S.H.U.

S.H.U. is a superhero actual-play feed: a narrator sets the scene, a cast of players voices heroes and villains, and dice settle what happens next. It works more like a shelf of running campaigns than a single show. Union Of Heroes, Weird Adventures in Space and a numbered crossover called Invasion of Krieg all live in the same feed, and one cold open describes everything on it as built around heroes. Happy Puke is Game Master for Union Of Heroes and the Krieg crossover. June hosts and narrates Weird Adventures in Space and introduces it as the feed's premiere sci-fi superhero real-play series. The game is never hidden behind the story. Rolls get called by name, such as drive, notice and physique, and the numbers matter: a two hands one player control of a starship, and a zero on the next roll means the largest ship in the fleet goes unnoticed. That player then starts ramming other ships anyway, which captures the spirit of the whole thing pretty well. The Krieg crossover runs on sheer headcount. So many players take part that the Game Master drops introductions and brings people in as they show up in the story. The antagonist is Captain Krieg, a tall purple alien with four eyes, golden hair and a red pirate outfit. The road to her goes through hell, through parallel realities she has already ravaged, and through a fleet of pirate ships, Viking ships and every other kind of sci-fi vessel, stretching in every direction. Along the way, a villain offered refuge on a planet with no extradition treaty accepts only because it's a new place to keep villaining, and pictures a retirement spent prank-calling heroes. Weird Adventures in Space has its own menace: an eight-foot brute with circuitry in his ears, eyes and mouth, leather chaps and a pair of nunchucks, hunting for members of the Union. One player tries to lead him away from the crowd, a small heroic beat in a lot of chaos. The same series promises a Rigor War, with heroes from Earth, Mars and everywhere in between facing the Rigor Corporation. Out of character, the table never stops riffing. In the openings on record, one cast introduces itself as a lineup of board games and another as fast-food chains, and the Game Master answers to 'Game Mustard' and 'Game Monster'. The humor is crude and the language unfiltered: drug jokes, a character who insists an enemy's blood is needed for the next spell, and talk of ripping heads off all come up. One closing thanks the cast, admits how hard it is to get everybody together, and says Alex doesn't get enough credit for how much work it takes. The back catalog is deep, so there are plenty of sessions to work through.