Here's how we did character generation. WT has a typical point-buy, fiddly-stacky grainy system. The kind that lounges there purring, "Minmax me, big boy, or lose me forever!" REIGN is also, at bottom, a point buy, so for this we used a character generation system that got elided from REIGN due to space reasons. 

INTERLUDE: CHARACTER GENERATION

The way it works is, the players tell a story about their characters, writing stuff down, and they underline the important things and spend points appropriately. It mitigates, I think, the starkest aspects of optimization and puts story and character front and center. I'd hoped their stories would be more interwoven, but such is life.

The twist I put on it was, after their stories were done, I said, "Hand your notes to the person to your left. Done? Add a plot twist." We did this a couple more times. It's how we wound up with Munk, Ben Franklin, Chlotilde and Tracy's bouts of cannabis-fueled megalomania. (Oh, did I mention that he gets delusions of grandeur when he's high? Tracy gets delusions of grandeur when he's high.)

SESSION ONE

The players for Leo and Lucien showed up, and I kept expecting Cicely's player, but it was not to be. So I started with clarifying some backstory, blah blah, what's Lucien doing (selling cars) and establishing that Leo's meltdown heroics took place the very night before. Then I got into it.

Lucien was walking down the street when he became convinced -- absolutely CERTAIN -- that something was getting stolen in the bank. Looking around, everything was calm, so he quietly teleported inside, found a stairwell, changed into his Bolt look, and only then thought to see if there were cameras. (He lucked out -- he'd gotten on the good side of a 50/50 chance that a camera was aimed at him, and really I felt that it was awfully early to jeopardize his secret identity.) He teleported past a few more cameras (with that mysterious sensation drawing him towards the basement) and, after some dithering, surged his way through a locked metal door. Once through that, though, there was no way to hide from a camera at the end, so alarms started going off. He moved at top speed towards the end of the hallway (it was the only way to go) when an explosion rocked the building. Then another, cracking the door at the end. Going through it, Bolt saw a heavy vault door blasted open, and emerging amidst the dust...

A guy in whiteface makeup with his eyes blacked and a horizontally striped shirt. Bolt reacted as any right-thinker would when unexpectedly confronted with a mime.

"Halt, evildoer!" he shouted.

The mime glanced up as two guards streamed down the steps, then grinned as he tossed a velvet bag to Bolt. "Here's your cut!"

Bolt wanted nothing to do with the bag and teleported behind the robber. He mimed up a wall as the guards opened fire. So did Bolt. But the guard aiming at the mime missed, the one who hit Bolt did no damage, and Bolt's lightning was blocked by the wall. The mime fled down the very hall from which Bolt had emerged, while Bolt teleported to the other side of the invisible barrier. By the time he got through the door, the mime was on the other side of the door that Bolt had forced. So Bolt teleported right in front of him.

It was at this point that timing became very important, because the mime had just created a psychic bazooka with which to blast his way out of the building. Unfortunately for Bolt, his jump was timed first. The mime's eyes got wide and he said, "Dude, look out!" before Bolt was clobbered back through the wall and out into the street.

At that point, Seth showed up. Unfortunately, we had to have Leo's player run him. I know. Highly sub-optimal. But Seth was played conservatively, resolutely failing to fulfill the "Heroes meet, fight and then clear up the misunderstanding" trope. (Lousy players. No respect for tradition.) Between Bolt's lightning and Seth's brawn, the mime kept taking damage to his left arm (even through his armor and past his walls). His reaction to Bolt (who did almost all the damage) was "Dude, what the hell? I tried to give you a sack of diamonds!"

INTERLUDE: RULES ON THE FLY

The guy running Seth wanted to pull his punch on the mime, doing Shock damage instead of Killing. Not having considered the possibility of a character wanting to do LESS damage to a mime (those players! They'll always surprise you!) I decided to give him a -1d penalty and judge that sufficient. THEN he wanted to pick up a chunk of rubble or piece of bannister, and I gently suggested that "pulling my punch..." and "...with a cinderblock" weren't really compatible phrases.

SESSION ONE: CONTINUED

The mime attempted to escape through his new opening on the back of a (mimed) motorcycle, but was much better at conjuring it than riding it. Seth knocked him off it, so the mime walled the heroes out and went back down the hall, towards the guards. Bolt teleported in front of him and found out that even with a sore left arm, he could mime up a rather nasty machinegun. Good rolls (huzzah for Spray dice) left Bolt with one unmarked box in his chest. The mime tried his bike again, and was just not fast enough to get away from Seth. So then (as the security guards ran up) he mimed pulling the pin from a grenade. Seth clamped his hans around the mime's and said, "If you drop it, you won't escape it."

With a sigh, the mime surrendered. Seth considered punching him in the back of the head but (I pointed out) two guards were watching, the guy's arm was really messed up, and he was handcuffed. Not exactly a heroic act, hm?

From there we switched to Leo, who was awakened by the cheery sounds of a media circus. With some help from a friend (Doug) he got out from his apartment and sent his alter out as a decoy. It fooled everyone... everyone except a pretty young woman named Swanda (it started as a typo, but I like it) whose life he'd saved the night before. She had anticipated a rear-door exit and blackmailed them into letting her come along by threatening to blow his ruse.

Leo, Doug and Swanda pretty much dodged the media all day, though Leo did wind up having to take a call from Disney. ("There is a LOT of entertainment potential at one of our theme parks for a para-real individual. Plus, having Talents around for added security is always a bonus.) He eventually picked an agent named Devon Eire, based mostly on the fact that Devon was fairly local and that Heather had chosen him as HER agent.

INTERLUDE: A PUN MY WORD

Yeah, "Devon Eire" is extremely debonair. And when they find out the mime's real name, it's Robin Banks. I can't stop myself. I actually think it'll kind of reinforce the comic book elements of the game.

SESSION ONE CONTINUED: CONTINUED

Leo got moved to an 'undisclosed location' in a stretch hummer full of bodyguards, and it turned out to be Devon's apartment. He had a tepid argument with Heather, who was also there, and who demonstrated her newfound ability to put a cigarette out on her eye without damage (though the ash is pretty irritating). He told her that the only reason he hadn't left the party earlier was that he'd been working up the courage to talk to her. Her response was, 'Oh, don't make me puke.' When asked what had set her off, she said 'I don't want to talk about that right now.'

Leo decided to hang out with his uncle Tracy for a while. Tracy and his girlfriend Angelica met Leo at the airport and he talked about getting Leo in touch with some other Talents... and also with Reverend Wright. Leo resisted that last offer.

The session ended with Bolt making a surprisingly successful roll to find a street doc in San Fran (after telling Seth "It's okay" as he stuffed strips of his shirt in his bullet holes). He considered asking Bahrira for help, but decided to wait until he's recovered, since she doesn't know his secret. Dr. Ismail runs a free clinic and often treats illegal immigrants who can't get treatment in other venues. He was pretty startled to find a bloodied superhero in his office.

ISMAIL: What happened to you?
BOLT: A mime shot me with an imaginary submachinegun.

Ismail rolled pretty well to patch him up after wrecking a needle on his arm ("I guess I'll administer this orally"). I like Ismail, he's fun, so he'll probably be back. ("Um, I can't exactly give you stitches, so I'll have to use the surgical glue." "Well, the good news is, there's no shrapnel left in the wounds. Or, none I can see anyhow.")

ISMAIL: Well, I've done what I can. Try not to get riddled with any more invisible bullets.
BOLT: Way ahead of you, doc.

With that, we concluded.