B-Rock

As I said before, I delayed my episode of Firefly to give myself some more time to prepare the story arc for the final three episodes. So instead, one of my friends took the opportunity to begin her campaign for Cortex Plus Dramatic yesterday. In her campaign, we all played high school students who suddenly have superpowers. My character, Brock "B-Rock" Bauer, is a skater/stoner who's a shameless flirt. His power is creating illusions. The other characters were:

-Anna, the student government activist girl, who's power escapes me at the moment (if you're in my group and reading this, let me know!);
-Alan, classic pocket-protector-type geek with the power of density control;
-Iggy, a giant Hawaiian who can control electricity;
-Joce, rebel girl and object of Brock's infatuation (a techno-empath);
-Ash, a soft-spoken weird girl (think Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter), who can control light and shadows

Our powers were choosen randomly. The session was just supposed to be character creation, but we were so into it that we just had to play a few scenes out.

Being a player again, it was really fun. A hell of a lot more relaxing than GMing! I did kind of miss the authority, but I also really enjoyed the lack of responsibility. Only having to focus on myself, and not the entire group at once, was almost a vacation of sorts. I'm really happy that we have created an environment that's fun and comfortable, enough that other players in my group feel good enough in it to start running their own games. This thing could only go so long with just me at the helm, always a bad day or head-cold away from ruining the afternoon, so it's good to know now that the players have other options!

As a system, Cortex Plus Dramatic is significantly different from Cortex Plus Action, as used in our Firefly games. Character creation was a beast. We did the full Pathways thing, with the Relationship Map. It was a glorious, chaotic mess, just as I imagine the designers wanted it to be. I wish I had re-read the rules so I could be a little more up to speed. I felt behind in the character creation process, and not really sure what I was supposed to add to the map. But it all worked out in the end, and I think our GM's got plenty of material to work with for a campaign full of angsty, teenage drama.

I'll write more on all of this later...a little tired at the moment, but I wanted to write something down before I forgot too many more details...but needless to say, I'm really looking forward to this campaign!