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40. Radio Buddy Tuner

Alright, this is the last strictly comic relief character for a while, and Radio Tuner is probably the best and brightest comic relief character the campaign has to offer. There are a handful that rank higher, but ever since its introduction to the campaign Radio Tuner has just been an ever-present force among the field teams, almost serving as our eleventh PC. Thats not bad for one of the only characters in the campaign that I think was strictly created, wholecloth, by Scarlet. No DC influence on this one.

On a mission to Los Angeles, the field team wound up visiting a Hollywood studio and ran afoul of a handful of D-list villains that were just wandering around at the time. But as is the case with quite a few D-list villains weve met over the course of the campaign, they were not long for this world. In fact, Monsoon and the Tangler seem to have existed entirely to introduce Radio Tuner in the first place. They were just investigating this studio when music starts playing. Confused, they sought out the source and found a damaged iPod. But it turns out this was no ordinary iPod, and it soon sprang to life. It began playing music, trying to coax the two villains into a lively dance, and they did not take kindly to this invitation. And Radio Tuner did not take kindly to them not taking kindly to its song. What we then witnessed was a magical iPod proceeding to outright murder two grown adults with superpowers.

Our party then made their presence known and correctly realized that they needed to play Radio Tuners game in order to gain the trust of this powerful entity. After a fun dance party, Radio Tuner joined the team, and has been with us ever since. Its had a few moments since then; namely, revealing that it was created by campaign one fan favorite Trish McKenzie, and doing so by speaking entirely in song lyrics. But Radio Tuner is one of those rare characters whose best scenes come from campaign sessions, rather than Zonn Zorr RP scenes. Regardless of which configuration of five party members goes on any given mission, we always make a point to trade Radio Tuner off from one group to another, because it just makes missions all the more fun.

Heres the thing: not every session is going to have a combat scenario. But when they do, and when those sessions have lengthy combat sequences that are your standard big bad final boss sort of scenario for the given setting, we want to bring Radio Tuner into the mix. For one point of damage (whacking Radio Tuner against ones head), Radio Tuners power activates and changes the theme song for the battle. The running theme of these past few entries is comic relief, and Radio Tuner brings that in spades, often times transforming a rough and serious battle into something upbeat, lively, and fun.

Of the top of my head, I cant picture any specific songs that have played, but theyre always something fun that adds a crazy new twist to the battle. Nat 1s get turned into nat 20s, everyone is floating, everyone does nine damage no matter what, an overabundance of enemies swarm the arena, making the fight harder (yet more rewarding). All of this is accompanied by the anthropomorphizing of Radio Tuner itself, dancing around and dodging attacks and jumping onto peoples shoulders like an overexcited pet. But the biggest example of Radio Tuners contribution to the campaign is from a battle in Gotham. We activated Radio Tuner and it wandered off, leading us to think the power wouldnt work in that particular combat. And then Christmas music starts playing. Radio Tuner managed to summon the literal Paul McCartney, who is now a real character in the context of the campaign.

As an addendum to recent events: the other party went on a space mission, and an alien collector (interpret that combination of words either way, because both are accurate) called the Auctioneer showed up. He tried to kidnap Radio Tuner as a rare piece of reality-altering tech, and the party wasnt about to part with their buddy. This led to a whole session of Radio Tuner spouting off individual lines of songs to serve as dialogue, plus various NPCs requesting songs (Churljenkins dancing to I Touch Myself, Joe Gardner bopping out to Intergalactic, Gal Gardner defending the honor of Britney Spears). It all culminated in a massive boss battle against Auctioneer, where Radio Tuner played Chumbawumbawhich led to Saoirse summoning magical summons of Chumbawumba to play in stereoand then fake JFK gave a rousing speech, using the words of Chumbawumba. The whole scene was a glorious trainwreck, and it kicked off with Radio Tuner.

I just love Radio Tuners contribution to the combat sections of the campaign. Im always big on RP and interacting with the NPCS, and combat is lower on my list of prioritiesso anything that can spice that portion of things up for me, personally (I know other players are much higher on combat than I am) is great. Radio Tuner might largely be a game mechanic, but its a game mechanic with a fun, goofy personality, and the way Scarlet characterizes Radio Tuners general disregard for social norms makes ever scene it pops up in a winner.

Hint for #39: First appeared in Campaign One.