Slipstream: Armor Shirts and Dead Jellyfish

Yesterday was Slipstream, so once more into the space!

Last time, the characters left the fragment of Nivek, intent on heading to Avia by way of Gemopia. That's a long trip, though.

Iris steers the ship around the Slipstream, crossing over it only when she's nearer to Gemopia. They land and find the craftsman that Zeenia hired to make her bracers ("danger bling"), and Iris also hires him to make her a crystalline shirt, lightweight but strong enough to act as armor. He says he can do it, they'll just need to give him some time. 

The heroes decide that going straight through to Avia would be silly, since they fully expect to encounter violence there. Instead, they decide to head to Barter and see if they find some kind of smaller, terrestrial vehicle for fragment-side use. 

 

They land and go find someone selling vehicles. A pod would be perfect (small egg-shaped thingie that seats one and is powered by little rockets), but it's more slips than they have on hand. The salesman recommends they go see a fellow named Setep, who will lend them the money. Iris asks around and learns that while Setep will loan them the money, he'll also expect payment back with interest or bad things start happening. The characters decide they're not quite ready to visit a loan shark yet, so Zeenia grabs her fancy clothes and decides to try and sell them. 

They find a Hosbecite tailor and Zeenia tries to haggle with him, but he offers 75 slips and stands firm. After some conversation, though, he does offer them a job - if they'll transport some cargo to his home fragment of Hosbec, he'll pay them for their trouble. Hosbec, as it happens, is right near Avia, so the characters cheerfully agree. They go back and buy a pod, load it into their ship (and find that the tailor's cargo is there waiting), and take off. 

The problem is that now they're in the Graveyard, and that's difficult to fly through. Iris gets turned around and they wind up flying back near Barter. When she rights them and they keep heading deeper into the Graveyard, they find a derelict ship.

The ship is a Gyptosian merchant carrier, badly damaged and clearly inert. Iris at first advises avoiding it, but her heroic nature (and Oola's curiosity) get the better of her and the two of them head abord while Zeenia keeps their ship running. 

They discover that the merchant ship has been badly damaged, probably by asteroids. They find some corpses, but the escape pods have been launched, so clearly some folks got out. Oola goes and pokes around in the cargo hold...and then laser blast flies over her head! 

A Mechanical Man shoots at her. She activates her force field, and notes that Mech Men aren't supposed to be able to harm sapient beings (unless their program is tampered with). Iris somersaults into the room and blows a hole in the robot with her ray gun, and claims his laser rifle as her own. Oola confirms that, indeed, this robot's circuits have been rewired - probably by the folks who left this ship. They have a brief conversation about the ethics of stealing the cargo, but Oola points out that if it's in the Graveyard, it's fair game. They load up the cargo and starting heading out...

...but then another ship hoves into view, this one very much functional. Iris recognizes it as the pirate ship captained by Officer Ioptis, the criminal who attacked Lady Roara a long time ago. Oola notices that the ship has been given a darker finish and rechristened the Dead Jellyfish. Apparently, Optis took Zeenia beheading one of his crew personally.

Next time: Thrilling space battle!

Chill: No, Children, You Have to Dig!

Sometimes, you don't have to wake the dead.

Last time, the characters we going to visit Carla Lane, Willa's paternal grandmother, whom she had been told died years ago. Melinda stayed behind at the hospital to keep an eye on Hilary (Willa's mother), as her player was out yesterday. 

They roll up to her apartment complex with the request lemonade and carton of cigarettes, and head down the hall to her door. The place isn't exactly ratty, but it's clearly cheap, and smells of old cigarette smoke. That smell gets fresher and stronger when Carla opens her door to their knock. Carla is in her late 80s and moves slow, but is feisty and not above cracking off-color jokes at the characters. She gives Willa a hug and invites everyone in, and asks if they're all her long-lost grandchildren or just Willa?

Everyone introduces themselves and they chat (and try to endure the blue air from the smoke). Father Will looks around the room a bit and finds a shelf with AA chips - the most recent one indicates that Carla's been sober for 30 years. Willa, still dealing with the trauma of fighting her father's ghost, is a little off her interview game and asks Carla if she believes in ghosts. Carla notes that this is a more interesting conversation than she was expecting ("honestly I was expecting you to show up with a bunch of rugrats that I'd have to meet"), but says that she doesn't really know. She's never seen one, but as one gets close to dying it's hard to not have some opinion on the afterlife. Willa confirms that Carla has never had any reason to think that, say, her son Douglas has haunted her, and Father Will catches a flash of guilt in her eyes before she makes another joke to deflect.

Will asks about the chips, and notes that he's counseled recovering addicts before, and 30 years is impressive. Carla (after joking that the chips were there when she moved in) says that it's actually been longer; she got clean in her 50s, so it's been closer to 35 years. Will asks, casually, if she can share what her impetus was for taking that step, and she stammers a bit and says that it just got too expensive because she has good taste, but Will can see that she's not ready to talk about this, not in front of strangers.

The characters talk a little more and Willa tells her about Hilary and the attack on her last night, that she was beaten with a bottle. Carla asks if it was a bottle of Old Crow, but then notes that it couldn't have been her son Douglas, because he's dead ("He is dead, right?"). The envoys use this angle to press a little, and Carla admits that anything Douglas did to Hilary or Willa, he learned from her. She doesn't elaborate, but the envoys take her meaning.

Willa tells her that she should come back to the ranch with them for now, just to make sure she's safe. Think of it like a vacation. Carla packs a bag and everyone heads to the car, and then back to the ranch, where Darnell gets Carla squared away in one of the ranch's few smoking cabins with an oxygen tank on hand. 

Jordan and Blake, at this point, decide to head over to the hospital and check in on Hilary. They find that she's awake, but very drugged. She's able to tell them that she remembers dreaming about Douglas hitting her, except it wasn't Douglas entirely, it was also the "sweater man" (a kind of boogeyman from her youth). And then she woke up and he was still there, beating her with a bottle. Jordan finds this all pretty suspicious, and wards the room before heading out.

Meanwhile, Father Will gets a text from Detective Jackson, asking if the envoys have checked out Douglas' grave. He says he was at the cemetery on an unrelated matter and the grave looked disturbed, maybe. Will brings this to the attention of Willa and Beth Anne, and the three of them head out to the grave. 

Willa activates Eyes of the Dead as they approach, and sees her father's ghost standing on her grave. He sees them coming, and sinks into the ground. She walks up and stomps on the grave, calling him out for being a chicken. Father Will says a little prayer over the grave, and the temperature drops. Lightning dances across the sky and the rain starts to pour ("Could your dad control the weather?" "Um, I guess he can"). Beth Anne looks at the ground and feels that it does look disturbed, and Willa drops to her knees and starts digging. Father Will tries to talk them out of it, but Beth Anne goes to get shovels from the nearby caretaker's shed. Father Will calls Blake and explains all this, and Blake and Jordan rush over.

By the time they get there, Willa and Beth Anne have dug a pretty impressive hole. Jordan yells at them to stop, but Beth Anne says that she's tired of their past fucking with them. Jordan protests that this isn't even Douglas, but at that moment, Willa's shovel hits the coffin with a thunk. 

And then the coffin lid bursts up, and Douglas' corpse crawls out, lunging at them.

Board Game: Sub-Terra

So we're going down into a cave, eh? Making a descent, you might say? Eh? Eh?

The Game: Sub-Terra
The Publisher: Inside the Box Games
Time: An hour or so
Players: Me, Michelle, Megan, Travis

Game Play: A buddy of mine recommended this game to me, and it's hella hard to find - it's out of print and the only copy we found was in the UK (so shipping was a bear, but fortunately this was before shipping from overseas really got ridiculous). Anyway, it's quite obviously inspired by The Descent - you're a group of cavers who've gotten lost doing some spelunking, and now you need to find the exit before you fucking die. 

Travis choosing a doomed caver

The game itself plays a little like Betrayal at House on the Hill. The cave is made of tiles, which include some harmless hallways, some gas pockets, some places that cave in, some water tiles, and some horrors. Each round, every player gets to take a couple of actions. Single actions include moving, revealing a tile, or exploring (in which you reveal an immediately move onto a tile, which is fast but risky). There are various hazards that come up, and circumventing them is largely something that eats both actions. 

The punch-out phase of board gaming

Once everyone takes their actions, you move any horrors on the board and flip a hazard card, which "activates" various things in the cave. A horror card spawns horrors, flood cards flood water spaces, and so forth. Dealing with those hazards is largely a time sink as much as anything - swimming through a flooded tile eats both actions, f'rex. If you're on a tile when something bad happens, you generally take damage, but if you run out of health you're unconscious until someone can come heal you. 

Beginning of the expedition

Every caver has a role and a special ability, too. I played the Diver, who doesn't take damage if he's on a water tile when it floods and can move right through them, but can also submerge in a water tile and resurface in any other one, which is pretty dope. 

The exit tile is one of the last six in the stack, but you only have X rounds (depending on the number of players and your difficulty of play) until you are Out Of Time. When you hit that card, each player has to roll a d6 every round or get devoured by horrors. 

Our journey nearing its conclusion

Opinions: I quite like this game! Dungeon-building games like this are very much my jam anyway, and the game is a good blend of random chaos, strategy, and atmosphere. The artwork is nicely simple and the rules are easy to follow, and all of the weird contingencies we ran into were addressed in the book. 

Megan and I survived, but Travis and Michelle...well, that's them in the bone pit

Keep? Sure

Movie #642: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the ironically named fourth chapter in the series, and stars Kimberly Beck, Corey Feldman, Crispin Glover, E. Erich Anderson, Joan Freeman, Ted White, Barbara Howard, and Judie Aronson. 

You ever leave a sauce on the stove too long and it goes past "reduction" to "unpleasant paste?" That's kinda where we are in the Friday the 13th series. Here, we have a brand new group of meat teens heading towards Crystal Lake, more specifically a house they've rented(?) to party n' fuck in, which is nearby to the Jarvis family: divorced mom Tracy (Freeman), her teenage daughter Trish (Beck), and her 12-year-old son Tommy (Feldman). The teens are largely forgettable, except for Jimmy, and that's just because he's played by Crispin Glover and Glover's weirdness is on display. 

The kids have their party, they all die, Jason (Ted White, uncredited apparently because director Joseph Zito was such an amazing dick to his cast) kills Tracy offscreen, and we get the Final Girl Tango throughout the last few scenes. Tommy lives, too, and he's actually the one that "kills" Jason with a machete, after making himself up to look like young Jason in order to confuse him. Into the mix we get a dude called Rob (Anderson) who's the brother of Sandra (Marta Kober's character from Part II) and here to avenge his sister. He falls short, natch. 

The movies get more formulaic as they go, and you can tell, I think, that everyone involved with this movie just wanted Jason to be dead and this franchise to end...but it's the fourth in a series of ten-ish, so we're not near done yet. The decline is apparent in a few ways. I mentioned in the write-ups for the first and second installments that it's not obvious who the Final Girl is because the story takes its time and establishes the characters. Here, it's pretty obvious that Trish is our Final Girl (although there's a bit of a fake-out, as Sara (Howard) is explicitly a virgin, and horror movie lore says that should make her the Final Girl. She does bang her boyfriend (Peter Barton) in the shower, though, and gets killed shortly thereafter, so there's that). 

The body count rises quite a bit in this movie, the kills are more graphic and more elaborate, the nudity is plentiful and gratuitous, but the whole thing just feels weirdly by-the-numbers. And yeah, I know it's a Friday the 13th movie, and this was mid-80s when slasher movies were thick on the ground and starting to lose their footing, but all of that just makes it odd to me that the series not only continued after this but did so for so damn long. 

My Grade: D-
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

Character Creation: Fate of Cthulhu

Since it seems the world isn't quite done ending, let's do a character for a game about the end of the world.

The Game: Fate of Cthulhu
The Publisher: Evil Hat Productions
Degree of Familiarity: Never played this game, but it's Fate and I know that pretty well
Books Required: Just the one, though I have Fate Core handy if I need it

Unlike a lot of other Mythos-based games, Fate of Cthulhu is action-horror rather than "normal people going bananas in the face of the unknowable" horror. It involves characters traveling back in time in order to prevent a given Great Old One from rising, or at least make the future manageable rather than a complete wash. There's a lot of innovation in a game that frankly could have been pretty by the numbers, and it's one I'd definitely like to run at some point.

I have a rough idea for a character already. I want to play someone who died and then was raised from the dead with a ritual. With that in mind, let's start the chargen process!

First thing I do is determine my Personal Timeline. That is, is my character from the present or from the Great Old One laden future. The only difference mechanically is that time travelers have to start corrupted (that is, they have a corrupted Aspect), but since I want to play a resurrectee, he'd be corrupted either way. I shall play someone from the present, I think. Raised from the dead is weird enough without requiring time travel, too.

Next, I gotta do the ol' Aspect thing. High Concept needs to refer to my status as no-longer-dead, which means I need to think about who resurrected me and why. I think it's in-theme if he was chosen because of when, why, and how he died. Maybe bringing him back is meant to give a cult the eldritch information they're seeking, but he's not interested in giving that shit up. I'll say his High Concept is Resurrected Urban Explorer. It'd be fun to have a character who specializes in exploring abandoned buildings and such, and that'd be a good way to die. I'll give him a name before I get too much further, too - his name is Damon Lowe.

Right, Trouble Aspect. That's easy, The Cult Wants What I Know. If we were actually playing, I'd probably substitute an actual name for the cult, but that's fine.

I need a Relationship Aspect, but of course that would normally be tied to another PC, and I don't have one of those. I'll say that one of the cultists who took part in the ritual was a guerilla journalist infiltrating, and when it became obvious that Damon wasn't going to play ball with these creeps and they locked him in a cage to ponder how best to force him to talk, she sprung me and we hit the road. Her name is Mary Larock; everyone calls her Rocky. I'll say the Aspect is Rocky Saved My Ass. 

Now I get two free Aspects. At some point I need a corrupted Aspect, so let's do that. One of the examples is Re-Animated, but that assumes you were given Dr. West's formula and I don't like that. I actually want Damon to be too alive - he feels and perceives everything deeply. Corrupted Aspects give you minor superpowers in the fiction, so I'll say Damon doesn't get sick and heals minor wounds almost instantly, but those minor wounds bleed a ton as his body quickly compensates, and he's always hungry. I need a Corrupted stunt, too - let's say Damon can mark corruption to reduce a physical consequence in severity and clear his physical stress track. That seems like a lot, but marking corruption is nothing to sneeze at. Technically I also get a +2 to a Skill use (corrupted stunts are tougher than normal ones), so let's say he gets a +2 to Notice rolls when he activates this stunt as his already sharp senses get even sharper. The downside, of course, is that he bleeds like a stuck pig for a bit when he activates the stunt. The attached Aspect is Too Much Life. 

One final Aspect. I think it's clear that Damon is pretty counter-culture, so I'm gonna give him the Aspect Off the Grid. He doesn't have a driver's license or other such ID, and won't use a cell phone, which means he's hard to track but also, like, he doesn't have a cell phone. 

Skills! Standard for Fate core, one Great, two Good, three Fair, four Average. Noice. Well, I want my Great to be in Physique. I'll put my Goods in Athletics and Notice. I want a Fair in Lore (consisting of half-remembered truths from beyond death; probably take a stunt for that, too), and I'll put the other ones in Investigate and Stealth. I'll put my Averages in Burglary, Deceive, Fight, and Will. Groovy. 

Stunts! I get two, not counting my corrupted one (which I technically should have waited to do until the end, but whatever). The first one is easy: Because I was brought back from death, I get a +2 to Lore to Create an Advantage about death- or time travel-related subjects. 

Seems like I should take one related to my urban explorer status? How about this: Because I'm an experienced urban explorer, I get a +2 to Burglary to Overcome locks and obstacles in buildings at least 20 years old. 

Groovy. My Refresh is 3, unless I wish to reduce it, which I don't. I get three extra Physical stress boxes (woo!) and one more Mental (woo). Other than that, just finishing touch kind of thing.

Damon is in his mid-20s. He has spiky, dirty blonde hair, a bold nose, and he's clean shaven (he used to wear a goatee but now he gets nosebleeds too much and it's easier to clean his face when it's smooth). He favors windbreakers and athletic wear; he either buys from thrift stores or shoplifts. Damon died while exploring an old sanitarium - he fell (or was pushed?) from a fourth-story window. Next thing he knew, he was surrounded by weirdos chanting in a language he didn't (?) understand, and then they were demanding he lick their metaphorical boots for bringing him back from death. Specifically, they wanted to know about "the gate" and "he who knows the gate." Damon told them to get fucked, they locked him in a cage, and one of the cultists released him and they beat feet out of there.

Damon figured this was all going to be a fun story to tell on his buddy's urban exploration podcast, but well, it all got weirder very quickly. 

Movie #641: Friday the 13th Part III

Friday the 13th Part III is, much like the title suggests, the third Friday the 13th movie. It stars Dana Kimmell, Richard Brooker, Paul Kratka, Larry Zerner, Tracie Savage, Jeffery Rogers, Nick Savage, and David Wiley. 

We pick up directly after the events of Part II, with Jason (Brooker) popping into a local store for some quick clothes-and-murder, and a brand new final girl, Chris (Kimmell) heading out to her family's house on Crystal Lake. Chris, as it happens, had a run-in with Jason during the period between him supposedly drowning and his mom going on a killing spree, during which she was out in the woods, Jason found her, she blacked out, and she woke up in bed. This kind of thing is pretty uncharacteristic of Jason, of course, but who knows, his mom hadn't been decapitated in front of him yet. 

Anyway, we get our usual crew of horny misfits, including this installment's harbinger of doom, Abel (Wiley), who is literally carrying around a human eyeball, and this movie's prankster, Shelly (Zerner), who I guess we're supposed to see as a socially awkward nerd except he reads more like an incel jackass? In any case, Jason chops, stabs, and electrocutes his way through the group in glorious 1982 3D, even bringing in a trio of motorcycle punks led by Ali (Nic Savage) so we can get some murder going before anyone in the main group dies. 

Reading a bit on the history of this movie, it turns out that the filmmakers went all in on the 3D, focusing on the effects and not really giving a tinker's fuck about the performances, and it kinda shows. Not that these movies are ever masterclass in the thespian's arts, but everyone kind of stumbles over their lines and doesn't quite stick the landing on any particular scene. There's also a bit of uncomfortable dialog in the beginning about Debbie (Tracie Savage) being pregnant, which nowadays would probably make her a final girl or at least a survivor, but it's never mentioned again and she gets slaughtered just like everyone else. 

This movie introduces us to Jason's iconic hockey mask. Jason's still in the process of becoming a wholly inhuman immortal zombie thing rather than just a big dude who's hard to hill, but we're seeing more of it (like him crushing a dude's skull between his palms). The kills are more numerous and more elaborate, but virtually every one is just an excuse to have something fly out at the audience. I'm sure that was exciting in a theater in 1982, but in 2D on a TV it's just funny as hell. 

My Grade: D
Rewatch Value: Medium

The Final Predation

And today was our last session of Predation, as one of the players is movin' away. Alas! Here's last time.

The characters were at the site of a supposed bunker, and looking for the hatch. Tallahassee finds an electrical reading, possibly a door, and Dakota digs around with her pry-bar and finds it. They dig up the door, and Tallahassee uses one of the mystery chips. It opens with a hiss, and Tallahassee leaps down into it. Buffalo, feeling that this was probably unwise, follows, while Omaha and Dakota stay topside with the dinos. 

The lights in the bunker turn on, and Tallahassee looks around at the machinery. There's gear for hatching dino eggs, doing modifications, but also time travel equipment, which excites her. The time travel stuff doesn't work, unfortunately. 

Meanwhile, Buffalo finds a hatch leading out into the river, probably meant to be a viewer or a way to catch fish. He doesn't have time to ponder this before his backpack starts wiggling. The egg that he stole from his mother the SATI operative is hatching. 

Tallahassee quickly uses a cypher to repair the incubation equipment and they put the egg in it. Buffalo watches, face against the glass, as the baby dinosaur emerges - it looks a bit like a triceratops, at least as far as body shape. Tallahassee calls up to Omaha and she jumps down as well, and they all watch as the little dino pulls herself out of the egg and screeches. Buffalo takes it and feeds it, and Omaha activates a mental link with it...and realizes that this creature is a living time anomaly. Omaha rolls with the sudden sensation of being mentally connected to an infant that is, in turn, connected with the endlessness of time, and explains what she's feeling to the others. 

Tallahassee, of course, is fascinated, and activates her various sensors, advancing on the baby. Seeing this, the baby starts, and begins emitting pink and purple lightning...and then grows to about half a ton. Buffalo drops it (because obviously) and it stomps and screeches at Tallahassee; Buffalo recognizes this as the behavior of a threatened juvenile triceratops. They figure they need to get this dinosaur out of the bunker, if they can. 

Buffalo works with it and manages to convey what he wants it to do, and the dinosaur ages down again, back to a baby. The characters quickly take it out of the bunker and let it romp around in the grass (Kevin stalks it, but Buffalo notices and distracts him long enough for Tallahassee to move him away from the baby). Omaha starts calling the baby "Molly" (a play on "anomaly"), and then the SATI drones roll in.

Dakota shoots one down, and Sebie brings it back. They hear it saying "Buffalo...Buffalo...", and Buffalo realizes his mother is trying to contact him. He takes the drone's communication unit and walks away to talk to her. She tells him that the readings they've picked up indicate that the new dinosaur has hatched, and she needs it - it might be able to open up time travel again. Buffalo isn't interested in letting the baby be a lab rat, however, and refuses. His mother says that she is trying to protect him and the baby - SATI isn't interested in hurting the dino, but the Butterflies will and they're en route. She offers help, but isn't going to be able to get there for a half hour or so. Buffalo says that they'll just dig in and try to endure, and his mother agrees. She also tells him the scientific name of the new dinosaur: chronosaurus buffalo. 

Buffalo returns and informs everyone of what's happening. They're getting ready to move along down (or across) the river when an arrow with an electrical device flies into the clearing. Buffalo grabs the device and hurls it towards the river, noticing that it's making squeaky noises similar to hatchling dinosaurs...and a second after it hits the water a carnosuchus bursts up out of the water. Butterflies, too, start emerging from the trees, clearly intent on killing Molly. 

Dakota tries to wrestle the carno away, but miscalculates and gets bit. Klio has her back, though - the ankylosaur charges in and shell-checks the carno back into the water. Buffalo pulls Molly up onto Klio's shell, while Kevin leaps at one of the Butterflies, all teeth. The Butterfly, however, is apparently ready for this - he drops back and shoots Kevin. 

Betty, meanwhile, leans down and bites one of the Butterflies in half (she's sociable, but she's still a damn albertosaurus). Omaha draws her pistol and fires at a Butterfly, but the Butterflies close in and fire. Several of the characters and dinos are hit by laser fire. Buffalo, putting priority on getting Molly clear, slaps a cypher on Klio to make her run faster. She charges a group of Butterflies and scatters him with her shell, but then Molly jumps down and ages up to a juvenile again. She screeches at the Butterfly in front of her, but the Butterfly just yells "here it is! Kill it!" and hits her with a machete.

This, of course, does not sit well with any of the characters. Omaha runs over to patch Molly's wound. Betty snaps at the guy and misses, but this distracts long enough for Sebie to tackle him into the brush ("clever girl!"). Kevin and Tallahassee manage to take down the one they were fighting, and Dakota shoots a couple of them. Now only one is left. 

He tosses a grenade into the clearing with Molly, but Omaha is ready. She slap-shots it back at him with her staff, and it bounces behind him and detonates. Klio's shell gets a delightful new paint job ("ew"), but the threat is over. 

Buffalo patches up Molly while everyone else pulls themselves together, and just then a boat rolls up carrying a grizzled old man and a gorehound. "Hey, your mom sent me," says Galveston. "S'posed to take you downriver." Dakota, Tallahassee, and their dinosaurs get on the boat, while the bigger dinos and their people walk along the bank. Some distance away, they see SATI drones, and then guards, and finally Buffalo's mother.

She approaches and talks with Buffalo. Buffalo wants Molly to have a normal dinosaur life, but his mother points out that she can't, really, as she's the only one of her kind. She says that she needs tissue samples from Molly, and Tallahassee volunteers that she has a ton of data (which Buffalo's mom quickly accepts as useful). Omaha takes the samples and hands them over, and Buffalo's mother says that Buffalo can take Molly with him out into the wilds - she'll just need him to swing back every so often for more data collection. 

Tallahassee goes with SATI to work on the science of time travel, aided by the chronosaur's blood and readings. Dakota and Omaha head back to Omaha's lab (which Buffalo's mother says she'll be happy to reopen for them). And Buffalo, Klio, and Molly head back out into the wilds, with no intention of ever coming back.

 FIN

Movie #640: Friday the 13th Part 2

Friday the 13th Part 2 is exactly what it says on the tin, a sequel to Friday the 13th. It stars Amy Steel, John Furey, Steve Dash, Warrington Gillette, Kirsten Baker, Stuart Charno, Tom McBride, Marta Kober, Bill Randolph, Walt Gorney, and cameos from Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer. 

Alice Hardy (King), our Final Girl from the last movie, got to enjoy her survival for all of about two months before she gets an ice pick in her head. Five summers later, a new group of nubile young (mostly white) teens are heading out to a camp near Crystal Lake to attend...camp counselor school? Well, whatever their reasons, they swap stories of "Camp Blood" and the tragic death of little Jason Vorhees. The director, Paul (Furey) and his girlfriend Ginny (Steel) argue a bit over whether Jason might indeed still be alive, and if so, what his psychological makeup would be. 

Meanwhile, of course, Jason is romping around in the shadows knocking off horny teenagers and anyone else who happens by, including the Crazy Old Man who warns the teens that they're all doomed (Gorney) and a cop (Jack Marks) who finds Jason's love shack in the woods. 

Ginny and Paul return to camp after a night on the town to find the five folks they left behind slaughtered, and have a delightful battle with Jason (who is wearing a pillowcase on his head) before finding his shack and the severed head of his mother, her sweater, and the machete Alice used to decapitate her. Ginny chops him with the machete, she and Paul flee, but then we get the same fake-out type of ending from the first one where there's a vision of Jason popping out and grabbing her, cut to her being loaded into an ambulance. As such, we don't know what really happened to Paul.

The quality of the franchise hadn't yet taken the nosedive it would later (I think the next one is about where it starts to get really bad), and so this movie is a decent enough slasher film. I always enjoy comparing early slasher films to the ones made in the last 20 years or so - this movie had to make a bunch of cuts to get an R rating instead of an X, but I just watched The Collection the other day and that's a hell of a lot more intense and bloody than this. The camera tends to show us one shot of a kill and then immediately cut away, rather than linger on the victim dying - the most drawn-out murder we see is Mark (Tom McBride) because he rolls down a flight of stairs in his wheelchair. 

Part 2 does a couple of the same things right that the first one did. Jason knocks off a couple of minor characters early in the film so that we can see the main characters interact and get a sense of who they are. It doesn't focus on the Final Girl exclusively, and, as before, I wasn't immediately sure who said Final Girl was going to be (and incidentally, Ginny and Paul are clearly in a sexual relationship, so we're 0/2 on virgins being the survivors). Once again, the characters are mostly nice to each other and appropriately terrified when the knives start a-slashin'. 

It's interesting, too, to see a version of Jason that's not terrifyingly strong and impervious to harm. Ginny kicks him in the balls at one point and he recoils and doubles over with an audible "oof," which is just such a shift from Jason X where he sucks up gunfire like it's nothing. See, that's power creep, right there. 

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Friday the 13th Part 3 (guess what I got for my birthday?)

Character Creation: Slayers

A character? A CHARACTER, THEN!

The Game: Slayers
The Publisher: Gila RPGs
Degree of Familiarity: None, but it's not particularly complex
Books Required: Just the one

I picked this game up and read it because it's nominated for a bunch of Ennie awards, including Best Game and Product of the Year. And I like it! There's a bit of a mismatch between artwork and tone, I think, but that happens (lord knows I know). It's a game about being hired to hunt monsters in an ever-expanding fantasy city, which is cool (shades of Blades in the Dark, which is listed as an inspiration). From a design perspective, one of the things I like is that each of the four character types engages with the combat rules in a slightly different way. Very much planning on running this at some point and seeing how it all works. 

BUT ANYWAY gonna make me a character. Let's see, Blade, Gunslinger, Arcanist, or Tactician. If I were actually going to play this game I think I'd lean either toward Gunslinger (because they're cool) or Tactician (because of the way I approach combat in RPGs), although I'd look longingly at Arcanist, too. Mark of a good, Chupp-test-passing game, if you've got 4 character types and I'm split between three of them. 

I think I'll go with Gunslinger (prints out sheet). Ooh, lookit this, not only do the rules shift to better represent what you can do with this character type, but it's actually reflected on the sheet so you can visually engage in play. A round of applause here. 

So first I choose my class, cool, did that. Next I set one Skill as d10, two at d8, and the rest at d6. Okies, then. There's no "combat" skill because all the characters have their own combat systems, which I really like for two reasons. First, asymmetry in design is cool, and second, it means I don't have to sacrifice combat efficacy if I want my dude to be good at something else, too. 

For my d10 skill, then, I'll take...actually, let's do this backwards, and note the skills I don't want to be exceptional at (that is, the ones that are d6s).

Well, Brawn can be a d6, I don't need my Gunslinger to be a beefcake. Mend and Study, likewise, I don't see him as bookish. I keep picturing some version of Erron Black from Mortal Kombat, if I'm being honest, so sure, let's lean into that "dark outlaw" trope a little and say he won his revolver in a game of cards against a man who wore a hood low across his face. He never saw the guy directly, and all he knows is that a couple of Inquisitors showed up and asked him some very searching questions (as they do) the next night. 

Cool, so with that in mind, I think Deceive can be a d6, and as contrary to my usual playstyle as it is, I'll make Stealth a d6, too (guns are loud). That leaves Agile, Hunt, Negotiate, and Streets, one of which has to be a d6. I think I'll make it Hunt, and say that he's pretty new to being a Slayer. 

I'll stick my d8s in Negotiate and Agile, and that leaves my d10 in Streets. So that's cool, my gunman is connected as hell. I'll say that he was known as a gambler before winning that revolver, and he was going to trade it away, but somehow not carrying it just feels...wrong. 

Neat! Next up, I get two basic advances. Sadly I can't start with a Rune (which requires three), so I'll take Draw (my Speed is d8 rather than d6, so I have a better chance at going first) and Desperate (last bullet in the gun deals extra damage). 

My HP is 8, my Speed, as discussed, is d8, Trigger Limit is 4, and Damage (for most bullets) is 1. All I need now is a name and a description. 

Loshe Canna started dressing in black once he became a Slayer. It's not necessary, but it fits the style, and one thing Loshe knows from his time frequenting the gambling halls and pubs of The City is that people hire Slayers who have done successful hunts previously, or the Slayers that look and sound cool, and since he's not one, he'd better be the other. Loshe isn't much of a Slayer as far as the blood-n-guts end of things (he's not bad, but he's not exceptional yet), but what he is good at is bargaining for a good price and making sure that any collateral damage gets forgiven, and that's an advantage a lot of crews don't realize they need.

Loshe is lanky - maybe even gangly - but he hides it under a cloak and a hood. His hood shows his face, though, because he's not trying to be that mysterious. He's got blue eyes and dark hair that's just a bit patchy due to an illness he had as a kid, which is another good reason for the hood. He keeps his revolver in a custom holster under the cloak, but moves the holster around (hip, back, ankle, wrist, whatever), which has led to the rumor that he has multiple guns. 

And that's it! Cool game, this, have to give it a whirl at some point. 

Character Creation: The Green Knight

Weird game, this. 

The Game: The Green Knight
The Publisher: A24 Studios
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: It's a boxed set, but just the one

Movie tie-in RPGs aren't unknown, though never exactly common. Mostly it's an RPG company buying the license from the studio, which is how we got stuff like World of Indiana Jones, Ghost Dog RPG, and so forth. But I don't know of any that were produced ahead of a movie as a marketing kind of thing. 

Anyway, I would have expecting a 5e type thing, or, failing that, something that's more obviously a D&D clone. Instead, The Green Knight is pretty explicitly mirroring the themes and experience of the movie, which is cool and all, but the movie is fookin' weird. Like, in a good way, but The Green Knight (which I recommend) is a good reminder that a lot of Arthurian mythology is, like most other mythologies, just bananas. 

The included adventure has the character dealing with the titular Green Knight, but the resolution system really cooks down to whether you get Dishonor or not. As such, it's not really a combat simulator like D&D or similar games, but much closer in spirit to an indie game. I think that's cool, and although the mechanics seem somewhat simplistic, it would still be interested to see it at the table. And making a character is pretty darned quick, so here we go. 

First thing, I need to pick a character type. Noble, Bard, Knight, Sorcerer, Hunter. Well, I usually default to magic users in fantasy settings, and the glimpse we got of Merlin in the movie was pretty cool, so sure, let's do Sorcerer. 

So, first off, I choose two Abilities. I can pick Courage, Might, Intellect, Cunning, and Charm. I think I want Courage and Charm, just because that's maybe not the most obvious choice for a sorcerer. 

And then I get 4 Skills. Skills are attached to Abilities, but I don't think I have to take Skills from the Abilities I chose. I'll take Mysticism (obvs), Authority, Vigilance, and Trickery. 

Now I get a Virtue and Vice. I want his Vice to be Proud, that's easy. Virtue...hmm. I'll take Temperate. That'll play nicely into my ideas for why he's in the pickle he's in.

I get a Special Move; I want Banefire. I can throw a damn fireball. Awesome.

And now I have to answer the questions three, which isn't mentioned during chargen but is obviously pretty important. Said questions are:

1.  Where were you when you met the Green Knight? My sorcerer, Accolon, lived in a stone cottage outside of the castle (the castle of whatever lord or king is appropriate, hardly matters). He met the Green Knight one afternoon when he was deep in study, and the Knight came knocking. Accolon was annoyed; he takes his studies seriously. 
2. Why did you strike down the Green Knight? The Knight made his offer to Accolon (duel me, you win if you hit me, but come find me one year hence and I'll do the same to you). Accolon knew a sucker's bet when he heard one, but he was proud enough to think that he could beat the Knight at his own game. He ignored his usual even-tempered nature and flung a fireball at the knight's head, burning it to a cinder. And then the ashes swirled up and reformed, and Accolon knew he was screwed.
3. What did you do in the year between then and now? Accolon has studied every text and scripture he can, looking for the true nature of the Green Knight. He's found so many legends of beings that might be the Knight, but nothing conclusive, and nothing he can use. The best he can do is go to the green chapel and meet his destiny.

I figure Accolon is obviously an adult man, but his age is hard to pin down. He's not old, but he reads as older than he is. He wears grey robes and walks with a staff, but clearly doesn't need it to get around. He's proud of his knowledge of magic, and hates the irrational fear that it engenders in people. 

And that'll about do it!

Board Game: Chaosmos

IT'S MY BIRFDAY WE PLAY A GAME.

The Game: Chaosmos
The Publisher: Mirror Box Games
Time: Took about 120 minutes for our game, I suspect once with experienced players it'd be a little shorter
Players: Me, Michelle, Jenn

Game Play: The premise of the game is simple enough. The universe is coming to an end, and you're playing one of several different aliens who are hunting for the Ovoid, a MacGuffin that will allow whoever holds it at the end of said universe to wield ultimate power. 

Punchy punch punchy

 

The universe is composed of planets and stars (adoy), and you can move around to various planets and take control of them. Once you do, you get access to a little envelope with cards in it, and you can take cards into your hard, observing a strict hand limit of 7. One of the cards, somewhere, is the Ovoid. Every turn, the Chaos Clock ticks down (it started at 36 for us, but I think that depends on the number of players and the variants you're using). Once the clock hits zero, whoever is holding Ovoid wins. If no one is, no one wins. 

The aforementioned envelopes

Cards do various things; let you move faster, let you visit planets that are otherwise toxic to you, let you set traps on planets. They also allow for bonuses and defenses in combat, because you can (and should) attack other players. The combat system is pretty simple - you both roll two dice, and then add to the totals with cards until someone concedes, at which point the winner can banish the loser to a planet of their choice or take a card from their hand (say, the Ovoid). 

The universe!

Opinions: This game has a shitload of components and fiddly bits, but you don't actually use an undue number of them for the base game, so there's a lot of variant play and optional rules you can slot in. The base game works just fine; there's enough strategy to keep everyone guessing, and the time limit means that if you find the Ovoid early on (like Michelle did), you have to figure out what to do with it. Keep it in your hand and you're just one missed battle away from losing it, but tuck it away on a planet and you can't really keep hold of it. It's very much a game that rewards good memory and tactical thinking, which is fun because I like games like that. I'd be interested to use some of the different aliens and rules variants and see how that changes things. 

Tick, tick tick...

Keep? Yep.

Cairn: This Little Piggie

Cairn! Here's last time! 

The characters had originally talked about hunting down Ashfeather, the Dire daggerbeak, but as they talk about it, they're not really sure that's a great idea. Snootabur and Rumdiggle aren't crazy about the notion of hunting something down with violence in mind. Russelet, of course, is totally good with it and starts making arrows. Rummy notes that Russelet isn't really himself, and leads the group in a rousing rendition of "Yeet the Noodle." This helps to get Russelet back on his feet, Harmony-wise, and the Knights decide that maybe they need to figure out why Ashfeather went Dire. Rummy notes that when creatures go Dire, it tends to be because one impulse just gets out of control. So what was Ashfeather's?

Snootabur asks Russelet for a game of checkers (again, to help with Harmony), and Rumdiggle and Ratatosk go searching for evidence (Ratatosk is in a "state of grace", which lets him sense the Dire). They don't find Ashfeather, but they hear pained squealing. They find a young daggertusk (boar) pinned against some trees, being tormented by goblins. 

This, clearly, will not stand. Rumdiggle charges, drawing on the power of the ripper and growing larger. She scares away the goblins (who retreat into the tree). Ratatosk casts a spell to talk to the daggertusk, and learns that the goblins like to lure daggertusks, torment them, and then use them as mounts. Ratatosk warns the boar not to trust sudden fruit, and vows that the Knights will take care of this goblin problem. 

The other characters show up about now, and consider whether the goblins might be responsible for helping Ashfeather go Dire. One of the goblins bounces a pinecone off Rumdiggle's head, and she snarls at the tree and scatters them. Russelet fires an arrow and drops a goblin out of the tree, and Rumdiggle advances on him and sings her Daunting Song to scare him. Ratatosk scampers up a tree and chitters angrily at a goblin, while Snootabur fires an arrow and drops a pinecone on said goblin's head. Ratatosk bops him with his staff and the goblin falls, but catches himself with his dagger in the trunk. This, of course, leaves him exposed. Russelet flutters up to interrogate him.

After some questioning, the goblin reveals that Ashfeather loves to dive down at his prey and see creatures run from him. Snootabur asks if Ashfeather has killed any goblins, and the goblin says he has. He agrees to show the Knights where, if they let the goblins go unimpeded. 

He leads them to a clearing with three goblin corpses (goblins loot their dead, not bury them). One of them has been dead since last year, the other two are more recent. Having fulfilled his end of the bargain, he scampers off, and the Knights examine the bodies. Snoot notices that all of them have brutal talon wound on their bodies, and the most recent one has had some of the skin from his face torn away. Ashfeather's attacks are getting more brutal. 

The Knights decide that they should find Ashfeather and attempt to subdue him. Maybe he's wounded or something, and is perpetually angry. Russelet finds a method of tracking him (claw notches on the branches), but Ratatosk notes that he's about out of sleeping draught. The Knights decide to head home and rest, and pick up this hunt tomorrow night. 

Next time, we shall see how that works out.

Character Creation: Red Aegis

Another year older, another year gone (almost), another year closer to the grave. But what do we say to the Grim Reaper? Have a slice of cake. 

The Game: Red Aegis
The Publisher: Vorpal Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Weird game, this. It's meant to be played in a discrete number of sessions, and instead of everyone controlling a single character, you control a clan. Clans are collectively part of a tribe, and the game takes the tribe through prehistory on up to galactic colonization, with a timeline of omens that drives the action. Also the GM hat passes every session. 

Red Aegis is one of those games that, like Blood Red Sands, I would love to be able to play and I probably won't be able to, because it requires a different kind of engagement with the game and its mechanics than most of my players have. But I have higher hopes for this than Blood Red Sands, I think, just because tonally I think this is a little closer to something I could sell (though it certainly doesn't look any simpler from a mechanics standpoint). 

The other issue, of course, is that it looks like this game was Kickstarted in 2017 and hasn't been delivered, and the creators kind of ghosted? The file on DTRPG hasn't been updated since November 2016, so like, that's not a good look. Ah, well.

Actually, it reminds me of a legacy board game in a lot of ways, which is cool, because I like those. Anyway, creating a "character" isn't as important in Red Aegis, but it is still a thing - you create a "scion" of your clan. This also requires a clan and a tribe, that's not terribly hard. Let's see!

Yeah, first up, I need a tribe. There are a couple of example ones so I'm just gonna use one of them. Let's use the Itztama. That means my Affinities are Civic and Commercial, and my Bastion is Wimchanca, whatever the fuck that means. Moving on to clan. 

For clan, I need to choose a caste, which sets the attributes, although in the clan section it says to set attributes before choosing a caste, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Anyway, I think I want my clan to be of the courser caste - explorers and trailblazers and whatnot. That gives me an Affinity of Exploration and Mettle 6, Insight 8 and Guile 4. I think I shall call the clan Seeker Bird, after the flocks heading south every year (I would call it Clan Goose, but that's a little silly).

And moving on to scion! My attributes start equal to the caste ones and then get modified by some scion-specific things. Birthsign is first up, and I can roll for that, so I shall: 10, the Sky People. 

Next, let's do distinction, which also gives me a title. I roll a d10 and a d6 and get...Firm (huh-huh). Fortitude is half Mettle (3), Acumen is half Insight (4) and Cunning is half Guile (2). Cool.

And that's actually all but the shouting. We'll say that my scion's name is Hylas (the Firm). Hylas, as a member of the Seeker Bird clan, is an explorer and an adventurer, but what he's really known for is being able to outlast natural phenomena. Be it rainfall, blizzard, heat wave, Hylas always finds a way to survive it, and he won't let folks he's with retreat, either (this is likely to get him killed and/or make him a legend). 

That's really about it. The sheet has a bunch of blanks, but it's all stuff that would come up in play. 

Character Creation: Reign

I had meant to make more characters last week, since I didn't have a lot of demands on my time, and then I wound up playing Stranded Deep a lot instead. Ah, well. 

The Game: Reign
The Publisher: Schroedinger's Cat Press
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game, though I've played a little ORE
Books Required: Just the one

There's a second edition of this game, I discovered when I was googling around to find a website to link to, and I was initially bummed I didn't back it, but then I saw how late the Kickstarter is and I think maybe I dodged a bullet there. But whatever, on we go.

Reign is a fantasy game, but focuses on political movements and larger-scale stories as well as (or instead of) smaller-scale ones. It has a detailed setting and I haven't read all of it (because I was eager to get to the chargen bit), but the bits I did read kinda hooked me. I don't know that I'm in a particular hurry to run this game, but that's only because it's the kind of game that would benefit from having the players read the book, and we all know how likely that is. 

So anyway, there are two methods of chargen: Point-buy, or roll a bunch of dice and see what you get! I'm gonna do that because it's basically an abbreviated lifepath system and I love those. So I need 11 d10s, hang on.

I rolled: 2x5, 2x8, 2x9, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7. Three sets, not bad, though they're all pretty narrow. The height of the set shows the profession(s) my guy undertook, while the width shows how far he got. Put another way, 5s make me a sailor, 8s make me a soldier, and 9s make me (oh, snap!) a wizard, so I get:

Noice! And then I have five "Waste Dice," which I can use on charts to pick more stuff. Let's have a look!

Oh, cool. Some ideas starting to take shape. I'll use my five loose dice to choose these things:

OK, now I've gotta tie all this together. I'll put this on the character sheet first, though. 

Cool, so I think my character, let's call him Afarri, started off as a soldier, and became a squad leader. He led his squad in battle and became a fairly successful leader, but never wanted to advance beyond his station - he had nothing but contempt for "leaders" who didn't go into battle with their troops. Until, that is, he met her. 

The "her" in this case was an officer Telu. Telu was a strategist and leader, but also a cavalry rider and warrior in her own right. My guy fell hard and made his affections known, and Telu...shot him down. Badly drunk, Afarri ranted about his spurned affections to the wrong people, and wound up giving away intelligence that cost him his position and his men their lives. 

Afarri was sentenced to death, but as a warrior with some battefield cred he was allowed to become a gladiator (the expectation being that he would die there). He alternated between fights in the arena and living as a prisoner for years, and then finally entered into a battle royale that he had no real chance of winning. He managed to secure a solid position during the fight, however, and ended the battle by hurling his spear through the chests of the last two enemies as they circled each other looking for an opening. 

Under the rules of the arena, he was to be free, but under his sentence, he needed to die. The High Court decided to exile him instead, and he took work on a ship on the understanding that he was never to return to his home country. He got off the ship in a faraway land and operated as a sellsword or bodyguard briefly. And then, one winter, he found a wounded pup - a strange animal with night-black fur and odd blue eyes. Afarri nursed it back to health, often giving up meals so that the pup could eat. That spring, a sorcerer found Afarri, and informed him that the pup was the offspring of his familiar, the only survivor of the litter. The sorcerer took Afarri on as an apprentice, and he's slowly discovering his power as a magic-worker himself. 

Phew! Let's see, couple other choices to make. I get the first step in a Martial Path dedicated to Spear, Dodge, or Parry, but I don't actually see any based on Spear (nice going, guys). I'll take Iron Tortoise Technique, which is based on Parry. The first level makes parrying more effectively (gobble dice, etc). 

And then I need Passions. I get three, a mission, a duty, and a craving. Mission should be concrete and achievable, duties are more like ethical positions/principles, cravings are selfish desires. I think Afarri craves comfort more than anything - he's been in prison or fighting for his life for much of his time. I'll say his craving is "never pass up an opportunity to rest in comfort." Duty and mission are a little tougher. I kind of want him to have learned from his downfall, even if he learned the wrong lesson. I think his duty is "always guard secret knowledge with my life." "Secret knowledge" doesn't have to be the mysteries of sorcery (although, that too). Anything that someone tells him in confidence is secret knowledge. He's never getting drunk and spilling the beans again.

As for mission...hmm. The obvious thing would be to clear his name, but I don't think that's even possible. Ooh...what if his men didn't all die? Let's say three of them were sentenced to life in prison for standing up for him, and they're still there. "Free my comrades from prison" is a good mission, I think. 

And, finally, problems. I can take up to three, and this game uses the "you get XP when the problems are problems" method, which I like. I'll take Gruesome (Afarri's face is a mess of scars and old wounds) and Drunken Blackouts (he doesn't drink anymore...often). 

And that's really it! I could go into more detail about his sorcery, since there are paths and stuff, but I don't feel like parsing the rules and I like that his understanding of magic is, at this point, kind of basic. 

Afarri is tall, but he's lost a lot of his bulk to age and malnutrition. As mentioned, his face is scarred, burned, and sliced, and he's missing half his nose. He wears a hood most of the time so as not to upset people, but he's not above pulling it down and going "blearrgh!" to frighten rowdy children. His magic-dog companion sticks with him always, and is capable of looking pretty fierce when it needs to, but it's generally very friendly and likes to chase butterflies. He calls it "Nighter." 

Atlantis: Save the People

Brief session today, but potentially an impactful one! 

Our heroes were, if you recall, in the sunken city of Elapi, where they had been left with the menfolk after the crocodile-beast Apep had told the citizens that the heroes were there to help him eat their hearts. (Gibberish, I know.)

Akala, not wanting to let rumors fester, goes to talk with the men, and displaying an impressive master of their language, asks them to consider that they fought this creature, Thanos included. Also, why was it just telling them an evil plan? The men think this through, and Akala presses her advantage, telling them that they need to press for equality and let their voices be heard. The others chime and in agree with her, remarking, too, that there's a whole world up above Elapi, a world that these folks could be part of.

The men agree to go and talk to the priestesses, and they all head through the tunnels toward the temple. As they approach, Eithne senses magic and readies herself to counter a spell, but doesn't do anything rash. Akala shoves an elder man forward and he speaks to the priestesses, saying that he doesn't believe that sacrificing the men and boys to a crocodile-monster is in line with Oshún's will. One of the women yells out "remember Sauda!" (the high priestess killed last session), but Akala tells them that it was the monster that killed Sauda, and that creature is just exploiting the people here. Imani steps forward and puts her hand on the man's shoulder, and demand that the women listen to him.

Someone in the crowd agrees and Eithne feels the magic fade. The priestess agree to talk this over and invite one of the group to come along; Akala goes, as she has the best command of their language. The women aren't exactly universally on board with completely upending their society, but enough of them are realistic about the sacrifices and how well that's working (read: not) that they are willing to listen. Finally, it's decided that the characters will take two Elapians - one man, one woman - to the surface to see the "desert", and perhaps open up relations with the people there. 

Akala points out, though, that they really need to handle Apep first. One of the women mentions that it might be possible to repair the Vril pyramid and increase the city's defenses, but that would mean getting into said pyramid. The characters regroup and talk with a Triton named Enu, who tells them that while the Tritons of Elapi would be willing to help hunt down Apep, they're not really warriors. Eithne points out that what they really need is a way to trap the creature and prevent it from swimming off, since it's so much faster than they are. 

They also ask about the pyramid, and Enu shows them the rapid current in front of the pyramid - they call it the Lady's Wail. Anyone caught in it gets sucked out into the ocean, and no one's been brave enough to ride the current and see where it leads. Imani looks across to the pyramid, and spots a little nook where coral and seaweed have grown into the gaps between bricks. She suspects that this extra space means the bricks might move, meaning this may be where one could get ingress to the pyramid.

Thanos has some knowledge of Vril engineering (though largely theoretical), so they prepare to cross the Lady's Wail and try to make their way into the pyramid. Next time, we'll see how well that works.

Character Creation: Goblinville

Wooo! Wild bachelor week! Time to...make a character. 

The Game: Goblinville
The Publisher: Narrative Dynamics
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Dungeon crawly kinds of games aren't traditionally my jam, but I'm starting to reexamine that. I actually really like RPGs that proceed in an incremented, almost formulaic or mission-based fashion, and I love it when RPGs have distinct phases, be they as regimented as Blades in the Dark's downtime/score divide, or as simple as Cairn having a Winter phase every year. A dungeon crawl game that arranges itself this way would be very much my jam, and Goblinville kinda scratches that itch. 

In Goblinville, you play as goblins (doy) who are out trying to explore and make money and generally improve the lives of all goblinity. Rather than being the disposable serving-sized characters of Kobolds Ate My Baby (and, to a lesser extent, No Country for Old Kobolds), the goblins here are clever and capable, and if you can think your way around a problem there's no need for a roll. Actions are dependent on positioning and approach, and a lot of the game reminds me, in a very positive way, of Blades in the Dark. So let's make a goblin! 

(Also lots of random tables in chargen, which I always enjoy. Gotta get me dice.)

Right, so, it's an 18-step process, but the steps are pretty simple. Step one is to choose a job, so I'm gonna roll for it. A roll of 19 gets me "sawbones." Awesome, I'm a professional wrestler doctor! I get a bonesaw, which I shall put in my pack. 

Step two is age. I'll roll for that, too. I get green-ear, which is a young goblin. Cool, I'm just out of goblin med school (or, more likely, out of an apprenticeship). 

Step three is a distinctive item of clothing. I'll choose this one, because "bloody apron" is an option, and that's pretty much perfect. 

Step four is to name my boss and explain what happened to them. My boss was named Grizzle, and he (rolls die) died. I figure he was an old sawbones, and eventually died of some illness he caught from a patient, as all sawbones do. 

Step five gives me a personal experience from my job, and sure, let's stay random. "Motivating loss." OK, then. We'll say that the first patient he "operated" on (that is, whose leg he amputated) died of blood loss and shock because he didn't apply the right poultice. Grizzle told him that this is normal, and told him the ugly secret of being a sawbones - you're gonna lose more goblins than you save. 

Step six, I get to pick two traits. One's based on appearance, one's based on personality. I'll say he's lanky and fidgety. 

Step seven is my name. I'll say his name is Feesh. 

The next several steps would normally involve other players, but y'know, just me, so I'll be making some decisions that I normally wouldn't. Step eight, f'rex, would be me telling Feesh's story to the other players and them getting to come up with a title for me based on that story. I'll say that my title, based on Feesh's history thus far, is The Bloodletter. 

Step nine is forging relationships between characters, so that one I'll skip. 

Step ten is another one that the other players would give me, this time based on how their characters see mine (it's called an "esteem trait", and it's basically "why we trust you enough to adventure with you"). Well, Feesh is determined to end his career with more wins than losses as far as saving lives go, so he's very driven to keep his fellow goblins alive. I'll call that trait tenacious, I think.

Step eleven is about Feesh's outlook, how he sees the world, why he goes adventuring. I think that mostly he's an adventurer because it puts him in situations where can save lives, and also he gets bored easily if he stays still too long. Win-win.

Step twelve is "ask the GM what's going on," but I ain't got one of them, so on we go.

Step thirteen is a Perfect Circle album...no, that's Thirteenth Step. Anyway, it's really write a goal for this session. I don't really need this, but I'll say "save a goblin's life", because why not.

Step fourteen! Back to rolling, this time for a weapon. Rusty knife. Sounds great.

Step fifteen is gear, I get 2 torches, 2 rations, and a grog skin. Easy-peasy. 

Step sixteen is more gear, but I choose or roll for one more thing. Ooh, I'll take useful herbs. 

Step seventeen would be to pick a spell if I know one, but I don't, and step eighteen is basically "start playing," so that's it!

Feesh is a mottled green-brown goblin, very much colored like a frog (though his skin is dry and leathery, not wet and slimy). He's skinny and has long arms and long fingers, though is forearms are surprisingly strong (gotta be strong to saw through bone!). He has patchy black hair and intense black eyes, and he tends to fidget by tapping his fingers, cleaning his knife (it never helps), and reciting little mnemonics he's made up for medical procedures. 

And that's it!