Troubleshooters

Troubleshooters was a very unusual game for me. While it used the Hero System, these guys were not superheroes. Rather the game was set in a world nearly the same as our own. The only difference was that fringe abilities thought only to be nonsense-- ESP, low powered magic, etc-- were real. Some of the heroes had these special abilities.

I always had mixed feelings about Troubleshooters. It was sort of the game that I never really wanted to run. That partially explains why it didn't last very long. Think of it as the X-Files before there actually was the X-Files.

Here's how it all came about. In early 1990, the folks who ran the Phantasy Guild on Q, where all these games were played, put up a want add for new GM's. I had applied in 1989, but didn't make it past the opening round of the audition process. In '90, I did. There were two parts to the audition process. The first was to write an opening post for a new game to demonstrate that you could actually run a Message Based game. The second part was a Live Game audition where you were in a room with other members of the Q Staff who were behaving badly. The staff took great delight in this part-- sort of like a hazing. If you could survive that part of the audition, then you were in. I have to say that it was a whole lot more fun on the other side!

Now you might have guessed, Troubleshooters was my Audition Post and it went over very well. I had very nearly half a dozen people ask to the join the game just from the Aud post! So, when I did make GM I almost felt obligated to run this thing. While there is some of my usual Champs folks from this time on Q, there are also some players who didn't play in any of the other games. I managed to make it through the opening scenario of the game. GM Kill took over for the second scenario and I was just a player. The plan was for us to alternate stories with the other being a player while one was the GM. We eventually pulled the plug during Kill's run on the title. What I have here is my run on the series, the first 21 posts.