to have brought any die or rulebooks. George turns to him: "Catwoman, you're on your apartment on Gotham and you've just put on your costume for another night of work..."

Five minutes later, a fat short blonde boy approaches the table. "Hey man, could I borrow one of your chairs? My table is all but full and... huh, no ONE showed up for your game?!? That sucks." He says, looking at the table, empty but for George.

George smiles. "By all means, you can take a chair. Yes, it's a pity, all my players seem to be... elsewhere." He chuckles.