Money in the Bag

So, you’re going to start up a game of The New Ars Moriendi, but you don’t really know how to kick things off? You’ve found exactly the right page to solve that specific problem you have. Good job, strawman reader that I made up in order to clarify the target audience of this adventure module! Money in the Bag is a dead-simple introduction to the game, revolving around a bank robbery that could happen anywhere in the United States. It’s even reusable in the same group for up to two campaigns, since it includes a set of enemies for both a heroic player group and a villainous one.

Nothing beats the classics, and a gang of superpowered crooks ripping off a financial institution is valid filler content in any cape story. Not that there’s anything wrong with filler content! Take this chance to let people get familiar with their new characters, both on a mechanical level and in terms of the mindset they’re trying to embody. Think of it as a warm-up. It’s a familiar (even slightly cliche) plot, so the plot won’t get in the way of roleplaying and establishing party dynamics. At the same time, there’s just enough happening that everyone should have something to bounce off of and make in-character decisions about.

Now, then, who’s ready to rob a bank?

Set This Where You Need It

As briefly mentioned, “the bank” in this module is a generic, all-purpose house of cash. It can be a local bank or an instance of any major banking company, and it can be anywhere in the United States. If your players are heroes or you’re willing to stretch things a bit, then you can easily plop the bank down outside the U.S.A. The sample hero team (who serve as the antagonists for villain players) is assumed to be a bunch of Americans, but you could certainly change that — or fly them in and have your local heroes make a fuss about jurisdiction later. Really, I’ve tried to keep from rooting this thing down at all, so that you can use it anywhere.

The flipside, of course, is that you need to root the bank in when you use it. People have been keeping their money here. It has to feel like a real building that belongs in your city of choice for the campaign, and not a nebulous floating concept of a bank that might as well vanish after this opening module is complete. You definitely should have a city for the rest of the campaign to play out in, by the way. Full campaign modules may be in the works for later on, but right now, I’m only going to help you kick things off right. Prep what you need to prep, then run this as a bit of a break before you dive all the way in on the GM thing.

The Sample Heroes

If your players are the ones robbing the bank, you’ll need a set of heroes to try to stop them. Disposable heroes, at the end of the day, not ones you spent a lot of time writing and planning things for only to see them one-shotted in the first session because you weren’t familiar with the system’s combat rules yet.

Brink are an elite private security force hired out to protect the sorts of places that can afford that level of protection. Each of them has a superpower that works fairly well in the context of the team. They don’t have the best synergy in the country, but they’re not stepping on each other’s toes in a fight.

Since they’re not meant to be a major presence in the story for very long, Brink don’t have their own Distinctions. They’ll still be rolling a Distinction, but it’ll be established later on, at the start of the confrontation. See “The Chase and Showdown” for those details.

Fencer

Fencer is the frontman of the team, and the center the others build around. A slightly-taller-than-average man with a classic athlete’s build, Fencer is the very picture of “superhero” in a lot of ways. His power allows him to create forcefields with a very specific shape and a limit on how they’re placed. The shape is that of a hexagon with two of the parallel sides being much longer than the other four sides. It doesn’t usually look like a hexagon, though, because he has to summon his forcefields with one point buried in a solid surface. When he lines up a bunch of them, they form the classic picket fence silhouette, albeit lacking the reinforcement of the horizontal beams. Fencer also carries a sword hilt around, creating a forcefield as the blade when he needs a weapon to swing.

Brawn d8	Wits d6	Influence d6
Motion d6	Research d6	Composure d6
Swordsmanship Expert d8/2d6	Forcefield Durability d8	Signature Weapon Asset d8
SFX: Entrapment. Add a d6 and step up Fencer’s effect die when inflicting a [Fenced In!] Complication on a target.	SFX: Studied the Blade. In combat, Fencer may replace two dice of equal size with one die one step larger.	Limit: Ground Force. Fencer’s traits will do little to hinder a flying enemy. Add a d6 to the Doom Pool when a Flight trait is used against Fencer.

Fencer

Flank

Flank is a straightforward guy, for the most part. He doesn’t try anything overly fancy. He knows his role on the team, and he’ll do that unerringly when given the chance. His role, of course, is to jump in and beat people up. That’s facilitated by his power to teleport short distances. There is a catch: Flank can only blink through something solid, like a wall or an enemy. If you catch him in an open field, he’s at a major disadvantage. That disadvantage is mitigated a bit by Fencer’s power, though, since it provides barriers for Flank to jump through. If anyone gets fully surrounded by those forcefields, Flank can still get to the isolated target and fight them, meaning the barrier isn’t providing much in the way of safe cover. In a fistfight (Flank doesn’t carry weapons), he can be a very irritating opponent, since he can almost always teleport behind you and take a swing at your back. Once you catch on, he has enough sense to vary it up, meaning you might whirl around in anticipation of an attack from behind… and get hit in the back anyway, because Flank didn’t teleport before attacking.

Brawn d6	Wits d6	Influence d6
Motion d8	Research d6	Composure d6
Clashing Expert d8/2d6	Short-Range Teleport d8
SFX: Nothing Personal. Whenever Flank attacks a target who has a blind spot (the back of their head, for instance) or a weak point, step down the target’s defensive traits by one step each.	SFX: Passwall. Flank can ignore solid obstacles, whether they take the form of a Scene Distinction, a Complication, or simply a narrative element that would otherwise obstruct movement.	Limit: Grasshopper. Use Short-Range Teleport only to move through something solid. If Flank can’t use his power to dodge something, add a d6 to the Doom Pool.

Flank

Flare

Flare is Brink’s ranged fighter, with a bombarding power that passes through Fencer’s barriers to strike any trapped targets. Flare can also simply attack whoever she has a clear shot at. To be more specific, her power creates globs of light that have a concussive impact. Being light, they pass through any clear material she throws them at. You’ll get no shelter from water, glass, or, of course, Fencer’s forcefields. Not to say there’s no benefit — tints and refractive shapes will partially obstruct the projectiles or throw them off target, respectively. Mirrors, on the other hand, allow her to bounce her attacks around a corner, even if you think you’ve put proper cover between you and her. She doesn’t have a big enough mirror on hand to set that up, but if the fight happens to take place in advantageous terrain, she’ll make use of it.

Brawn d6	Wits d8	Influence d6
Motion d6	Research d6	Composure d6
Sharpshooting Expert d8/2d6	Light Blasts d8
SFX: Area Attack. Flare can target an Engagement instead of a character.	SFX: Blasting Sequence. If Flare can line up an attack to pass through a tinted surface beside a target and then hit a target beyond that surface, she can attack both targets.	Limit: Diminishing. For each tinted surface Flare’s attacks pass through, step down her effect dice for the action by one and step up a die in the Doom Pool by one.

Flare

Freshen

Finally, Brink has a healer named Freshen. Her power creates a swirling fog of many colors, which can be cleared out by Freshen’s will or a strong wind. When inhaled, the fog induces rapid healing bordering on regeneration. Freshen tends to keep a cloud of her power around her, so targeting the support first is harder than it sounds. In the meantime, Fencer can use his forcefields to keep the fog contained in such a way that Brink is able to use it and their foes can’t get to it.

Brawn d6	Wits d6	Influence d8
Motion d6	Research d6	Composure d6
Diplomacy Expert d8/2d6	Healing Fog d8
SFX: Healing. Freshen can add Healing Fog to her dice pool when helping others recover Stress. She can spend a Doom Die to recover her own or another’s Physical Stress (same rules as the SFX to the right).	SFX: Passive. Freshen’s power remains active after being used. Anyone in the affected area can spend a Doom Die or a Plot Point to recover their Physical Stress by one step (or entirely, if the spent die is larger than the Stress was).	Limit: Exploitable. When one of Freshen’s enemies makes use of her healing power, add a d6 to the Doom Pool.

Freshen

The Sample Villains

If your players are the sort who stop banks from being robbed, you’ll need to have someone rob a bank near them. That’s where this throwaway group comes in. Rather than waste a villain you have big plans for and risk their swift defeat before you grasp the flow of this system’s combat, you can throw these idiots into the mix and not worry about what happens to them.

The Knights of Nab are the sort of people who actually think that’s a cool name for their team. Medieval theming and horrible wordplay are much more defining features than their powers are, but those powers are nothing to laugh at.

“The Chase and Showdown” has more details on how the group operates.

Sir Caustic

With an acid touch and an acid tongue, Sir Caustic can burn through security measures, shred mental footholds, and threaten to disfigure anyone who stands in his way. That’s what he likes to think, at least. His comments don’t really hurt that much, but the fact that he’s trying so hard can be a little distracting. While you’re distracted, he just pummels you. Sir Caustic’s Distinctions are listed above his Attributes. Each can be used as a d4 to hinder his action when appropriate, with a d6 going to the Doom Pool for the trouble.

Knightly Courage	Acidic Personality	Selfish Motives
Brawn d8	Wits d6	Influence d6
Motion d6	Research d6	Composure d6
Clashing Expert d8/2d6	Acid Touch d8	Armor Asset d8
SFX: Corrode. If an object can be damaged by acid, Sir Caustic can spend a Doom Die to destroy it. If it’s an Asset or Complication, the spent die must be larger than the trait.	SFX: Dangerous. Add a d6 to Sir Caustic’s dice pool for an attack and step down the highest die in the pool by one. Step up the effect die by one.	Limit: Melee. Acid Touch can only be used on Engaged targets. Add a d6 to the Doom Pool whenever Sir Caustic is hit with a ranged attack.

Sir Caustic

Dame Etherealize

Dame Etherealize, or Eliza for short, is one of the most effective members of the group. Arguably the entire reason they get away with anything, her power phases things out so they can’t be interacted with by anything that isn’t also phased out. The downfall is the timing. Eliza has to focus on something or something for a few seconds to use her power, and it only lasts for a few minutes. If you can follow the ghostly images of the group while waiting for her power to wear off, they’ll have a hard time actually escaping. Of course, you have to keep up with them to follow them, and you don’t have the luxury of walking through walls. Eliza’s Distinctions are listed above her Attributes. Each can be used as a d4 to hinder her action when appropriate, with a d6 going to the Doom Pool to make up for it. For her Limit, keep in mind that players will have to spend a Plot Point if they want to use an effect die from their reactions.

Spectral Escape	The Only Team Player	Cool Under Pressure
Brawn d6	Wits d6	Influence d6
Motion d6	Research d6	Composure d8
Stealth Expert d8/2d6	Intangibility d8	Armor Asset d8
SFX: Area Affect. Dame Etherealize can target an Engagement with her power instead of a character or an item.	SFX: Keepaway. Targets with a [Phased Out!] trait can use it as Intangibility. It counts as an Asset or a Complication as appropriate, and prevents interaction with anything that isn’t phased out.	Limit: Concentration. Taking Stress while trying to use Intangibility causes the action to fail and provides a d6 to the Doom Pool.

Dame Etherealize

Sir Tur

Named for the herald of Ragnarok, Sir Tur is the powerhouse of the group… when he gets a chance to be. He’s a capable hand-to-hand combatant, and that means he can stall out a fight long enough to use his power on those who aren’t cautious about it. While the group stays in one general area, Sir Tur can slowly fill the air with swirling sparks like those from a campfire. Once he’s saturated the desired area with enough sparks to get the duration he wants out of his power, he can invoke it to call down a pillar of fire, scourging anything that didn’t move or get moved out of the way. If you’re in the midst of the sparks, you should probably move. If the sparks are getting pretty dense, you should definitely move. His power resets after every doomsday moment, but the cooldown period is hard to really notice. Dropping a prolonged stream of flames on a wide area tends to end fights. Sir Tur’s Distinctions are listed above his Attributes. Each can be used as a d4 to hinder his action when appropriate, with a d6 going to the Doom Pool for the trouble.

Countdown	Doomsday	Martial Prowess
Brawn d8	Wits d6	Influence d6
Motion d6	Research d6	Composure d6
Clashing Expert d8/2d6	Spark d8	Armor Asset d8
SFX: Buildup. Save effect dice from harmless Spark actions in a running tally, from 1d8 to 2d8 and so on.	SFX: Kaboom! When Sir Tur unleashes his power, roll all saved Spark dice and target an Engagement.	Limit: Slow Start. Sir Tur cannot activate his power before saving at least three Spark dice.

Sir Tur

Sir Jekyll

The most recognizable suit of armor in the group belongs to Sir Jekyll, who managed to incorporate a lab coat without it looking completely stupid. In a manner of speaking, he serves the support role for the team, as his power-brewed concoctions can repair damage in a pinch. That said, Sir Jekyll doesn’t just wait around for his team to get hurt and swoop in to play field medic. He’ll make strikes with the syringes he carries around, dosing enemy forces with the same sort of biochemical formulae that allow him to patch up his allies. Whatever the mutation may be, it’s invariably inconvenient, and by the time a character is familiar enough with it to turn it to their advantage, it’s already withering away. Sir Jekyll’s Distinctions are listed above his Attributes. Each can be used as a d4 to hinder his action when appropriate, with a d6 going to the Doom Pool for the trouble.

Callous	Field Medic	You’d Better Hyde
Brawn d6	Wits d6	Influence d6
Motion d6	Research d8	Composure d6
Medical Expert d8/2d6	Concoctions d8	Armor Asset d8
SFX: Cruel Experiment. Add a d6 and step up Sir Jekyll’s effect die when inflicting a [Mutated!] Complication on a target.	SFX: Healing. Sir Jekyll can add Concoctions to his dice pool when helping others recover Stress. He can spend a Doom Die to recover his own or another’s Physical Stress by one step (or entirely, if the spent die is larger than the Stress was).	Limit: Injection Site. If there’s no way for Sir Jekyll to get a syringe into a target, his power won’t do a thing to them.

Sir Jekyll

The Robbery

Whether it’s your players or the sample villains committing the crime, there’s a few key details you should know about robbing banks as you run this module.

Firstly, many banks don’t have active armed security at all times. This bank, specifically, doesn’t have anyone capable of standing up to a supervillain.

Even if they did have a way to put up a fight, though, the thing about banks is that they won’t. The staff, and the tellers in particular, are trained to cooperate with robbers, for their own safety. Keeping the employees from becoming the victims of violence is prioritized over keeping the money on hand.

So the party can waltz in and take as much money as you’re willing to give them, if they’re villains. Otherwise, the sample villains grab their fill and skedaddle before anyone can report on the situation. Keep in mind, though, most banks don’t have a mind-boggling amount of cash in the building at all times. The party may be able to take every cent and still feel like they were shortchanged. Don’t feel pressured to hand them more cash than you want them to spend.

The other issue with bank money is that some of it is trapped. Ink packets that explode outside a certain radius of the bank, tracking devices, and other clever tricks complicate the process of converting the profit. If your players are stealing cash and they don’t check for that sort of thing, go ahead and spring it on them. If they check for it and don’t have a solution, just let them pick out the money that isn’t trapped. It’s a smaller haul, but it’s not as risky. The sample villains do spend a minute or so clearing out these traps, so that’s nothing to worry about in a hero game.

Once the villains have the cash they want, they can bolt with it. The news will catch wind of what happened soon enough, since this many costumed criminals in one place are almost always going to be newsworthy.

The Chase and Showdown

If your players are heroes, there’s a few ways to let them know a bank was just robbed. Any character in the habit of checking the news can be tipped off by a live feed on social media, a hastily-written article in a publication they trust, or any other seemingly reliable source. If a character has a police scanner, they can catch the reports coming in that way. If all else fails, you can just have the sample villains tear down the street the heroes happen to be patrolling.

If your players made a hero team, then the first person to notice the problem can call for backup, if they weren’t all together in the first place. If they’re all independent heroes, make sure they each have their own way to learn what’s happening and join the fray. Fighting alongside each other, even by coincidence, is a great way to make friends in this line of work.

If your players robbed the bank, their first real obstacle is the sample heroes, who were called in by the bank itself.

Hero Party vs. Sample Villains

Once the party catch sight of the Knights of Nab, they’ll have to keep pace with the ghostly figures until Dame Eliza’s power flickers and fades. With the villains back in the physical world, kick off an Action Scene by letting one of the heroes try something! If the party can split the Knights up, it’ll be harder for them to all escape with just one use of the phasing power.

Descriptively, Sir Tur’s sparks begin to float around the area as the first hero passes their turn. Your party might not know the details of his power, but you should let anyone within the area Sir Tur is targeting feel a sense of dread. If that doesn’t motivate them, Sir Tur can make direct verbal threats when he gets a chance.

The two most strategic targets are Sir Tur and Dame Etherealize. Taking Sir Tur out first means never having to worry about the massive explosion power. Without that possibility on the table, the fight is on less of a knife’s edge while the heroes clean up. Taking Eliza out first stops the Knights in their tracks. Their getaway is contingent on the phasing power, so they’ll need to stand their ground and drive the heroes off, at least long enough to wake her up.

If a strategic target goes down, it impacts the morale of the other Knights. If both go down, the fight is all but over. Sir Caustic is liable to cut and run with the cash he’s carrying, while Sir Jekyll isn’t above surrender if it means avoiding a beatdown. Dame Etherealize can escape by herself if she’s the last one standing. Sir Tur will try to take the party down with the Knights in a blaze of glory if he thinks it’s hopeless, but any other Knight that has the capacity to act will stop him.

If the Knights are taken down, one way or another, the heroes win.

If the heroes are taken down or forced to retreat, and the Knights escape, it’s not the end of the world. The Knights aren’t the type to kill their enemies if they can help it (which is fairly tricky, given their available attack powers). They’ll simply leave and count their cash. You can bring them back later, or give them a home base for the party to raid after regrouping. The follow-up confrontation is another chance for the heroes to win.

Villain Party vs. Sample Heroes

As the party flees with their cash, you may have to narrate the popping sound of any unnoticed ink packs detonating. Sooner or later, depending on the number of witnesses and tracking devices the party has pointing their way, the path they’re using is cut off by a glowing blue fence.

Brink respond proportionately to threats. They’ll pull their punches and avoid doing real, lasting damage to the party, if the party hasn’t given them cause for escalation. But hurting a bystander or knocking out a member of Brink will push the heroes to be just a little more vicious in their attempt to stop the party.

At the break of the fight, a [Forcefields] Scene Distinction is created by Fencer’s power. All of the characters in the Scene can use it as a d8 if it’s helping them (Brink coordinate around the forcefields for a lot of their battle tactics), or they can invoke the Hinder option that all Distinctions come with.

With their escape route blocked, action order begins with one of the villains. How will they try to make their escape? More and more forcefields bog down the battlefield with each passing moment, complicating the possible Engagements and forcing the players to come up with workarounds. If they’re lucky, their powers may present easy answers. Otherwise, we have a fight on our hands.

Taking Brink down or slipping away to somewhere the heroes can’t follow is the goal, here. If the villains manage that, they win.

If the villains go down, they lose. Brink takes them into custody.

The End

If the players are heroes and the heroes win, the media will want to hear about the whole ordeal. Using a reporter GMC to conduct an interview is a great way to throw random details into the tail end of the session, foreshadowing what you have prepped for the campaign to follow.

If the players are heroes and the heroes lose, the media will probably want to hear about it anyway. Any hospitalized characters may have cracks in their secret identity start to form, and anyone who managed to get burned severely enough might have Trauma visible. Other than that, though, there aren’t meant to be long-term consequences to failing this early. Perhaps the story takes on a bit of an underdog tone, as your scrappy party tries to claw a bit of justice out of a setting that outmatches them. Alternatively, this key failure is the thing that binds the group together with a promise not to repeat the mistakes that led to it.

If the players are villains and the villains win, they get to take their money back to whatever headquarters they planned the heist from. If, for some reason, you decided to run this module in a way that had them meet for the first time at the bank, then they simply find a nice hiding spot to catch their breath and debrief. Either way, the robbery was a success! So long as no dye packets ruin the haul, your villains have a financial head start on their next scheme.

If the players are villains and the villains lose, they’re taken into custody. That means it’s time for a jail break arc! Enjoy planning that out, and get to your real campaign after the party recovers from this setback. If they want to seek revenge on Brink, they should start brainstorming ways to level the playing field. If they hit upon something your city can provide, point them that direction and wait for the fireworks.