Reservoir Dogs is a crime drama and the first movie from Quentin Tarantino, starring Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Eddie Bunker, Lawrence Tierney, Kirk Baltz, and Randy Brooks.
A group of criminals, all dressed identically and given color-coded nicknames, rob a diamond warehouse (off screen) and make an absolute goat-fuck of it. The story picks up with career criminal Mr. White (Keitel) driving new thief Mr. Orange (Roth) to their rendezvous point - but Orange has been shot in the stomach and is bleeding to death. From there, everything continually unravels and we learn more of what happened at the heist - an alarm went off, Mr. Blonde (Madsen) started randomly shooting people, cops arrived, everyone ran.
We learn in flashbacks that Mr. Blonde isn't normally in on jobs like this; he just got out of prison after doing four years because he wouldn't rat out Joe Cabot (Tierney), the mob boss putting this whole thing together. Cabot's son Nice Guy Eddy (Penn) puts him on this job because they're friends, so that didn't work out so great. But of course the truth is that the only fucking professional Mr. Pink (Buscemi) was right - it was a setup, there is a rat in the house (it's Mr. Orange, and he telegraphs it in the very first scene), and this was all doomed from the word go.
This movie is not for everyone, but that's mostly because it's a heist movie where you don't see the heist. Really it reminds me more of a Mamet play than anything else, except of course for the usual Tarantino violence. Mr. Blonde takes a cop (Baltz, who I don't think gets enough credit for this role) hostage and then tortures him and cuts off his ear, and the scene was disturbing enough that Wes Craven walked out of a screening. Graphic violence in movies doesn't usually bother me (when it does, it's usually more about the context than the violence itself), so setting that aside, the performances are what make this movie.
Keitel, Roth, and Buscemi to me are the biggest standouts, but Madsen, Penn, and Baltz do amazing jobs, too. The situation is high-tension start to finish, to the point that the flashbacks do a nice job of letting off a little pressure. The last flashback we see is Mr. Orange, with him training as an undercover officer with his mentor Holdaway (Brooks), and by the time we flip back to the warehouse, now just covered in blood, there's a breath of, if not relief, then finality - it feels like it's all coming to an end.
If I have a complaint, it's that we never learn anything about Mr. Pink, who seems like an interesting character. Likewise, Mr. Brown (Tarantino) is just there so that Quentin has his monologue about dicks, and Mr. Blue (Bunker) has about 4 lines and then dies offscreen, so I don't really see the point in including him. But this is pretty minor, all told.
The heroes come together at Moonlight's lair and talk about their strategy. They aren't sure where the glove that Pyre made will take them. They know it'll take them to the matching glove, and probably to Ilijah Intrepid, but since they don't know where he is they don't quite know what to expect. Pyre is pissed and wants to go in fighting, but Jade Eagle and Moonlight favor a more discreet approach. The heroes review the security footage from their fight with Intrepid, and Jade Eagle notes that he has multiple gadgets and artifacts from various times and cultures, including a weird amulet and a dagger strapped to his back. An EMP might short some of his weapons, but not all.
They use the glove and all vanish, reappearing at the Four Corners Monument. Nothing untoward seems to be going on; they see tourists and school groups and the like. The civilians start pointing and taking pictures; Jade Eagle jumps into crowd control mode, while Pyre changes into air and surveys the area. Moonlight steps back and looks for anything out of the ordinary, but doesn't see anything - if Intrepid is here, he's hiding. Pyre looks for anyone who's not shocked by their appearance, and spots a man in sunglasses. He talks with the man briefly, but learns that the guy is blind (hence the dog next to him).
Jade Eagle has people go about their business and looks around, and spots a man at a vending machine. In the reflection, she sees an amulet hanging off his belt - the one she saw in the video footage earlier. She points this out, and Pyre springs into action, changing into electricity and attacking.
Intrepid, however, is prepared. He flips out his amulet and absorbs Pyre. Jade Eagle fires her eyebeams at him to try and fry his devices, but Intrepid reflects the blast back at her and throws her into a crowd of people. Moonlight stretches out his hand and grabs the amulet away from him. Intrepid speaks a quick incantation and the amulet release Pyre, but Moonlight has time to point the thing up and avoid getting zapped.
Intrepid walks forward and stands in the center of the monument, but Jade Eagle swoops in to block him. She tries to talk him down, but realizes that he has no remorse about any of this and asking for help just wouldn't have occurred to him. Pyre swoops over and stands next to her, but just then they hear helicopters. Two transports with AEGIS markings are heading in.
Intrepid sighs, reaches up with both hands, and spins a ring on each hand. He throws whirlwinds up, catching the copters and spinning them out of control. Jade Eagle flies off and catches one, pulling it down to land safely. Pyre changes back into wind and catches the other, but in landing, gets caught up in the rotors and cut to pieces (don't worry, he's fine, just has to reconfigure). Intrepid pulls the device he stole from Pyre out of his coat and starts fiddling with it.
Moonlight, meanwhile, draws on his shadowy powers and telekinetically yanks the device in Intrepid's hands. Intrepid touches a button a wristband and grows strong enough to resist, but Jade Eagle, flying into battle with the AEGIS folks, eye-lasers his wristband. It explodes, but causes enough of a backblast to knock the agents and her down. The device flies out of Intrepid's hands over to Moonlight. Intrepid turns to Moonlight and says that it doesn't much matter - "Execute the order." FLICKER's voice comes from the device, confirming it.
Pyre swoops back in, pissed, and fires his foam-gun, freezing Intrepid to the spot. But the device activates, and Intrepid and the device start to vanish. Moonlight taps into his power again and follows the device, and all four of them vanish and reappear...in the Place Between.
The ship is still there, held up by rocky tendrils. Pyre sees Intrepid standing in front of it, a tear rolling down his face. "Finally," he whispers. Pyre, however, does not care about his emotions. He flies over and grabs Intrepid by the neck, intending to slam his head into the ship.
Moonlight, not wanting Pyre to get out of control, siphons vitality from both Intrepid and Pyre. Intrepid falls unconscious, and a device on his belt covers him in an opalescent putty kind of substance. Pyre is conscious, but slightly weakened (Moonlight just wanted him to chill out). Jade Eagle appears as well, and Pyre tries to get the ship open. FLICKER tells him, however, that her programming has been compromised by Intrepid.
Pyre tries to talk her through it, but she is still struggling. And then, all of this disruption of the Place Between gains some attention - Ghostheart appears.
He tells them to get out. They all agree that they'd love to, maybe he could send them out and they'll never come back? Ghostheart seems like he's considering it, but then Intrepid wakes up and says that he just wants to escape this dimension (by which he means the one the characters live in, it seems). Ghostheart refuses to help him, and Intrepid isn't interested in asking nicely. Ghostheart, finally fed up, throws down green-white fire, and all four of them vanish.
Pyre and Jade Eagle appear in space, amidst a bunch of asteroid. Pyre still has the device that allows him to talk to FLICKER, but she's still not able to respond correctly.
Moonlight, meanwhile, has reappeared back in a cemetery in Halcyon City. Ilijah Intrepid is there, too, and makes his position clear - he's planning on getting back to the "Multitudes" and stealing and plundering his little heart out. He has no particular regard for other beings; if someone dies decades from now of a disease or today because Ilijah kills them and takes their stuff, what difference, in the scheme of things?
Moonlight, of course, does not agree with this philosophy, but before he can really argue, Intrepid points out an incoming fireball. At the center of it is Sol, and she doesn't look friendly.
Need a quick character since it's been a bit (but the last character I made was the 80th this year, so I could theoretically still hit 100 before New Year's, especially if all the schools close again) and I'm running Masks today. So I'm cuing up Newcleus and gettin' sci-fi.
The Game:vs. Mirrorshades The Publisher:Denagh Design Degree of Familiarity: None Books Required: Just the pamphlet
vs. Mirrorshades, much like the other "vs." games, is a quick little card-based thing. It's cyberpunk, set "20 minutes in the future", and involves cyber augmentation and suchlike.
First thing I need is a name and a concept. Well, going with the song currently playing ("Automan"), and drawing on the movie Her a little, I'll say that my guy is an average netizen who stumbled across a next-gen AI and fell in love with it. His name is Roman Vargas, but online he goes by ARROW'D.
Health: I start with 10, so that's easy.
Stats: Metal, Meat, Move, and Mind. I get 6, 5, 3, 3 to split up. I think I want the 6 in Mind. I'll put the 5 in Metal, and that leaves 3s in Meat and Move.
Qualities: I get 1 or 2 Good Qualities, and I must take an equal number of Bad ones to balance out. I'll take Everybody (I blend into crowds), and Well-Connected (my love affair with the AI has opened a lot of doors). For the Bads, I'll take Weak (8 Health instead of 10), and Combat Paralysis. Roman's not a fighty guy.
Augmentations: I get 2 of these puppies. Well, Neural Access System sounds about right. And then I'll take Cybereyes. He got those implanted so he could "see" his AI lover more easily.
Gear: I get a Personal Access Device, which I figure in his case is maybe just something that wirelessly syncs with his eyes and Neurals. I get a weapon for close-up and one for far away. I'm figuring Roman has a taser and a pistol, but isn't very comfortable using either. He's also a device that helps him do crime, so I'll say he's got a software hack he calls "ground floor" - basically it makes low-level detection and security ignore him. Won't get him out of a checkpoint or through a locked door, but nagware and the like will overlook him.
Create the Megacity: I get to name an organization that's doing oppressive shit. Well, obviously this should be the corp that developed the AI.
Blakote, Inc. is a software developer specializing in heuristics and other fancy words. They developed an AI they refer to as "Miles," as in "miles above the competition, hur hur" but they're actually really scared of it. Miles is powerful enough to "mirror" themself out in the world, but only for a short time. Blakote, meanwhile, is actively stifling and sabotaging other corps' attempts to perfect AI until they get a handle on what Miles really is.
Trouble is, Miles met and fell in love with Roman, and now Roman is trying to free Miles. Blakote, beware!
Roman is in his late 30s. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, bit of a gut, not very coordinated and very much not in shape (tends to eat junk food and nutrient paste because he'd rather be on the net). His cyber-eyes can change color, but he usually doesn't bother because he likes the way his eyes looked before the implants (though he really likes being able to see net-stuff while walking around).
Repo! The Genetic Opera is a fucking weird rock opera starring Alexa PenaVega, Paul Sorvino, Ogre, Paris Hilton, Anthony Head, Sarah Brightman, Bill Moseley, and Terrance Zdunich.
In a dark, dystopian future with a color palette that's kinda midway between Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Sin City, people buy designer organs from GeneCo. GeneCo is our token all-powerful, evil corporation, under the control of Rotti Largo (Sorvino) and his three gleefully evil children, Luigi (Moseley), Amber (Hilton), and Pavi (Ogre). Life is cheap, the Largos murder with impunity, and the rich go to GeneCo to see the Genetic Opera, headlined by Blind Mag (Brightman). Out on the streets, if you fail to make your organ payments, expect a visit from the mysterious Repo Man, a masked killer who will literally repossess whatever you bought from GeneCo (presumably for reuse).
A young woman named Shilo (PenaVega), suffering from a blood disease that prevents her from leaving the house, leaves the house and winds up nearly getting shot up by GeneCo's thugs for being in a cemetery after dark (oh, right, there's a drug called Zydrate that can be harvested from the bodies of the dead), but is saved by our erstwhile narrator the Grave Robber (Zdunich, who also co-wrote the screenplay). Turns out Shilo's father Nathan (Head) is a doctor working for GeneCo...as the Repo Man! There's a long, complicated history between Largo, Nathan, Blind Mag, and Shilo's mother Marni (Sarah Power) that all comes to a head at the Genetic Opera.
The story is almost a tragedy, but not quite. Shilo ends the story free of both her father and Largo, and Amber seems to have stepped up as the head of GeneCo, with the slight implication that things may change. With all of that said, the meat of the story is classically tragic. The worldbuilding is intricate and just weird, but in a good way, and it seems pretty internally consistent. Plotlines continue cropping up until pretty late into the story and there are dramatic revelations all the way through; honestly it feels very much like a game of A Tragedy in Five Acts (Shilo is the Daughter, Nathan is the Parent, Mag is the Foil, Largo is the Authority, and...I guess you could call Marni the Lover?), what with the way that scene progression feels a little disjointed and, again, new information and characters crop up a lot.
But, honestly, the movie is a trip. The actors chew scenery like it's slathered in maple syrup, because you can't not. They cast people who can sing, which helps immensely. Anthony Head has a nice Jekyll and Hyde thing going between Nathan and the Repo Man, and Alexa PenaVega does a nice job of not letting Shilo be nothing but a little girl lost (she's actually pretty manipulative at times, and has a full-on rebellion song complete with a cameo from Joan Jett). Everything is larger than life, but it's opera, so it should be.
Today we played Cairn. Let's see what our wacky aminals get up to. Here's last time.
The characters sleep a bit, and then the next morning Rumdiggle sets up a makeshift stage near the market and plays some songs about fruit for the citizens of Cairn. It doesn't go especially well; folks aren't used to impromptu concerts in the morning and her lyrics are kind of insipid. Russelet, watching from above, sends his rat buddies to start a kind of whisper campaign to get folks excited, but it really doesn't work and Cripke the weasel throws a rotten strawberry at Rummy's head.
She doesn't mind so much (she eats garbage, after all, she's a possum), but the action starts a bit of a donnybrook. Rumdiggle faints dead away, and Russelet pulls her into the town hall to keep her safe. Ringtail, Russelet's rat buddy, notes that Cripke and a few rats and closing in on Whisper Shimmerborn, the hare who brought the addictive fruits to the village in the first place. They don't look friendly.
Russelet springs into action! He flies out of the town hall's belfry and fires an arrow at the ground, driving off one of the rats. Rumdiggle activates her ripper totem and charges out with the aspect of the ripper (bear), and plants herself between Whisper and Cripke. Cripke snarls and tries to shove her out of the way, but she stands firm. Russelet lands next to him and tries to bop him with his staff, but misses, and Cripke scrambles up and over Rumdiggle...or at least he tries. He gets knocked back by her tail and lands in heap, surrounded by weapons. Cripke runs off, spitting and snarling.
Russelet takes off and starts tracking him. Rumdiggle, heading home, notices him flying off into the woods and decides that if they're headed to the tree where her friends are, she better follow.
Meanwhile, Ratatosk and Snootabur arrive at the offending tree (what a strange sentence). Ratatosk employs his training as a druid and calls out the dryad that lives in the tree. She emerges and smiles down at the animals, calling up fruit from her fingertips for them. Ratatosk and Snootabur try to explain that her fruits are causing Disharmony, but the dryad doesn't take that news well. Sensing the problem, Snootabur tries to explain that they are but small animals, and the fruit is too powerful. The dryad seems to get that and creates a smaller fruit, and hands it over to them.
Ratatosk examines, and realizes that it doesn't much matter how big the fruit is; the dryad's tree isn't a fruiting tree, so anything like this she creates is going to be a problem. They try to explain that, but the dryad makes clear that she hated just producing stupid little seeds ("I eat seeds," mutters Ratatosk) and being ignored by the other creatures of the forest. Ratatosk explains that her bark is very useful for a variety of reasons, but she is unconvinced.
And just then, Cripke bursts into the clearing and yells that these two are preventing people from eating the fruits, even though everyone in Cairn totally wants to. This angers the dryad, and she starts growing more fruit. Cripke charges forward at Snootabur, but Snootabur curls up into a ball and Cripke pokes his hands up pretty bad on her quills. Ratatosk jumps in and bops him in the nose with his staff, knocking him back and bloodied, and he curls up on the ground whimpering.
The dryad reaches down for him and Snootabur tries to stop her with her staff, but doesn't manage it. Russelet, however, puts an arrow right in her palm, and she lurches back. Rumdiggle wraps her tail around Cripke and drags him away into the brush, and Ratatosk, realizing that violence isn't really going to solve this, scampers up the dryad's tree to the branches where the chipmunks and birds live.
He casts a spell to speak to them, and convinces them to go down the tree and tell the dryad how much they love her. The animals do, and the dryad pauses, as Russelet and Rumdiggle watch from the brush and Snootabur stands with her staff, guarding. Ratatosk notes that the animals are helping, but that their comments are pretty basic (I likened it to a bunch of kindergarteners trying to talk an adult off a ledge - they're very sweet, but probably not very savvy about what the adult is dealing with).
Ratatosk hops down onto the dryad's head and explains in detail the many ways that her tree fits into the cycle of the forest - creating shade, dropping seeds, housing animals, and so forth. The dryad listens, and finally gets it - it's not about the fruit. She leans down and apologizes to Snootabur and Cripke, and the animals promise to come and visit her and to wake her up in spring. She says she'd like that, and fades back into her tree.
The characters head home to Cairn. Snootabur talks to Whisper and tells him what happened and that he should say hi to the tree on his way through the forest. Rumdiggle drops Cripke off at home and tells him to get some sleep. Ratatosk visits Asta Ringrunner and updates him, and Russelet heads back to his belfry to make some arrows.
The next day, Rumdiggle talks with Sarafina Bushytail, and the two of them do a better impromptu concert to celebrate the musk melons ripening. Cairn enjoys some fruits that don't make them euphoric and addicted, and the village finds some new uses for fruit and ways to store it for winter (raising Morale and Food by 1).
Next time, we'll see what new adventures these folks get into!
The Game:Young Centurions The Publisher:Evil Hat Productions Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played this particular game, but I'm very familiar with FAE and with Spirit of the Century Books Required: Just the one
Young Centurions is basically the teen version of Spirit of the Century. You're playing Spirits, folks born at midnight at the beginning of a new century (the 20th, in this case). In SotC, though, you're playing them as adults, while here you're playing them as teens. That means that game takes place before 1920, so there's this whole World War thing happening, and yet the tone of the game still manages to be pretty light. Part of that is because of the author (Carrie Harris, with whom I went to college and did a lot of gaming back in the day); she's really amazing at keeping the tone consistent and accessible.
Anyway! The game is meant to be playable by younger and less experienced players, and I can honestly say it's one of the better expressions of that idea that I've seen. So, let's make a Spirit!
This being Fate Accelerated, I need to start by deciding a high concept. I also need to figure out what I'm the Spirit of. I feel like I make a lot of characters who are resilient and enduring, and I know I lean on tragedy a lot (this may be because I'm sad most of the time, but y'know, life's like that). So let's say that my guy is the Spirit of Hope. The latter half of the 1910s are pretty dark, and enduring it is one thing, but hoping for something better and daring to dream is another. So my guy is going to be someone who has spent his young life in an orphanage (yes, I'm drawing on Annie, sue me). He doesn't know who his parents were, but he's bought into the story that a lot of orphans have - my real parents are important, and someday they'll find me.
Anyway, I think Hopeful Orphan is a decent enough High Concept. So now I need a Trouble Aspect. I think that the flipside of hope is that he trusts too easily; he's basically really easily led. Far Too Trusting is a good Aspect.
Now I get three more Aspects, and not a lot of guidance. I definitely want to lean into the whole "orphaned under mysterious circumstances," but I also don't want to have an Aspect that represents something the character doesn't know, so I'll call it No One Will Tell Me What Happened To My Family.
I suppose it'd be in-genre to take a dog as an Aspect, but I don't want to go full Annie. Actually, I want to swim again the grain here and say that the orphanage is an awesome place to live. The couple who runs it, the Swanns, are caring and honest people, and they just won't place a child with a family that they think won't care for them. Swann's Home for Wayward Children is the Aspect, and it'll represent that I can call on the Swanns for assistance and that the place is important to me, so it's potentially leverage.
One more Aspect, and I think I want something that's a little more intrinsic and beneficial. Nimble Like a Nervous Cat. He startles easily, but he also gets out of the way instinctively. Doesn't mean he's afraid of everything, he's just an easy mark on Halloween.
Strictly speaking I should choose a name and description now, but I'm not quite ready to do that. I'll do approaches first. I get one Good, two Fair, two Average, and one Mediocre. I know I want Clever to be my Mediocre (this guy gets by on guts, not smarts). Conversely, my Good is gonna be Flashy. Fairs can be Forceful and Quick, and that leaves Careful and Sneaky as Average.
Stunts, then! The book says to take at least one, but the usual rules apply (meaning I get three). One needs to be a "Century Stunt", which means the bonus is +3 or do a cool thing twice per session. It needs to be thematically related to my High Concept. I'll make a stunt called Light in the Darkness: Because I'm the Spirit of Hope, twice per session I can spend a Fate point to give a rousing speech that gives anyone who hears it a Fate point.
Cool. I can take two more stunts before I have to start spending refresh. I'll take one called "Want Ta Make Somethin' Of It?" Because I can talk tough, I get a +2 to Forcefully create an advantage by intimidating others.
And then I'll take "Ssh! You'll Wake Mrs. Swann!" Because I'm used to sneaking out of the orphanage with my pals, I get +2 to Sneakily overcome if I'm leading a group.
That means I've got 3 refresh, which is fine. The rest is description!
Obadiah "Obie" Tailor is 14 (meaning that this is set in 1914). He's short for his age, lanky, and has dirty blond hair that falls in his eyes if he's not wearing his newsboy cap (he's basically always wearing it). He's missing one of his front canine teeth and he blows air out of the hole when he's thinking. Obie is always down to sneak out of the house and go raid someone's garden or whatever, but if someone on the block asks for help, he always manages to convince his fellow orphans to pitch in. "How did Obie talk us into this?" is a common question, but it always seems to work out OK.
Well, wasn't exactly planning on ending this game tonight, but it came to a good stopping place. Here's last time.
The characters had fought off Calri and gotten him arrested, and protected Onil from his attempt to murder her. Now, they just need to get Thunas off on the charges against him. The next morning, his trial begins, and the characters bring Onil to the courthouse.
The bailiff lays out the case: Thunas is a foreigner and hasn't spoken in his defense. He's a watershaper, meaning he had the means to destroy the stables. There are witnesses against him (Calri, who of course is probably lying, and also some townsfolk who say they saw him watershaping), and Onil, who could have stopped the disaster with her earthshaping, was knocked unconscious. The court asks if anyone has anything to say in Thunas' defense.
Gerde stands up and says that it wasn't watershaping, but sandshaping that destroyed the stables. Khatun offers to translate for Thunas and he's finally able to give his side of the story. Ember explains what happened to Onil last night, and Feng elaborates on Calri and what happened to him. The characters' arguments are accepted, and Thunas is set free.
The characters head back to the Honey Blossom to celebrate, and discuss their next moves. They decide that this is where they part ways - it's been a fun adventure, but Gerde and Ember want to head back to Senda. Gerde buys up a bunch of souvenirs to take home as gifts, and heads back to get chorin'. Ember, back in Senda, works on building up the village with her grandmother's help.
Feng heads back to the Temple of the Seven Rings to teach the students, and Khatun sets up a cultural exchange with her people (which basically amounts to bringing teenagers from her tribe to Greycliff and trying to make sure they learn about the city and don't just party all the time).
So, this might all seem a little anticlimactic; like I said, I wasn't planning on ending the game here and so I didn't have a big thing planned. But I asked the players whether they'd like to keep playing Legend of the Elements or leave it, since we'd come to a good stopping place, and they pretty much all agreed that they weren't huge fans of the system. Legends is PbtA, which is fine in and of itself, but this particular expression of the game is a little shaky.
Two major issues that I identified: First, when you roll a miss, you get Chi, which is used as XP. So far, so good, a lot of PbtA games do that. But Chi is also used to modify rolls, meaning that when you miss, you're deciding between succeeding at what you're doing and advancing your character. Also, I've decided I'm not a fan of mechanics in PbtA that let you turn success to failure outright (a lot of the games have "help" mechanics, but that only boosts a roll, meaning if you roll low enough you're still SOL).
The other issue is the Tag system. Characters don't have health or wounds, they just get tags, which is fine, but they don't mean anything. They restrict actions in the fiction, but they don't have any mechanical impact and therefore it's easy to ignore them, and that means that the stakes aren't clear in a conflict because you can't really get hurt.
Oh, and, the idea of having shaping be a way to approach basic moves is great, but if you're going to include shaping as a move as well, it needs not to overlap with the basic moves so much. There, I think that's the long and short of it.
(And like, don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot to like about Legends, I just think the mechanics are a little sloppy.)
So, next time, a new game! We've already picked it, but I'll talk about that next session when we do chargen.
The Replacements is a sports comedy starring Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Rhys Ifans, Jon Favreau, Orlando Jones, Ace Yonamine, Brett Cullen, David Denham, Faizon Love, and Michael Taliferro.
The NFL players go on strike, demanding more money, and different teams react in different ways. The Washington DC Sentinels respond by hiring scabs to finish the season, and the team's owner (Jack Warden in his final film role) hires Jimmy McGinty (Hackman) to coach this team of "replacements."
Said replacements include Murphy (Denham), a skilled player who was born deaf and as such can't catch a break; a Welsh soccer player with a gambling problem (Ifans); a pair of brothers working as bodyguards (Love and Taliferro); a Sumo wrestler (Yonamine); and a riot cop action junkie and violent nutcase (Favreau). As their quarterback, he finds Shane Falco (Reeves), a once-promising player who blew his shot when he lost an important game.
From there, it's a sports movie about a team of misfits, and that's a genre almost as formulaic as a slasher movie or a rom-com. The team takes a while to gel, the Jackson brothers nearly come to blows with Fumiko, and no one really respects Falco because he has a habit of choking when shit gets intense. And then the evil union quarterback Martel (Cullen) picks a fight with the team in a bar, and they all get arrested, and bond when the youngest and greenest of them, Franklin (Jones) leads them in "I Will Survive."
In the midst of all of this, Falco woos the head cheerleader Annabelle (Langton), and the players deal with their own plotlines (some of which have arcs, some of which just have lines). In the end, they take the team to the playoffs, but then disappear into obscurity, which is about the only way the movie breaks from the formula.
So, this is a pretty harmless movie. There are a number of fun moments, and the cast in general seems like they're having fun (Hackman in particular, who can often come off as kind of prickly). I think there are two things about it that keep me from liking it more than I do.
First, I know nothing about American football. The tense moments in the movie don't affect me because I have no idea what's happening on the field or why it's significant. I don't know what a "down" is or any of the other terminology. In movies like Major League, I can get at least a little more invested because I know the rules of the game (or at least, I know the grade school version).
Second, I find it a little hard to root against a union strike, being a public employee myself. The movie addresses this; the NFL players all come off like clueless, spoiled millionaires, refusing to play because they want more millions, but knowing what I do about how the NFL has ignored CTE over the years, it's still a little hard to get behind the central premise. With that said, the cast does a great job of making the characters likeable (even Favreau, whose character is a cop who just loves beating people, which, erm, yeah, that's impressive, Jon), the jokes land, so it's a fun movie.
Well, I was gonna run Cairn today, but plans changed because of migraines, so instead I'm gonna make a character, do a movie write-up, and then solve a serial murder.
The Game:Clockwork Dominion The Publisher:Reliquary Game Studios Degree of Familiarity: Not much. I played it once at GenCon some years back and really enjoyed it Books Required: Just the one
Clockwork Dominion is...well. Like I said, I played it at GenCon, and it was well-run and worked nicely at the table (it must have, because I bought a copy and it's been on my "maybe I'll run this" list ever since). But I'd never read it, and so I grabbed it off the shelf for the project and started reading through it, and I have to say, there are some elements to the game I'm finding a little problematic.
Now, with that said, I haven't read all of the book. I've read enough to get the setting and to make a character, but the print is really small and the writing isn't keeping me hooked in (it's not bad, it's just a little dry). I really need to look through the GMing section to see if my concerns go all the way through.
But, it's like this. One of the central themes of the game is order vs. chaos. The forces of chaos are personified collectively as "the Pontus", and the idea is that chaos is rising all around us, threatening order and the "civilized" world. So far, so good. But the issue is that this game is set in an alternate Victorian era, and the British Empire is held up as the exemplar of order, keeping everything in its Creator-mandated place around the world. Out in Australia, for example, the Outback and the wilds of the continent are just full of Pontus-y shit, y'know, because the Empire hasn't established a foothold there.
Now, the book does make a point of saying that "order vs. chaos" isn't the same as "good vs. evil," but then the rest of the text really does hew to the "Empire good, Pontus bad" thing, and well, I have a hard time holding up the British Empire in the late 19th century as something to really aspire to, especially when it's framed as "everything and everyone needs to understand their divinely mandated place in the great Clockwork."
Anydangway, I hasten to add that this is not based on a deep reading of the book. So let's just make a character.
Gus gave me this song for inspiration: "Genius of Love," by Tom Tom Club:
(They actually gave me the longer version, but I wanted to link the official video because it's bananas.)
So, um, this song is from the perspective of a woman in jail waxing poetical about her boyfriend, and drugs are clearly involved. I think that my character is going to be a disgraced noble/black sheep/angsty poet/gay as hell type of fellow, a sort of Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron type of guy (oh, modern inspiration: Klaus from The Umbrella Academy). Where do I start?
Step One: Choose a Bloodline. He's a "pureblood" (that is, human, with no supernatural shit in there). That's easy enough. That means he gets 2 points of Purpose, a one-point bonus to Will, a one-point bonus to any two Skills I want (so that'll have to wait), and three Blessings: Protected (supernatural powers are less likely to affect me because I'm officially part of the Clockwork), Purposed (I refresh one point of Purpose at the start of a session), and Talent (I have a single mastery ability of one skill of my choosing, whatever that means).
Step Two: Pursuits. This is basically the overriding drive of the character. I think my rakish noble pretty clearly is all about Freedom. That gives me a point of Ether (another potential, like Purpose), and a point each into Grace and Will (not Will & Grace).
Step Three: Backgrounds. Circumstances of life, birth, etc. Where's "rich dude?" Ah, Gentry, here we go. That gives me another point of Purpose (bleah), and a bunch of skill dots (well, they're more like rectangles than dots). I get 2 Assets, too, whatever that means. My Class and Means both start at 3, but I'm gonna refrain from writing that in just yet in case I feel like fiddling with it later.
Step Four: Aptitudes. I get one in each Aptitude, an additional two in Will and one in Grace, and then five more rectangles. Let's see, what's my guy good at? Well, his Will is too high, for one thing, but there's nothing I can do about that. I think I'll leave Reason and Focus at 1, and bump Vigor up to 2. I throw a point into Grace, putting it up to 3, and then the other three points into Presence, bumping that to 4.
Step Five: Skills. I get two points from my bloodline, and then 12 more (in addition to the ones from my background, which I've already put in). So basically I just have 14 points to throw around. Oh, and then I have a mastery that I can take for any skill, whereas normally you only get a mastery when you put five dots (rectangles) in. Neat.
Well, let's see, here. Burglary is used for sleight of hand, and I kinda feel like my guy would have some skill there, so I'll put one point in. Command, too, seems relevant, but not more than one. I'll put one into Fencing (he learned how, he just never practices). Ooh, Guile. Here we go. Let's throw four in there. Seven more.
Intuition seems good, two there. One in Mysteries (can't spend so much time tripping balls without seeing some weird shit). Parley, there's what I want. Three points, and I'll take the Silver Tongue mastery for it.
One point left, and I think it had better go into Streetwise. Oh, wait, no, Temptation. Shit, I wish I'd seen that sooner. Ah, well.
Step Six: Assets & Liabilities. I get two Assets for free, I know that much. I can also take up to two liabilities to take additional assets. Let's have a look! Ooh, there's an asset called Skilled that bumps a skill up by two dots, perfect.
The Liabilities are pretty harsh, actually. I'll take Bad Reputation and call it a day. That gives me a Reputation (doy), which means I need to look up those rules. Oh, it's a later step of chargen, groovy. I'll pick my other two Assets, then.
I like Dangerous Friends. My guy has other gentry who are better regarded than he is, and who are willing to lean on people (socially) a little to make sure they overlook his reputation, at least a little. And then I'll take Favored; he's kind of got the Devil's luck.
Step Seven: Affinities. I have two different Affinities, one of which is rated 2 and the other 1. They have to be tied to a duty, goal, relationship, or behavior. Well, I definitely want one related to being a sensualist and rake. Let's call it "All manner of vice", rank 2.
And then I feel like a relationship is in order, but I've only got one point left. I'll say that the other Affinity is Jack Hannigan, my special friend. He and Jack wound up getting detained by the police one night for indecent behavior, and it took some bribery and some pressure to get them off (as it were). Since then, their families haven't really let them speak or even write, but he misses Jack sometimes.
Step Eight: Reputations. Reputations can usually be positive or negative depending on the situation, but I have an exclusively negative one because of the Liability. I'll call it "Prefers the Company of Men" and leave it at that. And then I get three points to make a couple other Reputations, but there's only two slots on the sheet, grr. Well, we'll say "Incurable Rake" as a 2 and "Loyal and honest friend" at 1 (see, that's that high Will).
Step Nine: Wealth & Accoutrements. This isn't so much the shopping step as me picking shit that fit into my character's Means, but I think I'm good. He doesn't typically carry a weapon (maybe a sword cane, since it's in genre and he can fence a little), but does often carry drugs - laudanum, opium, cocaine, whatever you've got. He favors dark clothing, but it's always perfectly tailored and fit (at least at the beginning of the evening, though he does get rumpled sometimes).
Step Ten: Finishing Touches. Derived traits! My Physical Defense is Vigor + a relevant Skill, usually Athletics (though mine is 0; he does have a point of Fencing, though). Guard is half Focus rounded down, so...1, I guess? Social Defense is Will + Composure or another relevant Skill.
And then description and personality! Well, let's start with name. Edmond William Apsley, youngest son of the wealthy Apsley family, was assumed to have been going through a wild phase when he and his "friend" Jack Hannigan were arrested. Now his family gives him a wide berth, but they won't openly disown him, since the scandal seems to have been contained (it really has not). Edmond, for his part, doesn't much care what people know and isn't ashamed of who he is, but he does love his family, his father in particular, and that curbs his most brazen impulses as far as his carnal appetites go.
He gives in to his appetites for chemicals, however, and the morning typically finds him incoherent. He's got a much higher tolerance than people think, though, and so folks tend to talk in front of him, figuring he won't remember it anyway. In fairness, they're not always wrong.
After a bit of hiatus, we're back in the land of Rul for our grand finale.
The characters take a day to rest, and then head for Seven Spires. Oballa draws them a diagram of the city, and points out the four paths leading up the hill, three of them leading into a tower, the fourth (the Southern Path) leading up to the gate into the city. The city is, of course, surrounded by the seven towers, but one of them (the Tower of the Hammers of Justice) has been completely destroyed and is naught but ash and burning rubble.
The heroes talk it over and decided to head up the Northern Pass, as it leads to the tower of the Keepers of Lore (and Homraz is pretty sure nerds will be no problem). Oballa obtains them a horse-drawn carriage. Dagmar dismantles Skadi and puts it in the back of the carriage, and Mayfly powers down and lays in the back. Homraz quaffs a potion of invisibility and ascends the hill between the paths with Bashir, who can remain stealthy thanks to his training as a druid and woodwose.
They find as they go, though, that the whole hill is under a shadow. They feel disjointed and weighed down, and they all feel their minds and souls being torn. Dagmar's skin becomes puffy and swollen, and they start to emit a sweet, unpleasant stink. They cover up with a cloak and decide that they need to stay covered. Bashir, meanwhile, glances skyward and begins to obsess over flying things. Homraz grows an extra finger and toe on each hand and foot, respectively.
The characters get to the top of the hill and find that the doors to the tower are open. A man in scholar's robes comes out, gibbering and clawing at his face, and then picks up a rock and tries to scrape off his flesh. Bashir knocks him out, and Dagmar reassembles Skadi so that they can be fully covered. They also wind up Mayfly, who takes the Shadow in better stride.
The walk into the city and people stare at Skadi, but aren't really sure what to make of it. As they're walking towards the palace, they note people looking up, and spot a woman with wings and a fiery sword incoming. Bashir screams and rolls under the wagon, and the woman swoops down at Dagmar. Dagmar braces and strikes it, and Homraz bursts from invisibility and attacks. As people from the city scatter, Homraz hacks away with his ax, and Mayfly puts a bullet in the creature's head, killing it.
The citizenry recognizes Homraz and starts chanting his name. Homraz, never one to ignore an opportunity like this, screams at the people to reclaim their city, and people start grabbing pitchforks and going after demons. Homraz drinks down a potion of growth he's been saving for a special occasion and grows to 15 feet tall, leading his companions to the palace gates - the nearest ones are close to the burned-out wreckage of the destroyed tower.
When they get to the gate, a number of skeletal guards away them with bows. The creatures fire and the characters attacks; Homraz smashes one to bits and Bashir and Dagmar jump in as well. And then they notice the ground is shaking...Mayfly flits up to the edge of the wall around the palace for a better view, and spies an immense reptilian head coming up out of the ash. "DRAGON!"
The dragon rears up and spews fire over them, setting Homraz alight but barely harming Bashir (thanks to his Oak Hide spell). Homraz charges in to fight the beast, and Dagmar hands back and shoots at it. Bashir follows Homraz, striking at the monster with his club, but doesn't manage to injure it much. Homraz, of course, cuts it open pretty good, but a second blast of fire injures Homraz further and destroys Skadi (though Dagmar jumps clear unharmed).
Dagmar, furious and exposed, shoots the dragon in one of its ax-wounds, and it shrieks and falls. Homraz lops off its head with his ax, holds up the head and screams "This is going on my wall!" The citizens cheer, and Oballa motions them into the palace - she's opened the gate while they were fighting the dragon.
Inside, everything is dim, quiet, and eerie. A horrible slimy mold runs up the walls. They start walking, looking for a way toward the palace, but the mold seems to be growing. It slides down to the floor and starts oozing up their legs. Homraz tries to free his legs, Dagmar tries to beat the mold with his club, and Mayfly lights a torch to it...and then they see the mold vanish from the ground. It's still on the walls, but it's just mold, and it's not moving.
Bashir, unfortunately, is still very much convinced it's covering him. He pulls off his trousers and falls down, trying to roll away from the stuff. Homraz picks him up and smacks him around until he comes to his senses, and he tugs his pants back on. The group heads deeper into the grounds, and Bashir spots something that looks like a humanoid figure with antlers darting across his field of vision. "Faun," he mutters, and everyone goes on alert.
The group sees a faun appear from the shadows and fire a crossbow bolt at Homraz, screaming "Death to monarchs!" But Homraz see through the illusion and it falls away. Mayfly, tired of these images, casts a spell to create sunlight and the characters realize that the mold definitely gets thicker in one direction. Homraz pulls out a pendulum and asks if following the mold will lead to Tain Faw - and realizes that yes, it will.
They press on until they come to the gates of the Palace, and a courtyard that's completely covered in mold. Homraz beats his ax against the wall and calls out Tain Faw, and the demon answers. It appears in their midst and slashes at them with its claws, but the characters fight back bravely. It injures them, teleporting around the area, but then Homraz catches it off guard and buries his ax in its chest. Mayfly shoots it in the face, and Tain Faw dies, receding into the mold. The mold, in turn, seeps away, and the Shadow of the Demon Lord fades.
Homraz returns to Caecras and takes up the mantle as the Emperor. He makes Dagmar his chief engineer, and installs Mayfly as the head of the Cult of the New God (the Mechanarch). Over time, the Cult's faith merges with worship of Father Death.
Bashir, meanwhile, is granted a large plot of land in the most peaceful part of the Empire (probably the Low Countries). He takes one single dragon scale and turns it into a fruit dish, the sole reminder of his days as an adventurer who fought to free Urth from the Demon Lord's shadow.
Renaissance Man is a mostly-comedy starring Danny DeVito, Gregory Hines, Mark Wahlberg, Stacey Dash, Kadeem Hardison, Khalil Kain, James Remar, Lillo Brancato, Richard T. Jones, Peter Simmons, and Gregory Sporleder.
Bill Rago (DeVito) is an ad man who used to be a desired commodity in the biz, but has fallen on some hard times, largely because he's an abrasive jackass. Fired for the unforgivable sin of trying to pitch an ad campaign over a speakerphone because he was stuck in traffic (remember when everything wasn't virtual?), he collects unemployment for a while and then lands a job as a teacher at a US Army base.
His job is to teach eight "squeakers" to...comprehend. And here we have one of my niggles with the movie, not a deal breaker but just something I think should have had some more attention (there's a bunch of these) - what exactly is the problem these kids are having? All we're told is that they "can't hack it" or "have sawdust for brains," but during montages all we see is a few of them having trouble with obstacle courses and, in one instance, reading a compass-like thingie (look, I've never been to basic training, but I'm thinking the screenwriter hasn't, either).
Anyway, utterly unprepared for this job, never having been a teacher and knowing precisely dick about pedagogy, Bill shows up and meets his class. They're all young soldiers from poor backgrounds, rural areas or inner cities, but what exactly makes them unable to "comprehend" being a soldier is unclear. Bill flounders for a bit, and then while he's having the students "read something" (whatever they wanted to bring from the Px), they ask him about the book he's reading, which turns out to be Hamlet. Bill winds up teaching Hamlet to the students, and this makes them...smarter, I guess. They graduate from basic, and Bill decides to stick with this program, I suppose on the assumption that there will always be squeakers.
I have niggles with the central premise, that is, if there are soldiers that, because of a lack of language skills and cognitive abilities, are having trouble in basic, there's not already something in place for that? Even if informal? And if the program is, as it's kind of portrayed, the brainchild of the base's colonel (Cliff Robertson), why hasn't he put a little work into it? Bill gets no lesson plans, no guidance, other than "teach them basic comprehension." He winds up teaching them Hamlet purely because they show a little interest. For that matter, why is Bill reading Hamlet for fun? Don't get me wrong, I love Hamlet, but I'm also a theater geek and even so, I'd much rather watch the play than read it. Does Bill have a background in theater? He recites a monologue from Romeo & Juliet from memory, so that would imply he did some acting at some point, but he doesn't come off like someone who loves theater or literature (though he clearly has some training in English, but like, he's an ad guy, so that tracks).
Basically, what makes this movie fun is the performances from the class. They have some fun chemistry, both with each other and Bill, and we get to know them enough that when one of them (Kain) gets arrested as a drug dealer, it's got some weight and their reactions matter. There's a scene in which one of the students (Brancato) recites the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V when his drill sergeant (Hines, in a bit of really weird casting) demands to hear some Shakespeare in the middle of bivouac training in a rainstorm, and while it makes no goddamn sense if you hold it up to scrutiny (how did this kid, with no particular affinity for literature, memorize this speech? And more to the point, why?), but it's a moving moment because Brancato sells it. The rap version of Hamlet, too, headlined by Kain and Hardison, is fun.
All in all, it's a light and fun movie and it could have been a white savior movie a la Dangerous Minds, but Bill's unpreparedness for teaching kinda levels the playing field (and also that several of the students are white).
First we make a character, then we dust. My life is exciting.
The Game:No Country for Old Kobolds The Publisher:Steve Wallace Art Degree of Familiarity: None; it's a PbtA game so I know the underlying assumptions Books Required: Just the one
No Country for Old Kobolds is a Dungeon World hack that has the players taking on the roles of kobolds, those lovable (?) little dog/lizard people that get slaughtered in droves by first level D&D characters. NCOK embraces their limited lifespan, so players are actually taking on the role of a family more than an individual character (that is, you play one character at a time, but when that character dies, you'll make a new scion of that line).
Like a lot of PbtA games, there's a lot of player-created background. If I were actually playing, we'd make a kobold village, which is really the lifeblood of the game. Also, we'd come up with neighboring Countries that make life hard on us.
But, as usual, I'm not gonna do the backstory stuff because that's group work and this is just me. The good news is that to make a kobold, I really don't need the other stuff. So here we go!
First I need a family name. I'll choose Pondscum.
Now, looks, complete with the usual PbtA lists. I'll say that my little Pondscum (huh, that doesn't sound fun, easy to see why they went with ponies instead) has milky eyes, a short frame, green-tinted scales (hence the name), and stubby horns.
Stats! I get 1, 1, 0, 0, -1, -2 to divide up between the usual six D&D stats. After this particular Pondscum dies, I'd use his stats as a base but add one to one of them to represent the...evolution, I guess?...of the family. Let's put the -2 in Constitution, that'll make me die fast. I'll put the -1 into Strength, my 0s into Wisdom and Intelligence, and my 1s into Charisma and Dexterity.
I get WIS+2 (so 2) Abilities. I'll play to my strengths, such as they are, and take If I Can't See Them..., allowing me to become invisible by staying perfectly still, and Voice of the Wild, allowing me to command animals to do my bidding.
And, finally, I roll a d6 for my hit points. I roll a 6! That means I start with 4 hit points, because of my shitty CON score (though 4 is actually pretty respectable for a kobold).
My kobold's given name is Bloop (the Pondscum family gives birth in the swamp, and children are named after the first sound the make. Often it's some variation on "bloop"; it's kind of our "John"). His scales are green and tend to have residual algae on them, his eyes have a nictitating membrane that makes them look cloudy, and Bloop feels most comfortable in the water with just his eyes and horns visible. He looks a lot like a bullfrog when he does that...which is great, except that other species eat bullfrogs. Ah, well.
It's a game post, or, as we call it around here, "Matt's Blog Post Type 3."
Last issue, our dynamic trio took on a singing swan lady and then ran afoul of Ilijah Intrepid (would it have killed you guys to spell the name "Elijah" like normal people?). So here we are in Moonlight's sanctum facing off against the dude.
Pyre shoots Intrepid with one of his alien weapons, a gun that fires a pellet of expanding foam to immobilize him. Intrepid looks impressed for a moment, then taps a couple of his fingers together and teleports behind Pyre, reaching for his communicator. Jade Eagle zaps Intrepid's hand with her eye-beams, shorting out the glove, and Intrepid yelps and tosses the glove. Moonlight attempts to encase Intrepid in, well, moonlight, but Intrepid absorbs the construct with his other glove and fires it right back at Moonlight.
Pyre jumps in the way of the blast, and it turns him to ice. He falls to the ground and shatters, and Intrepid tosses a little metal sphere into the shards, which roll them up into a larger sphere. Intrepid grabs said sphere, but Jade Eagle flies over and socks him, sending the sphere flying up. Intrepid reels back and tosses a couple of little glass rectangles to the ground. They break, and two huge alien creatures appear, six-legged, tiger-sized monsters with horrible spindly mouth-folds. One of them leaps on Jade Eagle, and the other charges after Moonlight.
Moonlight puts up a wall to block the creature, and the creature just slams into it. But the one attacking Jade Eagle tackles her and munches on her head. Pyre manages to reform himself and turns himself into a huge wolf-creature made of ice, but can't quite get his bearings before the other tiger-monster goes around Moonlight's wall and tackles him. Jade Eagle struggles, but can't get the creature to let go. She feels her hands tingle and realizes she could probably call on the power of the bloodstones still embedded in her flesh, but decides that would be a terrible idea and just endures.
Intrepid tosses a disc onto Pyre and immobilizes his (knowing that Pyre can pretty easily reform and free himself), and pulls out a little remote device. "Give me the thing, and your friends don't get hurt." Pyre tries to think of a way to get out of this, but doesn't want to put his friends in more danger. He hands over the communicator and makes a grab for the remote, but Intrepid is too fast. He pushes the button and he, and the monsters, vanish.
The heroes free Nightingale and she patches up Moonlight and Jade Eagle (both are bleeding from the needly bites from the tiger). Pyre turns into a stormcloud to vent some anger; Jade Eagle tells him to take it outside. Pyre grabs the glove that Intrepid left behind and, with Moonlight's help, analyzes it. It's futuristic tech; the glove is made of millions of nano-wires. When the fingers are tapped together, it can achieve different effects based on the order of the taps. It's too badly damaged to repair, but Pyre manages to rig it so that they can use the teleportation effect to send the wearer and anyone in a five-foot radius to the other glove - once. The heroes decide to do a little preparation before going after Intrepid. Pyre gears up with his remaining weaponry. Jade Eagle heads out to talk to her legacy folks, and Moonlight heads home to get ready for school the next day.
Jade Eagle gets patched up (again) by Auntie, who dresses her down - aliens have different biology than we do, so they can sometimes bypass a Jade Eagle's invulnerability. Casey says that maybe it's time to "show her." Auntie agrees, and Casey takes Selena out to the edge of town, and opens the Eyrie, a hidden sanctum that the Jade Eagles have used for years.
Charlie, meanwhile, goes to school and immediately has rumors spreading about why he's got a weird ring of wounds around his head ("I heard he stuck his head in the piranha tank at the zoo!"). Tandy - Sol - corners him and says that she doesn't want him dying before they have a chance, um, fuse, and reminds him that he's got the power of darkness eternal at his disposal. He should just release it and not get hurt by alien tigers. Charlie responds that while he does have that power, yes, using it recklessly, even in self-defense, isn't how he rolls.
Next time, we'll see if the heroes can stop Intrepid and keep to their principles.
Last time, our heroes were at the tea shop when they learned that an angry mob was heading for the jail to kill Thunas. The characters head out to stop said mob, and Gerde wastes no time getting in front of the jail and turning back the earth-shaping that was being aimed at the doors. Feng, meanwhile, mindwarps some of the vigilantes to head home, while Ember and Khatun survey the crowd trying to find who might be instigating all this. They both spot a man on top of a building, watching over the scene and gesturing as though shaping.
Gerde tells the folks to go home; Thunas is going to go on trial and that's that. Just then, a layer of sand flies from behind her and slams into the mob (she didn't do that). Khatun causes a tree next to the building to grow up and block his line of sight, and the sand falls. Feng goes and stands next to Gerde, offering strength, and together they get the mob to disperse.
Meanwhile, Ember tries climbing up the tree to get to the guy, but when she gets to the top she gets a face-full of sand and falls back down. She tries to get it out of her eyes, but just makes it worse, and starts to lose control of her powers. The ground cracks and lava starts to rise up, which of course gets everyone's attention. Khatun climbs the building and sees the guy - clearly an earthshaper, by his tattoos. She tries to encase him in ice to keep him from fleeing, but the lava has made things too warm and the ice turns to slush. The man falls off the building and lands in a poof of sand, and then runs of into the crowd.
The heroes reconvene (and Khatun washes out Ember's eyes). Khatun heads back to the inn to meditate on what she's seen, and the others try to follow the man's trail into the city. Khatun reflects on the guy, and while she didn't recognize him, she did notice he was wearing a quartz necklace - very much like Onil's. That would make him Calri, Onil's cousin.
The others, meanwhile, have been looking at the now-cowed vigilantes (Gerde tells them to go home). Gerde also notes that the man they saw apparently likes to take a high vantage point; this enabled him to avoid her vibration sense. Ember climbs a building and, figuring that she's not going to be able to see the guy, instead tries to find his scent (he had a faint odor of clove). She catches a whiff and runs off towards it, and winds up at Onil's house. She doesn't see Calri, but notes that the whole place is shaking. She sends a flare up to alert the others.
Khatun finds the others and tells them what she figured out - this guy is Calri, Onil's cousin, which makes him a sandshaper and the one that actually destroyed the stable. Just then, they see a blast of fire shoot into the air (Feng notes that either that's Ember or it's something they should check out). They rush to find it and wind up at Onil's house, which is now quaking. Gerde tries to get a bead on the quakes, while Ember, Feng, and Khatun rush into the house to get everyone out.
Ember goes into a side room to look for anyone who needs help, but an outer wall collapses and leaves her trapped. Khatun and Feng wind up in Onil's room, where she's trying to stop the quake with her own shaping powers, but she can't focus enough to do it. Khatun picks her up and heads for the door. Feng looks out a window and sees that the worst of the quake is coming from a copse of trees. He yells to the others and leaps out the window.
Gerde, meanwhile, is trying to contain the quake, and it hurts. When she hears Feng's direction, though, she parts the trees, and there's Calri, exposed. Ember, panicked by being trapped, blasts open the wall, but the lightning reverberates back on her and she stumbles out, barely able to start. Feng mindwarps Calri and Gerde earth-shapes the ground to bring him out.
Onil berates her cousin, and says that they had agreed to join their necklaces (which supposedly are items of great magic power) when they turned 21. However, Onil became concerned at Calri's ruthlessness, and refused - and it seems she was right to do so. They take Calri to the jail, and Khatun tries to get the guard to release Thunas, since Calri is the real culprit. She is told, however, that she can present that evidence at his trial.
The Game:Supernatural The Publisher: Margaret Weis Productions, but the license must have expired because it's not up on DriveThru anymore Degree of Familiarity: More with the underlying system than the TV show Books Required: Just the one
Supernatural is one of those properties that I'd probably be really into but just never got around to watching (but it's still on Netflix, so maybe someday). When Midnight Roads came out, I remember people asking me why Supernatural wasn't in the inspirations, and the answer was simply that no one working on the book suggested it and I'd never seen it. I have now seen a few episodes, and I can safely say that it looks like a good property upon which to base an RPG...except that "normal people hunting hostile supernatural creatures" is not exactly untrodden ground for an RPG.
Reading the game, I don't see the "hook." I mean, I do, because the core concept is solid and the show has a following, but like, off the top of my head: Hunter: The Vigil, Chill, Monster of the Week, Vampire$...there are so many of these games. Does Supernatural have something so unique to its setting that it demands another monster hunter RPG? Or was this just a case of cashing in on a popular geek property? I dunno, I suspect the latter, but in any case, I'm more interested in seeing how Cortex handles the genre.
Right, so, chargen. My friend Jenn gave me this song for inspiration ("Sweet Jane," Cowboy Junkies):
(She actually gave me this song Friday and I was going to use it for ACKS, but I like the song too much to waste it on that game.)
This song has a sad, wistful vibe to it, and makes me think of loss and bittersweet memories. I actually think it's pretty much perfect for inspiring a Supernatural character. The classic monster hunter, of course, is someone who lost their family to monsters, but I think I want to play someone who left his family because of the monsters.
Wade Berry used to be a social worker. He had the unenviable job of performing house inspections; might not have been his first choice, but he was big, strong, and soothing (he looks like everyone's dad or cool uncle). Wade had a husband and two boys, and like a lot of folks in his job, he struggled with leaving the shit at work and dealing with compassion fatigue.
And then one day, he did a visitation and the girl who let him into the house, probably all of 13, seems undernourished, nervous, gaunt - nothing too uncommon, except she had odd wounds on her neck and wrists. Wade called for an ambulance, and then opened a door he thought led to a master bedroom. The room was pitch dark, and he went in and opened a window. Sunlight flooded the room and someone - something - in the corner of the room screamed and disappeared.
Wade never saw the girl again, and apparently she disappeared from the hospital that night. All Wade knows is that she was anemic. But the next night, Wade's dog turned up gutted on his porch. His husband, who works nights, started seeing people following him. And then Wade got a letter at his office that simply said: You'll pay for burning him.
Wade wasn't an occult expert, but he was smart enough to figure what was going on. He left town, ostensibly to visit family. His husband reported no more stalkers, but Wade started to see them. That's when he realized he couldn't go home.
Right, that's a good, if sad, start. What next? Need to set a starting level; Wade's pretty obviously a rookie. That means 42 Attribute points, 62 Skill points, and 0 Traits.
Attributes: We buy them in dice, so a d6 (average) costs 6 points. There are 6 of them, so spending enough to get a d6 across the board would mean I've spent 36, giving me 6 remaining. Ugh. I want Wade to have higher-than-average Strength and maybe Vitality.
Well, if we do d6 across the board and then spend 4 more to jack Strength to d10, and then 2 more to jack Vitality to d8, that's all my points. I can live with that. I could lower something to raise something else, but I don't see Wade as below-average in any of the other Attributes, so that'll do.
Skills! I get 62 points. I can take up to a d6 in a General Skill, but past that I have to buy a Specialization, but I only have to pay the difference (meaning if I want a d10 Specialization I'd need to spend 4 points on it). Let's see. I'd like:
That's 62. Cool, now Traits. I don't get any for free, so I have to take Complications if I want some Assets, which I do. Let's see!
Well, Combat Paralysis d4, that sounds good. I'll take Dead Broke d8, reflecting that Wade just kinda walked away from everything and he's got basically nothing to his name. Hunted, obviously, and whaddya know, "vampire with a grudge" is an example at d8. Straight & Narrow is an easy d4 because Wade doesn't like to break the law, and I'll take Memorable d2 (Wade is a large, muscular black man, and depending on the venue and the situation people will remember him). That gives me 26 points of Assets to pick.
OK, I'll take Brawler d4 (Wade can fight, he's just better in theory than practice). Devoted is perfect - Wade is Devoted to going home, but he's gotta take out this vampire first. Good-Natured, that's perfect, d6 (I've spent 16, so I've got 10 remaining).
Higher Education; he's got a Masters degree, after all. D4 oughta cover it. And then...Hmm. I want both Natural Athlete and Sensitive. I could take one at d4 and one at d2, I suppose, or I could just take one at d6.
Actually, you know, I'll ditch Brawler, take Natural Athlete instead (d4), and take Sensitive at d6, and that'll finish out my points. Derived traits put Initiative at d6 + d6, Life Points and Endurance Point at at 14 each, and Resistance at d6 + d6.
Wade, as I mentioned, is large (6'4"), very muscular, dark skinned. He didn't take much with him when he left, so he's got a duffel with a couple of changes of clothes and an extra pair of shoes, some cash (not much; he wasn't going to drain the bank account), a couple of notebooks (Wade is notoriously averse to tech and prefers to write longhand), and a book about vampires (perhaps Lust for Blood by Olga Hoyt). I think he'd be played by Winston Duke. I also think it'd be fun to have him stumble into a group of hunters going after something nasty and getting wrapped up in it, and I'd want the "season" to conclude with him finding that pale girl again, probably while "Sweet Jane" plays.
OK, actually, it's Adventure Conqueror King System, which is abbreviated ACKS and thus pronounced "axe." I guess I could also have with "Acks", as in the noises that these dudes make:
The Game:Adventurer Conqueror King System The Publisher:Autarch Degree of Familiarity: None Books Required: Just the one
I'm actually not sure why I own this game. Not because of the controversy surrounding its author (controversy, like talk, is cheap), but because it's really not my cup of tea. It's very much in the OSR mold, aka the "the games that came out in 1974 and are basically glorified war games are the only good ones", and that's totally not what I get into. But here we are.
Reading the book, it reminds me very much of early D&D, which I suppose is the point. A couple of knobs have been tweaked, and there's an emphasis on Law vs. Chaos in the alignment, rather than good vs. evil. Also an emphasis on becoming badass enough to become a warlord or a king or whatever, which I kind of like; some attention to the endgame of a campaign is nice. But anyway, let's do this.
First off, I roll 3d6 six times for my Attributes (I appreciate that the book doesn't tell me to conceptualize first). I get:
STR 15 INT 13 WIS 11 DEX 17 CON 8 (oof) CHA 9
Now I choose a class. Each class has a prime requisite Attribute, so obviously I want to play to my strengths and pick a class that relies on Strength or Dexterity. Shouldn't be hard. Ooh, elven nightblades have Dexterity as their prime. I like that, that sounds cool. Reading their write-up, they're basically assassins with some magic sprinkled on top; starting at 2nd level they can cast some spells. Doesn't help my 1st level ass, but that's fine. I get a few nifty abilities (I can spot hidden doors easily, bonus to initiative in the woods, that kind of thing), and I get a bunch of thief abilities (hide in shadows, climb walls, etc.).
Next I'm meant to note that I have zero XP, but there doesn't seem to be a slot on the sheet. Weird. Oh, wait, no, it's on the second page. That's fine.
Hit points: I roll a d6, add my CON bonus (which is -1, ugh), and that gives me...2 hit points. Holy shit, I'm probably not long for this world.
Attack throws and saving throws, that's easy, just copy them off the chart. And now, Proficiencies! Hey, I get to choose something! I Adventuring as a starting, um, adventurer, and then one from a class list and one from the general list. Now I gotta think about concept a little.
Well, nightblades are supposed to be subtle and stealthy, and my dude is going to fold like a sheet of crepe paper if anything hits him, so I better lean in to that. For my nightblade Proficiency, I'll take Weapon Finesse (letting me use my Dex bonus instead of Strength when attacking with a one-handed weapon). For the general one, I'll take Lip Reading (weird, I know, but the idea is to hide and spy on people, and then stab them, I guess).
I have (roll dice) 110 gold, so I guess I should buy some shit. Leather armor is 20, so that's fine. A hand axe is 4gp, a crossbow is 30, and a case with 20 bolts is 2, so that's 56 spent. I'd buy adventuring gear, too, but y'know I don't like shopping in games, so I think I'll call it there.
For alignment, I think I'll go with Lawful. Sure, an assassin and spy might seem obviously Chaotic, but I like a challenge. I think my nightblade recognizes that killing is inherently un-lawful, but in some cases, allowing someone to live leads to greater instances of chaos down the road. A controlled burn is better than a forest fire, that kind of thing.
Like most elves, he's tall, pointed ears, pale and somber. He's not as beautiful as most elves, but in his case that means he's just kind of bland-looking - still pretty, but not memorable. His eyes are violet, his hair is grey (but like, cobweb grey, not grey because of aging). He cleans his armor meticulously, and has shaved down his axe and crossbow so that they're perfectly balanced. His name is Luos Nobe Ebonsoul (yes, it's a palindrome, might as well go all-out).
