First off, a huge thanks to Thrudj for producing stats for the Agents of Atlas!
My friend and I have been doing a podcast exploring the multiverses of comics and for our 4th episode we did the Agents of Atlas origin what if (What If The Avengers Formed In The 50s) and the characters are pretty great - they are what they say on the package.
Jimmy Woo - Secret Agent
Gorilla-Man - Adventurer
M-11 - A Robot
Venus - A Goddess (sort of)
Namora - The Super Hero
The Uranian - An Alien
(And 3-D Man but we don't talk about 3-D Man)
Originally my idea was to have them fight the Beyond Corp but looking at the price for a Fin Fang Foom Heroclix I was like "Nah" and started thinking (luckily my cohost has all of the Agents of Atlas clix). If I just toss enemies at the team they have fun but it gets boring fast. So I wanted to get an enemy who would give them tasks to think out of and I came with everyone's favorite master of menace, the duke of deathtraps - ARCADE!
The big part is those individualized death traps. Finding ways where the players have to out-think you or die trying. And if you can make the idea fit the character like when Nightcrawler had to teleport blind vertically or when Colossus got hypnotized into being the Proletariat because Russia, it becomes a growing moment.
My starting plan is that as an homage to the original What If (which is bookended by Iron Man and the Avengers of the Time looking into what is essentially the What If Machine" and being like "hey guys, I made you look at these guys so I could relate them to us!" except he totally doesn't relate a member to Jimmy Woo - like he could have invited Nick Fury but I digress.
Robot Cap, Iron Man, Beast, Vision and Thor show up to try and knock out the Agents of Atlas or lead them into the nearby carnival that just opened up which is obviously where the new Murderworld is. Eventually either by plothook or crook they end up in their respective death traps.
Jimmy Woo - Homage to the classic "laser you in half" scheme. I expect the player to be able to pick their locks but the keypad is tied to having something within the manacles. Once he escapes, the keypad closes up so he can't access it. The player will have to find a way to access the keypad that is tied to them being in danger of being lasered in half. This is a "give me a good solution" puzzle with a time limit because once the table is chopped in two a laser grid starts up that will be fatal.
Gorilla-Man - Gorilla-Man has been placed in a large cage with a group of other gorillas, a simple wooden door and an exchange door for the delivery of food. Using a variation of the 5 Monkeys and a Ladder experiment, the gorillas believe that if someone touches the door something bad will happen. The gorillas can overpower Gorilla-Man and if he pushes against him too hard, they could likely kill him.
M-11 - It is a classic dead trap. M-11 is in a room with 10 people. All of them must be dead for him to be able to escape the room because their heartbeats are tied to the lock on the door. Before too long the room will fill with water which would deactivate M-11 and also kill everyone in the room. Just killing the people is wrong - they are innocents and luckily M-11 has an electrical attack BUT there are 10 targets and it is unlikely that he convince everyone to follow him and or knock them all out long enough to unlock the door.
Venus - Venus was hard so I am adapting the Reed Richards test from the Murderworld! adventure. Venus is swarmed by an army of killer cupids. If she takes up the Sword of Mars then she can fight back and try to escape but the sword will hurt her because it is anathema to her and it is also charged. More of an endurance or outwitting check.
Namora - Namora is trapped in a circular prism within a circular prism. In the outer prism is water and an exit. Her prism has an opening at the top with a set of high intensity heat lamps and her prism can be rotated within the other one if she moves fast enough. The problem is the only exist is through the lights and there isn't enough room and if she tries to short the lights the water will become electrically charged. She needs to think a way out (and honestly punching the sides is the secret solution - you don't play the game. )The heat is sapping her energy and if she is in much more than 30 minutes she will die of dehydration.
The Uranian - Bob the Uranian's helmet has been coated in a goop that blocks off his sensors so he can't see outside of it. He needs the helmet to breath, but he is also going to be attacked by robots who he can't fight if his helmet is on - and constantly taking it off and putting it back on is a bit of an inescapable situation so he'll need to balance those out while fighting robots and trying to navigate the room.
If any character is having too much of a problem one of the players who have escaped will be able to rescue them unless they do something reaaaaaally dumb.
After being freed it will be a classic "let's go beat up that nerd Arcade and find out who paid him to do this". Instead they get to fight a giant monster of some kind - I may make something out of paper - that will give Arcade a long enough chance to escape. But the ending needs work. I figure small battle > death traps > big monster works well enough.
Thoughts? Comments? People calling me a monster?
