Gotta love RPGs that don't top 20 pages. Makes this project a little easier.
The Game:Outré Realms: A Roleplaying Game of Weird Adventure The Publisher:Mystic Beard Games Degree of Familiarity: None, but there ain't much to it Books Required: Just the one
You know, I've been in this hobby for a long time, and although my first RPG was TSR's Marvel Superheroes, not D&D, I'm well familiar with the early editions of "the most popular RPG." I actually kind of "rediscovered" 1st Ed D&D (that is, I discovered I had the books in my room) in the late 80s, and I remember reading them, designing dungeons, and listening to Scarlet & Black while I did it. The idea of designing a dungeon, and having the kind of formulaic feel to doing so, appealed to me and the way I design scenarios - I'm happy to improvise but I like to know what I'm changing things from. (This is probably why I gravitate to investigative games, but I digress.)
All of this to say: I understand having a fascination for old expressions of a game. What I don't understand is the fetishization of "old school" gaming, in terms of game philosophy and emulation. Is it is a cousin of other kinds of philosophical conservatism? Fear of aging? Stubborn, dogged insistence that "it was good enough for us, gol' dangit?" I have no idea.
(And please note: This is not me saying "I don't get it" to mean "this is bad." I'm saying "I don't get it" because I don't get it, mostly because I'm up earlier than usual today, the dogs are snoozing, and I don't feel like playing video games so I'm gonna ramble before I make a character. If this game is your jam, fuckin' jam on it.)
Anyway, Outré Realms, in addition to having an accent mark, is, well, this:
And I don't really get it. But whatever, let's make a character. (Oh, and there's no sheet, grumble grumble.)
So! I am first asked to visualize a concept for my character. You know, I like playing spellcasters, and it's been a while since I've made one, so I shall lean in that direction. I don't know how magic works in this game specifically, so probably I should look at that. Just a mo.
OK, wow. Magic isn't based on a huge spell list (didn't figure it would be, since the game is only 13 pages) or on memorizing spells (yay!) but on a much more freeform thing - your difficulty, as it were, depends on how impressive and permanent you want the effect to be. I can roll with that. So I think I want my sorcerer character to be interested in the intersection of magic and faith - a wizard who also takes worship and intercession from the gods seriously. Maybe he was studying to be a cleric and something took him down a different path. I hate to be cliché, but maybe he realized that while faith is one thing (and in a fantasy world where gods exist it actually makes sense!), religion and temples are an institution, and not really what he was looking for.
Why sorcery, though? I'll noodle that. On we go.
Second step is race, but it doesn't have a mechanical effect. I think I want this guy to be human. I could work in his central conflict to any race, of course, but I think human is fine.
Next is stats. Our four stats are Fighter, Intercessor, Sorcerer, Thief (FIST!). I put a 4 in one stat, 2 in two others, and 1 in one.
Well, I think Sorcerer pretty obviously gets the 4. I'll put 2s in Intercessor and Fighter, and then 1 in Thief. (I wish I could switch 2/2/1 to 3/1/1, but whatevs.) Because I'm a gangsta havin' fun a sorcerer, I get to have a trivial and moderate magical effect I know how to produce. So, wait, I do have to worry about spells? Hang on, better reread this.
OK, weird. I get a number of sorcery effects per day equal to my Sorcerer stat, but it doesn't say anything about defining what the effects are. Well, assuming that the effects I "know" are just things I've practiced, I'll say my character's trivial effect is to summon a small object within sight and weighing a pound or two to his hand (so, "mage hand," but even weaker), and his moderate effect is call up a bright light that stays behind him and his companions, hindering anyone looking at them (and making them look cool and backlit).
Derived traits! Blows & Setbacks. Blows is Fighter x 2 (4), and Setbacks is Intercessor x 2 (also 4). Easy enough.
One weird trick! I like this, and I humbly submit that early D&D would have benefited greatly from this kind of narrative freedom. This is just one cool thing my guy can do. I want to tie it into the whole Intercessor vs. Sorcerer thing, but not mimic the Intercessor abilities. So let's say my guy can hear divine messengers talking - they're all over the place and most of the time they just go about their angelic/demonic/shamanic business unnoticed, but my guy can hear them if he concentrates. They don't necessarily talk to him, but it's still a pretty good way to size up what's happening on a mystical level.
Finally, need a name and a description and suchlike. My guy's name is Ynthim. He's handsome in a dad kind of way (rugged beard, somewhat thick bod). He's got a measured way of speaking and he tends to take weird pauses in the middle of sentences, usually because he just heard a spirit say something and he's trying to listen. Most people think he's an Intercessor upon meeting him; he believes faith and one's relationship with the gods is an interesting discussion and talking about sorcery is about as interesting to most people as talking about math.
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride is actually an episode of Sherlock, the TV show, but qualifies for this project due to a technicality - it got a limited release in theaters. It starts Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves, Andrew Scott, Mark Gatiss, Natasha O'Keeffe, and Una Stubbs.
The TV show Sherlock is set in modern times, but here we roll back to the 1890s and meet Sherlock Holmes (Cumberbatch) and his trusty sidekick Watson (Freeman), who are famous celebrity crimestoppers (like Scooby-Doo or Speed Buggy). Watson has begun publishing their exploits, with the result that what the public expects them to be and what they actually are has begun to bleed together. But in any case, Inspector LeStrade (Graves) comes to them with a bizarre case: One Mrs. Ricoletti (O'Keeffe) went nuts, shot up the street from her balcony, then blew the back of her head off. But then, some hours later, she appeared out of a carriage and shot her husband (Gerald Kyd), only to reappear in the morgue later. Months go by and other men turn up shot by the "abominable bride", but it's not until Lady Carmichael (Catherine McCormack) comes to him for help in saving the life of her rather dickish husband (Tim McInnerny, who I absolutely did not recognize at first).
Anyway, the story of the Bride by itself would have been a perfectly interesting mystery, but it turns out that this whole thing is a "mind palace" that modern-day Sherlock has constructed in order to solve the century-old Ricoletti case. It apparently bears some resemblance to a modern-day case, but since I haven't watched Sherlock I was kind of unclear on what was really going on. There's some interesting dallying with the idea that modern-day Sherlock is a fantasy or dream of Victorian Sherlock, and Watson, at one point, realizes that he's in a fantasy when Sherlock is at the mercy of Moriarty (Scott).
All in all, though, I slot this firmly with Fire Walk With Me or Serenity - if you don't know the show, you don't really get the movie. This is more accessible than those two (hell, a movie filmed in Basque with Martian subtitles would be more accessible than Fire Walk With Me), but it still comes up unsatisfying without that context.
Well, it's been almost three months, but we finally got back together to play Atlantis. Here's last time.
Our heroes, having liberated a quarry full of slaves, take a breather. Eithne, Imani, and Thanos are all injured, and decide that taking some time to mend is wise. Eithne also feels the need to drink blood, and figures she can maybe solve the problem with magic. She conjures up a cauldron of blood and digs in, and that seems to satisfy the urge.
Akala, meanwhile, talks with some of the folks at the quarry and learns that they've heard rumors of other slave revolts in various other places around Khem. Thanos spends the time drawing a huge rune-circle in the sand, and summoning up a kongamato.
The next day, the heroes wake up and Eithne is ravenous. She creates more blood and drinks it, and the heroes help the workers build some fortifications. At some point their former masters are probably going to try and retake this quarry, and it'd be helpful if the spot was a little more defensible.
Towards the end of the day, Eithne is once again feeling hungry. Imani goes out and hunts down a dan ida hwedo, a big ol' lizard creature, so that Eithne can see if she needs living blood (as Thanos theorizes; she can create something chemically identical to blood, but it doesn't have the spiritual or magical essence she needs). Eithne eventually works up the courage to cut the lizard and drink its blood, and it tastes good, but it isn't nourishing. The workers roast it and eat it, though, so it doesn't go to waste.
The next morning, Eithne has gone quite pale and sallow. She's weak, and unable to focus. Nonetheless, Eithne rejoins the others and they start heading east towards Haru-Seti, where Thanos and Akala figure there are plenty of people that Eithne can feed upon without a problem.
As they're traveling, they come upon a group of people riding dan ida hwedo on a rise ahead of them. The men call to them in a dialect of Khem that Akala recognizes, but doesn't speak fluently - it's a dialect mainly used by the nomadic tribes living in and around Khem. Before there's much time to talk, though, the nomads attack, hurling spears down at the characters!
Akala takes to the sky to get a better look, while Eithne summons up a barrier made of sand to deflect the spears. Imani steps forward and asks to parley, and the nomads cautiously agree. An old man and a young warrior descend to talk to Imani (and Akala, who lands with her) and after talking a moment they realize who exactly these people are. It was a misunderstanding - they saw a Jinn traveling with Andamen and thought it was the same Jinn that raised the barrier around Khem. Akala perks up - these folks apparently know something about the barrier! Thanos, too, is interested in these folks, because he wants to master riding the lizards, too.
The heroes spend the night with the tribe, apart from Eithne, who sits apart from the group with her head between her knees. No two ways about it, she's starving. Imani finally has had enough and tells Eithne to drink her blood - she's
got plenty to spare. Eithne agrees, desperate, and discovers that Imani
is delicious. Sated, but worried at the implications here, she walks back to the tribe and her companions.
Thanos asks how one goes about training a dan ida hwedo, and the tribesmen tell him that you can adopt a lone male that hasn't found a herd, or adopt a whole herd, but that's pretty much it. Or, you can buy already trained ones. Thanos perks up at this, and Imani and Eithne (as the characters with money) haggle with the tribe and purchase four of the big lizards, along with saddles and tack.
Akala sits with the elders and asks about the barrier and the Jinn, and learns that a Jinn came to slave camps in the form of a rainstorm, and then called down lightning to free the slaves. But at some point, the Jinn changed from freeing slaves to keeping the borders closed - indeed, anyone who tries to force their way past the barrier is torn to pieces by cipher scarabs and taken away to be a slave. The heroes have no idea how this happened, but Eithne knows of a Jinn sorcerer who favors storm magic and changes himself into a rainstorm - her husband/uncle, Nizar.
Faced with that fact and the ongoing issue of how to fix Eithne sanguinary diet, Akala meditates and calls on the god Orunmila for answers.
Orunmila speaks with her, and tells her that the egg of the Impundulu, the Lightning Bird, can cure Eithne. These creatures nest in the mountains east of the great river, and are dangerous, having been sent to plague mankind from an angry god (Orunmila doesn't mention which one, but Akala doesn't ask). Akala asks about Nizar, and learns that Nizar is the barrier. She asks who made that happen, and Orunmila says that Nizar bears some responsibility, but beyond that, the one most directly responsible is a Netherman named Otieno.
Akala remembers that name. Otieno was a slaver that the characters met in Joktan. She isn't sure how he figures in, but this just got worse. The heroes decide to head east, traveling across the river between Haru-Seti and Acheron, and try to find one of these Lightning Birds' nests so that they might cure Eithne before continuing on their quest to free Khem.
We join our characters on a typical Monday, when the new assignments on the Hub chore wheel have been doled out and everyone’s trying to get their stuff done and out of the way. River and Oscar are getting rid of trash and starting the weekly cleaning rounds, and Bonesey and Edison are handling maintenance – time to wash the solar panels so they don’t stop working. They’re just getting started with their chores when the Station Boss, Molly, rings the bell and calls them all in. The other team has been out at the gate into SE Eugene since dawn, as they’re defending against waves of super basic Alpha zombies and they need a break. The team grabs their stuff in an Edgar-Wright-worthy montage, ending with Oscar slowly picking up his Garden Weasel and trudging after them, inasmuch as a ghost can trudge.
Along the road to the wall, they notice signs of zombies having passed toward their destination. They arrive to find Miranda completely over this, Todd ready for breakfast, and Rory ready to keep going if given the slightest opportunity. The team sends the others home, much to Rory’s quiet dismay, and before long, a wave of zombies comes along. Bonesey pummels one to pieces, just tanking his way through the blows with little more than a scratch. Edison racks his shotgun (ejecting the cartridge already in there, which Oscar retrieves and hands over again, shaking his head) and takes down two of them. River effectively downs one after the other with her spiked bat, and Oscar manages to take out two with one blow of his trusty Garden Weasel! Edison puts his shotgun through Oscar and shoots the last one facing his ghost friend, a move that is effective and that looks super cool but everyone involved regrets once ectoplasm is involved. In a few moments, the minor horde is down and out and leaving little more than a mess of zombie bits behind them.
It’s not long before they settle on Resthaven Memorial Park as the most likely cemetery in the area to host a necromancer – it’s the closest, it’s been used the most recently, and the trail seems to lead in that direction. It used to be a really nice place with a lot of landscaping, but it’s become this sort of overgrown garden gone to weeds and seeds throughout most of it. There’s still a little corner that’s kept up by some local families as a place to bury their loved ones’ ashes, but mostly it’s been left to grow wild.
There’s not that many structures at Resthaven – in the middle of the cemetery is the only building, which has a viewing area, restrooms, a business office, and a small chapel. Trying to find a place a necromancer might hide, they approach the building and ponder the best way in. River and Oscar are studying the building (with Oscar being quietly dismayed by the lack of plant care and gardening going on) while Bonesey and Edison realize that three groups of three zombies each are coming out of the underbrush (and the one behind them has a zombie dog, which is distinctly NOT NORMAL). Unlike most zombies, these groups are coordinated and targeting Bonesey, evidently focused on his lich energies. They’re still just alphas, though, and the group takes them down in short order.
Once that’s done, and River has pointed out the weirdness about these groups, Oscar sticks his head inside to see if there’s anyone around. He goes through and lets them in once he realizes the coast is clear. They all look around and Oscar, again sticking his head through a door, realizes that the chapel has been converted to a lab/office and there’s someone in there. Edison takes lead and knocks, and unexpectedly is answered in a relatively polite way. Turns out the person in the office is one Prof. Randy King, who’s been sending his zombies to break down the gate in hopes of “talking” to an administrator (Andrea Martin) at the University of Oregon, inside the walls. King is angry because Martin denied his application for a position in the Necromancy department, and like liches often do, he’s become obsessed with proving her wrong, a goal that’s been extended to “kill her, take any spells in the office/lab, and burn down the University” as part of his onboarding for his inevitably chairship at Republic of Davis.
Edison and River try to talk him down, but Randy is having none of it and in fact just grows more strident. He tries to talk them into either a) assisting him to get in or b) ignoring the problem, but has no luck, as evidenced by Edison sneakily letting him have it with the shotgun. Oscar phases through Randy and slimes him, Bonesey beats on him, River swings on him, and all of them manage to bring him down, but not before he lets loose with a magical scream that feels like being spiritually sandblasted. Oscar finishes him off with a well-placed blow from the Garden Weasel, leaving Randy to fall to dust. The team is happy before River reminds them that liches collapse into bones when you kill them, not dissolve into dust, and everyone feels uneasy about this unexpected turn. They go into the chapel and search through the stuff, like you do, before returning to base to file their reports and get back to doing their chores.
Last time, our fuzzy heroes were headed out to the village of Ellendonk, to look into allegations from Heinrich Doberman that rogue cats were attacking supply lines from his iron mines. They got attacked by a bunch of giant worms and then discovered that Graff Doberman, Heinrich's son, was following them and was suspicious of his father's activities.
And now with Graff in tow, the characters set out. Boomer sings a rousing traveling song to keep their spirits up, and before they know it, it's time to camp again. As they're sitting around the fire, a dog emerges from the woods and comes and sits silently by their fire.
Gelert notes that this knight's armor and decoration is years out of date, and Dire notes that the dog is dressed for war, not for wilderness travel. Both of them notice that he's slightly translucent - perhaps a ghost? Petunia offers the knight a squirrel-biscuit sandwich (or a "s'quorre", if you like), and the knight "eats" it (the food doesn't actually go anywhere, but he goes through the motions). Having finished, the knight nods to Petunia and vanishes. Dire, never wanting to let food or an opportunity to be somewhat inappropriate go to waste, picks up the food and eats it. He discovers it has lost its flavor, and finds that more than a little disquieting. Peppa points out that ghosts are often just echoes of a departed dog, and are only dangerous if something angers them.
The characters sleep, and then hit the road once again. As twilight falls, they smell cooking food and beer, and over the next rise, happen upon an inn called the Hydrant. Dire and Boomer race each other to get to the door (Boomer wins), and they enter. The bartender, Alex Golden, tells them that they need to leave their weapons in the cloakroom, and they oblige. The others arrive and they take a table, and the waitress asks if they'll be having dinner and rooms? They confirm that they will, and Graff tosses a pouch of plastic to her. She brings them bowls of stew and mugs of beer, and they relax and enjoy civilization for an evening. A group of dogs at the next table are throwing dice and betting, and Dire perks up and moves to join (the others recognize a hustle when they see one).
Dire loses the first pass, and notices that the dogs are cheating. He calls them on it and tries to look intimidating, but as he growls he lets out a big burp and everyone laughs. He stomps back to the table with his companions and sulks, and then leans over to Boomer and asks if he's up for a little mayhem later.
The characters go to bed, and Dire and Boomer creep out and set up a little ambush. The cheater-dogs are walking along a path, and Dire jumps out and confronts them. He demands his plastic back, and they point out that he's outnumbered. Dire smirks, steps forward, and whacks one in the head with a stick. Boomer, meanwhile, jumps out of the brush and knocks two of their heads together. One tries to punch Dire, but doesn't manage to do much, so all four of them run for it.
Dire, however, isn't willing to let them get away with it. He runs after them and knocks one down with his stick. The dog, seeing that his companions are still fleeing, gives Dire what plastic he has and pisses off. Boomer and Dire head back to the inn and get some sleep, and in the morning the party heads out again.
The rest of the journey to Ellendonk goes pretty uneventfully, and in a couple of days they find themselves passing the farms on the outskirts of the town. Petunia realizes something is wrong right away - she knows the families that live here, but these farms look abandoned. The fields are fallow and the houses empty, as though the inhabitants packed up and left years ago. Petunia is distraught, obviously, and the group heads into town, only to find more of the same. The blacksmith, the Cider Tap Inn, all empty and left for the elements. The general store is in better shape, but still empty.
Dire looks around and realizes that there was a fight here; looks like someone or something was thrown through the door into the street. Petunia and Dire go upstairs and look around the living quarters, and find that the bed is stained with blood. Dire guesses that someone was murdered here, and Petunia finds a diary in an old chest. The diary belonged to Elijah Dane, the owner of the store, and describes his life in Ellendonk (including the day that Petunia left to go to Pugmire - they were so proud!). Two years ago, though, mercenaries in service to House Doberman came to town and tried to force everyone out. Elijah and his store-hand, Ralph Pibble, threw them out of the store. A postscript in a different hand (probably Ralph's) says that Elijah was murdered in his bed that night, and after that, no one resisted.
The characters search the other buildings. Homes are empty, and the streets are eerily still. In the old schoolhouse, they find evidence that the townsfolk made a stand, but the doors were bashed in (fortunately, there's no sign of blood, so hopefully it ended without violence). Petunia finds a note in her old teacher's desk naming Heinrich Doberman as the cause of all this, and imploring any good dogs of Pugmire to make sure he doesn't get away with it.
Peppa, Boomer, and Gelert go to the church. As they enter, they see someone dart out the collapsed wall. Peppa calls after the shadowy figure, saying that they mean no harm, but it doesn't stop. Boomer gives chase and sees it dart into a storehouse, and then into a trap door in the floor.
All of the dogs regroup, and Dire, never one to wait or show caution, drops down the trap door and charges down a tunnel. He sets off a trap - a spiked grate swings down and punctures his flesh, but he escapes without serious injury. The others manage to keep him from continuing, and they take the tunnel slowly.
It comes to a fork, so Dire, Peppa, and Gelert go one way while Boomer, Graff, and Petunia go the other. The first group enters a chamber with a stone staircase in the corner, but as he walks across the room, Dire trips another trap and nearly falls into a pit. Fortunately he grabs the edge and Gelert pulls him up. The three of them head down the stairs, but they dead end into a stone wall, which doesn't seem to have a switch or a secret door. Dejected, they head back up the stairs and search the chamber, and discover that the wall is covered with burlap. They move the camouflage and discover a small tunnel leading back.
At the end of the tunnel, they find a secret chamber. Two badgers stand guard in front of a small group of skinny, half-starved cats. The badgers brandish weapons, but Dire raises his hands and offers them rations. Peppa and Gelert arrive the female badger tells them that they won't submit to Doberman's thugs, ever, but the characters quickly disavow any suggestion that they're here enforcing the Duke's will.
The badger says that she wants to believe them, but that there's too much at stake. She does tell them, though, that at the bottom of a nearby staircase there's a room containing a relic of Man - and a demon. They walled up the entrance to keep the demon at bay, but if the characters can kill it and retrieve the relic, that would prove their intentions. The characters agree, and fall back to find the others.
The others, meanwhile, have followed their tunnel around to a chamber with some old bedrolls and a cookstove. Searching the room, Boomer finds that a section of wall is actually a big rock. He pushes it out of the way and finds a passage leading to a storeroom with non-perishable food and traveling gear, as well as a long tunnel leading to an ornate door with no handle or keyhole. The dogs try, but can't figure out how to open it. They decide to fall back and find the others.
The six dogs meet up and share what they've learned, and they descend the staircase and open the wall using the secret that the badger explained. They descend further, and find themselves in a huge natural chamber with tunnels leading off in several directions, and huge, acidic pockmarks on the walls. An altar in the middle of the room holds a book that smells of magic, but as the characters approach it, a horrible buzzing sound fills the air. Huge black flies emerge from the walls and attack, stinging at the characters and lapping their blood. They fight off the flies as best they can, Petunia and Peppa with magic and the rest with various bladed implements...but then the demon hound emerges from the rubble.
The creature races across the room and bites Petunia up pretty badly. It lets out a howl that sends Petunia running away in fear, and then it turns its attention to Dire. The flies are also still around, and they surround Peppa and sting her. Her shield of faith protects her somewhat, but she's hurting. Gelert backflips over to kill flies, and Peppa manages to stay in the fight, but then demon bites and fells Dire.
Peppa runs across the room to stabilize Dire with magic, and the demon lunges at her, but slides right off her magic shield. It then races across the room to attack Petunia, but she ducks just in time and unleashes her Thunderwave spell. The boom smashes the demon against the wall, killing it, and it vomits up a black cloud of magic, much like the last demon that the characters fought.
The dogs mop up the last of the flies, and Petunia takes the book from the altar. She realizes it's not a book at all, but a masterwork relic made in the shape of a book. She realizes that anyone who lies while holding it will feel terrible pain, and that if the "book" is exposed to sunlight it will start to decay. The dogs head back up to the badgers, and the female one, Harriet, asks Petunia to hold the book and swear that the dogs are not here to help Heinrich with his machinations and that they will not harm the cats.
After hearing Petunia (and Graff) promise, Harriet explains that Heinrich Doberman wanted to make as much money as possible on his mine, so he drove out the citizens of Ellendonk and threatened death if they ever so much as contacted Pugmire again. He then brought in enslaved cats to work his mines, and used the Cat Conservation Society as a way to recruit more. The dogs are horrified, especially Petunia, who lost her home town because of this. Harriet gives them the book and takes the cats away, leading them to safety, while the dogs ponder their next move.
Graff informs them that he can show them to the family mines, but they are extremely well guarded and he knows his father employed a master trap-maker at one point. Perhaps they should return to Pugmire and report on this? The Pioneers consider this, but also wonder if they can use the tunnels off the demon's chamber to access the mines. They decide to rest and make this decision in the morning.
I mentioned yesterday that I was reading a couple of RPGs, one of which didn't have a default setting. I'ma do that one today.
The Game: Mettle The Publisher:Planarian Games Degree of Familiarity: None Books Required: Just the one
Mettle is another RPG that I got in a bundle, and it's another "looks perfectly playable but eh" type of game.
The danger in making a setting agnostic game, I think, is that people who are wedded to a particular system that they hack into whatever setting they want already have that system. Maybe it's 5E or some other form of D&D (whatever, some people juggle geese), maybe it's Fate, or SWADE, or whatever. But the appeal of those games, at least in part, is their ubiquity - there's a lot of support for them, meaning if you want to hack 'em you're not alone and there are resources to draw on. So why choose a largely unknown system to hack, unless that system does exactly what you want?
I don't know. Mettle, like I said, looks perfectly playable, but it doesn't do anything I haven't seen before.
Well, let's do this. As mentioned, there's no default setting. There's an example adventure, which is billed as Gilligan's Island meets Matango. Since I'm a little pressed for time, I'm just gonna use that setting, but make my own character (the example characters are takeoffs of the Gilligan's Island cast, natch).
The setup here is very much Gilligan's Island - seven people wind up on a beach after their ship capsizes. I think I'll lean into the horror a little, and take some inspiration from another "capsized on a desert island" movie, Sweetheart. I'll say my character wasn't with the original group, but instead was marooned on another nearby island. After a harrowing few weeks of barely surviving, he managed to lash some planks together and strike out for land, only to wash up on this island. I think he's grizzled and weathered and looks older than he is; he's really only 22! (Maybe he was on the beach from Old, too.) His name is Dodd.
So, the first two steps of chargen are name and appearance, and I've got those done already, go me! Descriptors are next. I've got five of them: Focus, Frame, Motive, Nature, and Poise. I think I'll use the array method of assigning them numbers, so I get 5, 4, 3, 3, 2 to throw around. I also need to add "tags" to each one (Aspects, basically). Let's go through these!
Focus is occupation, lifestyle, suchlike. I figure Dodd's most important characteristic is his harrowing couple of weeks as a castaway, and I think that's better enumerated by Frame than Occupation, so I'll put my 2 here and say that Dodd has Gaps in his employment history.
Frame is how physically powerful Dodd is, and I want that to be high. I'll put the 4 here, and call it Extreme survival skills.
Motive is exactly what it sounds like. In Dodd's case, it's make it back to the mainland, no matter what. I'll put a 3 here.
Nature is force of personality and will, and this is gonna be Dodd's strongest point. He is way too intense, and I'll put the 5 here.
Finally, Poise is dexterity-type stuff, and I've got a 3 left to put here. I'll tag it younger than he looks.
And now, Backgrounds. These are brief phrases that indicate how Dodd has spent his life, and I could assign some in play, which is cool. Here's the thing, though. The book seems to think that 5, 4, 3, 3, 2 adds up to 22, because it talks about the "standard 22 point character". Those numbers actually add up to 17, however. So assuming the math is right and I get Background points equal to half my Descriptor totals, and we round up, I have 9 points to throw around. I can't have any individual Background higher than 2 (my Focus rating).
Well, Dodd has survived for weeks on his own, so I think that's a good start. I think I should probably have some reference to his pre-castaway life, so let's say he is or was a world traveler. He knows how to prepare fish (maybe he worked at a sushi place?). I'll put 2 into each of those, and leave the last 3 unassigned.
Last thing is Resources, and that's both physical stuff and intangible things like contacts and debts. I think Dodd has a survival knife and a pair of ratty shorts and that's it.
I guess Mettle is set at Motive + armor, and I got no armor, so that's just 3. And that's apparently it for chargen, so that's Dodd, ready to wake up with the rest of the castaways and be totally in the wrong genre...until the Lichenoids show up.
Today I (Michelle) am guest starring on Matt’s blog as I’m running a new game for us, and I don’t have a journal of my own anymore that isn’t for work! It’s been a super hot minute since I’ve run a game, but I’ve gotten the itch to take on a GM role again and so here we are.
Trial and error has shown that I work best with games that don’t have too many GMing moving parts, so I’m going to stick with FATE Core – I also like Accelerated, but I want a little more granularity than Accelerated provides for genre emulation. That probably seems funny given that we’re talking about FATE, but no judgment, plz.
My players are Amanda, Gus, Cael, and Matt. Amanda and Gus are old veterans at the table. Matt’s going to get to take on a player role, so Cael and Matt actually get to be players at the same time for once! Gus and Matt were both players the last time I GM'd, while Cael and Amanda haven’t been in one of my games before, so overall it’s a pretty balanced table.
I decided that I’d take a gander at the published settings. I really like to do emulation games – specific IP/settings – but those work best when everyone knows at least a little about the setting. I went from there to looking through the FATE Core Published settings, and presented a list of six – half properties I like, half published materials. The group ended up choosing Morts, a setting published by Evil Hat in 2016 and written by Lara Turner.
The elevator pitch behind Morts is basically take one part Empire Records and one part Zombieland, and swirl in a pinch of Community and a dash of The Office, and there you are. All the characters, dead or alive, are morticians, responsible for keeping Zombies out of the outskirts of Eugene, OR (or Cascadia, as the people in charge reshuffled a bit after zombies came to live and took a huge bite out of all the densely populated areas). Morticians get free room and board and keep the zombies at arm’s length from the city they're attached to. There are no qualifications and very few questions – it’s like the Peace Corps, but involves zombie killing and is open to sentient dead who manage not to try to eat people and can get through a short interview.
Of our group of Morticians, we have the following characters:
Bonesey O’ Sullivan, a Black Market Lich who doesn’t remember anything prior to his time as a skeleton and isn’t entirely sure how he got this way, except that he clearly doesn’t know enough necromancy to do it himself. He is fond of taking off his arm and using it as a club with his other arm (I Am My Own Weapon).
River McNannis, who’s been a mortician forever and kinda likes it. She uses a Spiked Baseball Bat and generally directs the newbies in how to do their job in an unofficial sort of way, seeing as how she's (Not) The Boss.
Oscar Blair, who’s the ghost of a florist who unwisely went to visit his sister and got jumped by zombies. He uses a G-g-arden Weasel of the cultivator variety ( https://www.gardenweasel.com/") as his weapon of choice.
Edison Poe, a Temporarily Inconvenienced Movie Star who wants to make it big in the entertainment industry and is just waiting for his big break. He has a Badass Pump Shotgun Like in T2 that he’s not at all good with, but it makes a great sound and he looks very impressive holding it.
We played last night, so you get the write-up later today!
In celebration of finishing Our Flag Means Death last night, and because the other game I've been reading this week (Mettle) doesn't really have a setting and that's more work than I'm willing to do today. Also, this game is so delightfully weird and holy shit, I need both "delightful" and "weird" today as our nation slides further and further into Christo-facism.
The Game: Shanty Hunters The Publisher:Molten Sulfur Press Degree of Familiarity: None with this particular game, but it's Gumshoe and I know how that works Books Required: Just the one
So, in Shanty Hunters, you're playing sailors who are literally hunting sea shanties and writing them down as the age of sail comes to an end. But the shanties come to life and "recapitulate," altering the world around them, and you need to figure out what's happening and...fix things (I'm unclear on exactly how that part works because I haven't read the whole book thoroughly yet, but for chargen purposes it's not a problem). Like I said, delightfully weird, and plays into my love of magical realism and meta-fiction. And singing.
Making a character is a lot faster than many Gumshoe games; not nearly as many skills. We start off by picking a Profession, something that allows my character to go to sea for long periods of time. (Gentleman pirate, perhaps?)
Actually, one of the Professions listed is "Client Scholar." That is, someone is paying my way to go on these adventures, and I like the idea that my character is an eager and skilled scholar in service to a shadowy billionaire (or, given the setting, a shadowy several-thousand-aire, I guess).
Next step is Drive, or, why my character does this. And "money" is obvious, but ooh, I like "Musicality." My character was down on the docks one morning, maybe stumbling home, maybe delivering something, and heard sailors getting ready to ship out and singing a shanty. The song rattled around in his head for months, and then one night he was whistling it while making a delivery (guy transports goods, I think?) to the aforementioned shadowy rich guy. Said rich guy heard it and offered him this very weird job. And my character knew this was weird on the level of "might never come home again", but the song just won't leave him alone.
Skills! There are eight Skills and I get 5 points to distribute, which seems like nothin', but like I said, it's a pretty stripped-down version of the system. Let's see. I think I want Athletics 1, Class 1, Seamanship 1, Stealth 1. One more. I think I'll put it in Kind (the Skill one would use to flatter or persuade). My character is easy-going and approachable; it's part of what got him this job.
Details! My character's name is Charles Charles. He was born in San Fransisco, and grew up in a working class family. His father and brothers worked hard (and made the right friends) and eventually wound up being able to buy a sturdy wagon, which they used to make pickups and deliveries at all hours. Charles, the youngest boy (you can tell because they ran out of names), had been at the family business for a couple of years when all of the shanty weirdness happened, and while his family was initially against him going to sea, the money paid to them by Charles' mysterious employer changed their minds.
Charles isn't exactly thick, but he's not terribly smart, either. He's able to follow his training and his instincts are good, but he's not the kind of person who's going to invent something clever or come up with a terribly original solution to a problem. But he remember songs and shanties, and he's got an impeccable sense of rhythm (which would be the most challenging thing for me to roleplay). Charles has stringy brown hair, his mother's bright green eyes, his father's rather listless expression, and a sailor's calluses.
Sabrina is a romantic comedy starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, John Williams, Walter Hampden, and Martha Hyer.
The titular Sabrina (Hepburn) is the daughter of the chauffeur (Williams) to the fantastically rich Larrabee family. Sabrina has been in love with the younger Larrabee brother, the flighty playboy David (Holden) since she was a kid, and on the eve of her trip to Paris to study to be a chef, she witnesses David seducing a giggly socialite (Joan Vohs) and attempts suicide. The other Larrabee brother, Linus (Bogart) finds and saves her (though doesn't really recognize what's going on), and Sabrina leaves for Paris while David gets engaged to Elizabeth Tyson (Hyer), daughter of a sugarcane magnate.
But then Sabrina returns, having undergone a makeover overseen by the eccentric Baron St. Fontanel (Marcel Dalio), and is confident and poised. David falls for her (because that's kinda what David does), and Linus swoops in and ruthlessly sidelines David with a champagne glass to the butt and seduces Sabrina, intending to ship her off to Paris and get her out of David's sight just long enough for the wedding to happen.
Of course, best laid plans go awry, Linus falls for Sabrina himself, and he is ultimately willing to scrap the Tyson deal so that David can go off with Sabrina (since, he thinks, that's what she wants), but David comes through in the end and Linus and Sabrina wind up...um, hugging very chastely on the ship to Paris, thanks very much Hays.
This movie was remade in the 90s with Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, and Julie Ormond, and it really didn't work as well. The original not only has characters with better comedic chops (look, I love Harrison Ford, but he's not really suited to this kind of comedy), and, more important, it had a screenplay and direction by Billy goddamn Wilder. There's a bunch of physical comedy, much of it involving broken glass, come to think of it, and some very witty dialog. Plus it's paced like a comedy, unlike the remake, which was paced like...a 90s rom-com, kinda, I guess? Also, while the class divide is very much an issue, here, it's not treated with same kind of pearl-clutching I was expecting. Actually, it's more that the Fairchild family knows what dicks rich people can be and Mr. Fairchild advises Sabrina against mixing with them.
I like this better than the remake; it's lighter, faster, and funnier.
The Game:Seeker The Publisher:Vajra Enterprises Degree of Familiarity: None Books Required: Just the one
You know, Seeker may not be my particular cup of tea, but it's at least not another D&D clone boasting that it's so unique because it doesn't have classes or levels. (Actually, the award for "seriously? Have you been asleep for the past 30 years of RPG history?" has to go to the game I saw being Kickstarted where you play monsters in an urban horror/fantasy kind of setting. Like, that's the gimmick, you play the monsters. So unique.)
Anyway, in Seeker you play a...seeker. That would be someone who has walked away from their old life in order to pursue philosophical and spiritual enlightenment, using whatever tools they choose. So you want to play a Christian itinerant preacher, you want to play a wandering Buddhist monk, you want to play a hippie with a vague sense of spirituality expressed through crystals, you want to play an atheist who is trying to find their place in the universe, rock on, all roads lead to Rome. Seekers have "magic", of a sort, but it's very subtle and generally expressed, in story terms, though coincidence and expertise and other invisible things, rather than throwing fireballs around.
The system is a little weird, and I'll be honest, my eyes glazed over the first couple of times I read it so I'll have to take another look as I'm making a character. But the game knows what it wants to be, and that's always a good step. I don't know if it's a game that I would like to play or run, but that's mostly because my experience with games that really ask players to explore what's in their characters' heads on a philosophical level really need a concrete way to represent that at the table (see, for example, Promethean, but also Kindred of the East, just off the top of my head). In Seeker, you wander around and help people, trying to put things right and challenge yourself, and that's cool and all. It just didn't scream "run me!"
Regardless, I have a theme song, courtesy of my pal Toasty:
I almost put this song off for my next character, because tonally it's not a great fit for Seeker, but I do like a challenge. This song is about someone who got beaten and nearly killed coming back for bloody revenge - very straightforward, but not exactly something that lends itself to this largely nonviolent game. But, then I thought, the obvious assumption would be that you were making a character based on the badass that comes back for revenge - but supposing I make a character who was one of the original aggressors?
So! Jewel David Ballard ("J.D." to his friends, as he found his first name hella embarrassing) ran with a very wrong crowd when he was in his late teens. One day he and his buddies were hanging around drinking in the middle of the afternoon and wound up hassling...some guy? He was a local, J.D. remembers that, and his name was Chris or Chuck or something? He's pretty sure that one of his buddies had some reason for starting shit, but it was a while ago and J.D. was drunk. Anyway, things escalated and this guy wound up on the ground spitting out his teeth, and J.D. always felt vaguely bad about it, but it also always kinda felt like a dream to him. Did it really happen? The guys never talked about it.
Oh, it happened, because that guy came back some years later, when the "drink all day" had become "drink on the weekends while we watch football" and most of the guys were married and the town had gotten even smaller. That guy - J.D. still doesn't know his name - came back, killed his friends, and burned half the town. J.D. got away with "just" a bullet in the shoulder, and stumbled away from the burning wreckage as the guy ranted about God's vengeance and justice and suchlike.
As J.D. ran, he thought about that, and thought about how he and his friends absolutely did something terrible to this guy and that he deserved recompense. But at the same time, did it have to be death? Does one beat-down equal multiple murders? But then, that certainly wasn't the only wrong his buddies had ever committed. Is that how God's vengeance worked? And if God really wanted this kind of shit not to happen, wouldn't putting some love in their hearts rather than whiskey in their bellies a little early have been better? J.D. didn't know it as he fled his burning home town, but he was taking his first steps as a seeker.
Whew, OK, apparently I felt like writing today. On we go!
Step One is concept, and I feel like I've covered that.
Step Two is Attributes. I have 24 points to split between 8 Attributes, minimum 1, maximum 5 (many things about this game remind me of early White Wolf games, actually).
Agility can be average or the higher side of average, so I'll put that at 3.
Awareness is about noticing things, and as we've established, Jewel isn't the most perceptive of cats. I'll just leave it at 1.
Charm can get put to 3, I think, as can Endurance. Intelligence is 2 (again, not Jewel's finest point). Speed can be a little higher (4), as can Strength and Willpower. That's 24!
And "Charm" isn't on the character sheet. Nice going, guys. Oy. Anyway, I have 10 Hit Points, too.
Skills! I get 10 points. Skills cost differing numbers of points per level, and damned if I can figure out the logic behind the costs. Like, Criminal and Combat are both 4 points per level. Is that to discourage us from taking them? I happen to know that many of the Paths (the splats, we'll get there) grant combat bonuses, so it's not like it's not part of the game.
Well, anyway, what kinds of things does Jewel know how to do? I don't see him as particularly well -educated, so that'll narrow it down a bit.
I feel like Athletic is a good idea, but it's 3 points per freaking level. I'll just take one, I guess. Well, no, looking at the rest of the skills, I think I'll take two in Athletics, and one each in People, Traditional, and Labor. I get a free specialty in each of those, so I'll take Outdoors (Athletics), Building/Repair (Labor), Social (People), and Survival (Traditional).
Step Four is Paths, the aforementioned splats. There are 8 of these, or rather, four with two...viewpoints? Goals? There's Thought, Harmony, Self, and Feeling, and in each one you can go + or -. For example, -Self is a kind of Buddhist striving to remove ego and let go of the self, while +Thought is about using the mind and thinking through problems. It's not a bad approach for a game about practical philosophy, actually (though I'm hardly a philosophy major so I don't know).
Anyway, I have four levels in these. I could take one dot in four or four dots in one or whatever combination makes me happy. Hmm.
Well, I feel like Jewel's goals are going to be centered around justice, atonement, violence (understanding it, not committing it), and maybe anger. That to me suggests that +Harmony and maybe -Feeling make the most sense, though I think I want to give him one dot in -Harmony (putting himself outside society) just because he's already got some foundation there. So let's say -Harmony 1, +Harmony 2, -Feeling 1.
I get specialties here, too, and also Focuses. Let's start with -Harmony. I think that Jewel feels like being outside of society and breaking taboos is something he's done for a long time, but he wants to understand how he got to that point without hurting anyone else. So his Focus there is reading - he reads true crime, analyses of killers and other people who have done terrible things - and tries to put it all in context. His specialty here is Combat (I get an effective +1 to -Harmony if I'm fighting dirty; again, not aspirational, but instinctive). I need a brief philosophy statement about each Path, too, so for -Harmony it's "No one breaks the rules, we step over them."
Over on the +Harmony side of things, Jewel does find this aspirational. Here's where he pins his hopes of atonement, redemption, and being a "good person." His Focus here is "acts of service" (basic good deeds for people that need them). His specialty is "fix Harmony" (it's one of the Path abilities, allowing him to figure out what part of a system is broken). His statement here is "If you want to fit in, do the work."
And, finally, -Feeling. For Jewel this is about not losing his temper or getting swept up in passion. It's not about being joyless or robotic (ew), but more about maintaining a functional calm, I think. His Focus here is "small talk." Sure, it's more social than -Feeling stuff usually is, but at its core it's about interaction without strong emotion. Specialty: secondary (Paths have a primary and secondary "plus", and in this case the secondary is a bonus to activities that benefit from a calm and rested mind). Philosophy statement, in honor of my late father: "Who gives a shit?" (Not to say dad was dismissive or dispassionate, far from it, but he was a very big proponent of choosing one's battles.)
Step Five is equipment, but there's actually a system so I won't skip it. I get five "equipment points" to spend. I'll spend one on an equipment packet for Athletics: Outdoors (good hiking boots, serviceable backpack and bedroll), one on a packet for Labor: Building/Repair (tool roll, duct tape), one on a cell phone, one on a junker bicycle, and one on a bit of pocket money.
Step Six is advantages and disadvantages. Standard stuff, disads give me points, advantages cost points, but I can also use points to raise Attributes and Skills, which might not be a terrible idea. Let's see.
Well, I'll take Hunted: Seeker as a disad. The "guy" with whom Hell was comin' is still looking for Jewel. That shoulder shot was meant to just put him down temporarily, and the guy didn't count on Jewel getting away. He's a seeker, too, though obviously we have some philosophical differences.
I'll take a Demon, as well. Demons aren't necessarily literal, they're just impulses or personality traits that get in the way of a seeker's journey, big time. Jewel's is Shame, triggered by violence. I thought about Rage, but Jewel never really engaged in violence out of anger. He just...didn't stop.
That gives me 8BP to throw around. Attributes are 1, Skills are 3 for 1, and advantages cost whatever they cost. Let's look at those first. Nothing there I like, actually. OK, Attributes. I'll put one in Awareness so I'm not quite so thick, and I'll bump up Endurance to 4. Six BP left, holy shit, that's a lot. I guess let's put some into Skills. 1 BP gives me three skill points...huh. Does that mean Skill levels, like in earlier chargen, so one more point in Combat would cost 4 skill points? The math isn't exactly consistent. I'll assume it does, because otherwise BP would be bananas powerful (I mean, they kinda still are, but whatever).
No, you know what? I'll drop the Demon and just keep the other disad. I think that's a pretty good starting point for Jewel, especially given that adding Skills means adding specialties and so on.
Step Six: Eccentricities. (But wait, wasn't the last one Step Six? Yes, and this one is too! This is what happens when you don't proofread, kiddies!)
These are just little quirks about the character that are noticeable and, as the name implies, eccentric. I think Jewel says "call me Jewel" when people ask his name, or when introducing himself, or just to open conversations. He tightens bolts and screws and performs other little fixes if you leave him alone in a room too long. And, finally, Jewel smiles at everyone. That...doesn't always have the effect he wants.
And that's it! Jewel is out there on his bike, ready to roll into town and try and be helpful, and in the process learn a lot about people getting suspicious of anyone being kind.
Through dangers untold and etc etc. Here's last time.
Our heroes are in various places around the Radios mine prison. Abbas is in the central prison area, baring his claws against an incoming squad of Primals. Iris Blue is approaching the command center, wherein waits one of the deadly Handmaidens. Zeenia, Princess of Zeebor, is following another bunch of Primals into an elevator. One of those Primals is wearing her blades!
Iris enters the command room, brandishing the helmet she used to beat her captors unconscious. "I am Iris Blue, of the Daikini Valkyrie, daughter of Orchid Blue - FIGHT ME!"
The Handmaiden stands and smiles. "I am Erif the Strange, Handmaiden to Queen Anathraxa, and I will fight and beat you."
Iris responds by launching herself at Erif and smashing her through the mirrored glass behind her. They both fall to the floor below, which coincidentally is where Abbas is battling Primals.
Abbas, not having a weapon, fights with tooth and claw, and finds that he is more than a match for the Primals. They try to poke him with pain sticks, but even when they can manage to land a blow, Abbas is strong enough to fight through it. He tears out the throat of one of the Primals, and slams another into a third.
In the elevator, Zeenia is doing just as well. A couple of the Primals do spot her, but she lashes out with her tentacles and beats most of them into unconsciousness. The Primal Captain, Murk, however, isn't so easily defeated.
Erif, the Handmaiden, unsheathes her laser sword and strike Iris once. Iris falls, wounded but alive, and Erif laughs. "Kill the Lion-Man," she says, and activates her rocket belt, blasting up into her command center again.
The elevator arrives, and Zeenia spies Iris lying insensate on the floor. She wants to finish her battle with Murk, but she isn't about to let her friend die, so she moves as quickly as she can into the main prison center. She immediately takes out two more Primals with her tentacles, and tends to Iris. Murk, realizing that the tides of battle have turned, keeps his distance, but the last surviving Primal in the prison center pulls grenades out of his belt and pulls the pins, intending to destroy himself and the heroes (much as the one that killed Oola did!).
But this time, the heroes are ready. Abbas yells "throw him through the window!" and Zeena grabs him with her tentacles and does exactly that. He flies into the command center and lands next to Erif - boom. Surely, Erif the Strange could not have survived that!
Abbas turns his meager healing knowledge on Iris and helps get her on her feet. The heroes free the prisoners and unlock their collars, including Prince Boolar. Iris and Abbas steal guard uniforms off a couple of dead Primals, and they head downstairs to the processing and loading area. They surprise the guards when the elevator doors open, and shoot them down with ray guns stolen from the other Primals. They hide the prisoners while they take out a few of the remaining guards in the room (Abbas winds up falling into the huge bin of radioactive rocks, and is very nearly lost, but Iris flies over and pulls him out).
The heroes then order the rest of the guards out (and they listen, because Primals are nothing if not loyal), and load the prisoners onto one of the cargo ships. While Iris works on altering the punch card that guides the ship, Abbas, Zeenia, and Prince Boolar go back into the prison to retrieve the heroes' gear.
It's not in the command room, so they check the barracks. They find Murk pacing back and forth, ranting at a few other guards. Abbas bursts in, still in the guard uniform, and says "the whole place in chaos and you're in here? Get out there and fight!"
The Primals, again, obey - they rush out of the room and are immediately cut down by laser fire from Boolar and tentacle whacks from Zeenia. Murk steps back and hurls a couple of the blades at the heroes, but only manages to nick Zeenia a bit before Abbas pounces on him and tears him limb from limb.
The heroes find their gear and head back to the ship. Iris launches it with an altered punch card, which she believes she has altered to send to Avia. Has she really? We'll find out next time!
Yay Chill! Here's last time (which isn't real relevant because that was the end of a case, but hey).
March of 2020! We decided that we didn't want to deal with the pandemic in-game, so we chose to say that COVID did hit the US, but was much less potent than in the real world, and so all that really happened was the more people got a bad flu that year.
On this particular Thursday evening, five of the envoys - Samantha Layson, BB Bottomley, Jordan Ramsey, Emily Montgomery, and Jennifer Joyce (newly returned to Boise) - are at the ranch playing board games. Just as they're nearing the end of a Clue game, Jennifer's editor calls her. Turns out that a freelance music reporter by the name of Brandi Simon collapsed and died at a concert in Boise tonight - perhaps Jennifer could look into it? She just fell over, but she was young and healthy, so it might be newsworthy.
Jennifer rounds up the envoys and they head downtown to Egyptian Theatre. The marquis says "Ti Papa," which isn't a band anyone has heard of. Samantha does some quick googling and finds that Ti Papa ("little daddy") is a swamp blues/zydeco musician. He's an older, kind of rolly-poly Black gent, and his band consists of Jacob Hurleen (fiddle/bass), Simon Singer (piano/keyboard), and Aaron Tripp (drums).
Jennifer finds the theater manage, Colin Lawrence, and introduces herself as Brandi's co-worker. Lawrence tells her that he doesn't know much; apparently she collapsed, nearby concert-goers tried to help her, and then EMS arrived and took her to the nearby St. Luke's hospital. Lawrence points out a man leaning on the wall, and says that he was the one who tried to revive her.
Talking to him, Jennifer discovers he's an RN. He says that when Brandi collapsed, he went right over to her, but he could barely find her pulse. She was dead before EMS got there. He has no idea what happened to her - he just noticed that she was white as a sheet.
Emily, meanwhile, senses the Unknown, and feels danger from inside the theater. She had been wondering if this was really something SAVE needed to be concerned with, but it looks like that is indeed the case.
The envoys decide to go in and have a look around, so they walk in like they belong there and no one stops them. They get into the main auditorium and BB, looking at the room, figures out where Brandi must have been sitting. She was in the second row, quite close to the stage. There's no evidence of injury or foul play around her seat, however.
Emily cases the room, checking exits and looking for ambush - she's learned from her experience with the chillers. The envoys note that a policeman is onstage talking with Ti Papa and a younger, slimmer, very dark-skinned man in an expensive-looking linen suit. Jordan senses the Unknown and feels evil coming from the stage.
Samantha stands by Brandi's seat and uses Postcognition. She sees the end of the concert - Ti Papa hands his guitar to an assistant or roadie, waves, and says good night in a thick Cajun accent. She sees Brandi suddenly stiffen up, and her head turns to the right sharply. And then she simply collapses. Ti Papa is walking offstage as she falls. No wounds, no one visible around her. But the drummer, Sam notices, is staring hungrily out into the audience.
Jordan goes up on stage (after a quick chat with a cop) and looks around. She finds a drumstick under the back curtain, and takes it to give to Samantha. Samantha uses her power again and sees Brandi's death once more, this time from the drummer's perspective. It's much the same as before, except that when Ti Papa is standing there waving, he "stutters" a bit, jumping a few inches to the right instantly. She also hears Aaron, the drummer, whisper "what the fuck" when Brandi collapses.
The envoys gather outside, and head to the parking lot hoping to catch the band before they leave. They learn from a parking attendant that the band has two more shows here, and they're staying down the street at the Leku Ona.
It's nearly midnight by now, but they've got one more stop to make - the hospital. Jennifer talks to the doctor who treated Brandi, who tells her a bit more than he probably should. Brandi died as a result of a heart brought on by a sudden drop in blood pressure. She also appeared to be seriously anemic, but it wasn't in her medical history. Jordan gets the name of the doc doing the autopsy and then puts in a call to Detective Jackson so he can pull some strings and get her into the room to watch.
The envoys head home to get some sleep. In the morning, Jennifer calls Colin Lawrence and gets the number of Michel Belazaire, the band's manager (and the fellow in the nice suit that they saw last night). She schedules an interview with them early in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Jordan gets a call back from Jackson and learns that she (and Emily) can attend the autopsy this afternoon - clearly the group will need to split up.
They have a few hours, so they do a little digging. Emily looks up whether the date or the theater have any significance. The theater is old, built in 1927, and it has changed names and themes over the years. It also shows up on lists of haunted buildings in Idaho, but then, any old building is haunted. March 20, though, is significant - it's a holiday dedicated to Legba, a vodoun god of the crossroads. She kicks this lead over to Samantha, who's a better researcher, and she learns a bit about "voodoo", Haitian vodoun and how it intersects with Catholicism, and Papa Legba. Legba, a loa, is indeed the guardian of the crossroads, but also has power over spirits possessing the living. March 20, today, is a holiday for Legba, traditionally celebrated with the sacrifice of a black goat. This feels significant, though the envoys are having trouble piecing things together.
Jennifer does a little digging in the band, too. Jacob is the only one with any real social media presence and he's been talking about the tour. He joined the band just before the tour started. Simon has been playing with Ti Papa for decades; there are pictures of them together going back to the mid-70s. Aaron joined the band more recently than Simon, of course; he's in his mid-50s. Aaron also has a bad rep in the music business. BB digs a little deeper, and finds that Aaron has been arrested for DUI, assault, battery, drug possession, and was actually tried (and acquitted) of manslaughter after he killed a guy in a barfight.
The autopsy raises even more questions. Emily and Jordan meet Dr. Mason, who talks them through the processes. Brandi's death was the result of a conflation of events - she lost a lot of blood suddenly, which caused a drop in blood pressure, which interacted with an undiagnosed heart defect, which caused a heart attack. That's all very well...but where did the blood go? Mason tells them that the amount of blood she lost is more than one would lose donating blood, but not enough to kill a healthy person. If not for the heart defect, Brandi would have just had a bad hangover. Her tox screen is likewise clean.
Meanwhile, Jennifer, Samantha, and BB go and meet the band. Jennifer asked to talk with all of them, so they meet up in the band's suite. In addition to the band members and Michel, they also meet Fredo, the band's roadie and driver (whom Samantha saw in the Postcognition vision taking the guitar from Ti Papa).
They all have a lovely chat; the band isn't able to say much about Brandi's death that the envoys don't already know, but they do notice that Aaron is a little too interested in how she died. Samantha senses the Unknown and realizes that everyone in the room is "tainted" in some way. Jennifer asks if they've had any other such mishaps on their tour, and Michel said that if they had, he would consider the tour cursed and "cleanse" them. Jennifer presses him a little, and he talks about his faith - vodoun - and the difference between the movies and reality. He mentions that in the faith, a practitioner will call a loa to possess them, "riding" them and granting them power and wisdom. When he does this, he typically calls on Papa Legba.
The others don't necessarily seem interested; Aaron looks bored, Jacob looks uncomfortable, and Simon is poker-faced. Ti Papa is enthusiastic and jolly, and is happy to steer the conversation back to music and the tour. Jennifer decides to press her luck a little and asks about the holiday today - don't they need to kill a goat? Ti Papa tells her that, yes, normally they would, but the laws in Boise make that a no-go, so they'll just do it later. Papa Legba will understand.
The envoys take their leave (and BB slips Aaron his number; Aaron seems nonplussed). They all meet up for dinner in the hotel restaurant, and, since goat chops are on the menu, Samantha sends up goat dinners to the band, with a note that says her grandmother would have wanted them to observe the ritual on the right day.
They talk over what they've learned, and the consensus is that one or more of the band might be some kind of vampire. They do a little digging in the SAVE archives, but "vampire" is such a broad topic that it's hard to know where to look. Some vampires can turn invisible or move faster than the eye can follow, so maybe that's what happened to Brandi? Did others also get fed on, and she only died because of her heart defect? No one else seemed to be ill when the envoys saw the concert-goers outside the theater last night, though.
The envoys got tickets for the show yesterday, so they decide to catch the concert and see if they can see anything suspicious. Hope they like swamp blues!
The Game:DOGS The Publisher:KN Obaugh Degree of Familiarity: I've played Dogs in the Vineyard once or twice, but it's been years Books Required: Just the one
THIS GAME HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DOGS. I feel cheated. (I don't really.)
DOGS is short for Dicepool mOral predicament based Generic roleplaying System, which is something of a forced acronym, but it's there for a reason. DOGS is basically the mechanical and philosophical (from a game design standpoint) bones of Dogs in the Vineyard. And at first I was a little skeptical of that premise, but honestly, I've heard any number of great ideas for using the underpinnings of DitV - that is, the PCs are the moral authority and the conflict comes not only from dealing with "evil" but from deciding what evil is and how to deal with it. Green Lantern Corps was one of those ideas, and I remember someone putting forth the idea that Werewolf: The Forsaken would work nicely in that framework.
But for purposes of DOGS, I do need some kind of setting. There's one included with the book, but it includes pregens, so I don't know if I want to use it. Ah, there's a few pages of example settings that aren't more than a paragraph, but that's really all I need as far as chargen goes. Just a moment.
Hrm. There are a few I enjoy (and a few I don't mind but I'm not gonna use because they're too similar to other settings I've done lately). Let's see if I can randomize.
So there's my starting premise. I don't have a character concept handy, though, so I'll turn to my old friend iTunes Apple Music and pick a random song. Aaaaand that gives me:
Listening to the lyrics ("Angels," by Tori Amos), I'm not really sure what the song is actually about, but for my purposes, it makes me think of someone who's destined to do great and terrible things. I don't necessarily want to play that person, though, I want to play the person who's trying to warn others about the course of destiny, so I'm thinking a soothsayer/diviner/Cassandra kind of character. That's a decent jumping off point, so let's jump off.
I must pick a Background and a Focus. Background is either Specialized, Balanced, or Rocky. I'll go with Rocky, I want this guy to have some baggage.
Trained/Connected/Spiritual are the choices for Focus. I think I want to go with Spiritual.
Now, I get 15d6 to distribute into the four Stats, and each one has to have at least 2d6. I know I want Spirit (which is aggressiveness and tenacity) to be high, but Soul can be a little lower. So let's put 7d6 into Spirit, 3d6 into Body and Mind, and 2d6 into Soul.
So then I get Traits, Relationships, and Powers, according to the chart up there. Starting with Traits, I shall take I see the light of greatness in others 1d4, because that's gonna get me in trouble. Too Clever by Half 2d6, sure. And then I want something to represent that this guy is, above all, hopeful about people (which is why he keeps getting burned). Thinks the best of people 2d8.
Relationships! I think that he needs an enemy, someone that he talked up and helped and promoted who then turned out pretty rotten. Verl, the student who betrayed me 1d4, sounds good. I want some connection to the other diplomat-type people I romp around with. If I had a group, I'd probably work in a reference to a single character, but since it's just me I'll say My cadre has yet to disappoint me 2d6.
Last one is 2d8. Hmm. I'll actually leave those unassigned, because in play I'd want to be able to "discover" that someone is a Chosen One or whatever.
Powers! Obviously I need a divination like thing, but that should be a mixed blessing at best, so I'll just say Natural talent for divination 2d4. I see this guy having powers involving dust or ash, actually. Ooh, maybe it's about the remains of destroyed objects, so it's not like he can command dirt, but he can call up the ashes of a fire into a cloud to obscure him or whatever. Power over the ashes 2d10, please, because I want that to be impressive.
2d6 remaining, and I can split them if I want. Do I want? I think I want him to have some magic allowing him to sidestep danger ("not my time to die" kind of thing). Sidestep fate 1d6, sure. And then I'll take Basic conjuring 1d6 - he's been trained in simple magic, conjuring light and whatnot, but it's not where he's really skilled.
Equipment! The setting explanation up there doesn't mention anything that I get for free (most of the other settings do), so we'll just assume I get the usual allotment. That is, I can take as many items as I want, but they are rated thusly: If it sucks it's 1d4, ordinary is 1d6, good quality is 2d6, honkin' big is 1d8, good and big is 2d8. Total maximum is 32 (meaning, if my math's right, I could four 1d8 items).
Well, traveler's gear 1d6, sure. I want some kind of divination paraphernalia, but I don't want something obvious like Tarot or runes or whatever. I think that his method of divination involves a keek-stane, a box with a black glass lens in it that he stares into to divine the future. I'll give the keek-stane 2d6. That puts me up to 18, so I can take 12 more.
A weapon is probably wise, so I'll take longsword 1d6. One more d6, and that's pretty much my only option. I'll give him a signet ring 1d6, a symbol of his office. That might be the kind of thing that the group would get for free, but I'll just assume that closes me out.
Dranas, for 'tis his name, is a younger man, but his hair is ash-grey. He has blue eyes and resting annoyed face - he actually does have a sense of humor, but it's very dry and deadpan. He rarely laughs, and almost never our loud, but you'll get a chuckle out of him sometimes. He was raised in educated society, but his mother was obsessed with his father (who actually died or left when Dranas was young) - she claimed that his father, Drani, was the Savior From the Fire, whatever the hell that means. Dranas doesn't see mom much anymore.
Often after meeting someone, he'll get hung up on some little detail about them and stare into his keek-stane, and then either let it go ("guess it was nothing") or decide this person is Important ("shit, here we go").
Here I am living alone for a bit while Michelle is off living her rock n' roll scholar lifestyle, not perhaps as lucid as I would like to be, between lack of sleep and the humidity/heat, but what the hey, let's make a character for a really interesting-looking game.
The Game:Fae's Anatomy: A Melodramatic Medical Mystery RPG The Publisher:Hebanon Games Degree of Familiarity: None, but I've watched all of House and I do diagnostics for a living Books Required: Just the one
I gotta say, between Red Markets and this game, I have a lot of respect for the designer. It's easy to make up a setting with some compelling elements, it's even fairly easy to come up with a dice system that simulates whatever kind of action you're looking for well enough. But Hebanon Games' RPGs (all two of them now) are so damn tight and focused, none of this "this game can do anything you want!" crap.
Anyway, FAMMM is a game in which most players are Providers (doctors) of various supernatural stripes, while the GM, kinda, is the Patient. The Patient has a disease, with a super- and a -natural component, and gets to roleplay symptoms but never say the name of said symptom. The Providers spend Expertise and perform tests to figure out what's going on. There's even an app.
All in all, it looks like a lot of fun, and plays to my love of mystery, player agency, and focus on acting, so yeah, probably have to run it at some point. Meantime, though, let's make a provider.
First thing I do is choose Specializations. I get one Super- and one -Natural, and I'm to roll for 'em. 5 and 8 would give me either Alchemical Pathologist or Sorcerous Lab Tech. Ooh, tough call. I think I'll go with the latter, though, since I already made a pathologist back here.
My lab tech's name is Dr. Dee, PhD, MD, DPhil, DDS. Yeah, he's got all those degrees, but really he just likes collecting things with "D" in the name. He's heard all the "D" jokes, thanks, and it's not like that. Necessarily. I picture Dr. Dee looking like a young Jeffrey Combs in Re-Animator, right down to the businesslike demeanor hiding madness within. But Dee isn't necessarily the creepy kind of mad, he just winds up talking like V (as in "for Vendetta") only using "d" words.
(Were I to play this guy, I would need to make a list of words and phrases.)
Anyway! The only other bit of chargen is Associates, which normally would require more PCs, but it's cool, I'll make some folks up.
Rival: Dr. Dee can't stand William W. Woofrum, the werewolf what waits with white wingtips. William is another lab tech (though he prefers to call himself a "whitecoat"), and Dee doesn't dig dreadful dog demons.
Crush: There's a fellow who drives an ambulance. His name is Derrick Demoyne. Dee doesn't know his middle name, but oh, if it's David. Dare a deprived doctor to dream?
Bestee: The statue of the hospital's patron, St. Draco of Damascus. The statue doesn't normally talk to Dee (or anyone, really), but Dee still feels like it's the best listener in the place. And sometimes it deigns to discuss dire difficulties.
Deity: Anything that starts with "d", really. Demeter, Dionysis, Durga, Danu, Dagon...
It is early summer in Cairn, and the Traveling Knights have had a month and some change to get over their horrible battles with the Bloodwalkers. Rumdiggle Sunsong has spent the time training her pet snake, Arthur, and writing songs. Ratatosk Longberry went out into the woods to replace his Treestaff, as it was broken in the aforementioned battle.
Russelet Leatherwind and Snootabur Shadowbough have both become master bowyers, so they make bows for each other. Russelet makes one out of white ash, while Snoot makes one out of blackthorn bramble. Snootabur also has been working with the Lord Mayor of Cairn to plot out the earthenwork amphitheater, and Keeble Brownberry (the Lord Mayor) figures they can break ground later in the summer.
Russelet's other project has been expanding the borders of Cairn, as far as security goes. He trains border keepers and sets up a series of signal fires; Ratatosk contributes chemicals that burn different colors to signify different events. And indeed, the system gets its first use this fine evening - a messenger is coming!
The messenger, a mouse, arrives at the Cider Mill Inn shortly thereafter, but isn't looking scared or worried. On the contrary, he's thrilled - the circus is coming! The Knights immediately start considering what needs to happen as far as setup and logistics, all except for Rummy, who immediately runs home and starts frantically practicing and writing new material.
Over the next couple of days, the Knights help out with the setup. Ratatosk makes fireworks, Rummy continues her musical frenzy, Snootabur helps plan the site (and negotiates with Ripark, who isn't thrilled about the circus being so close to the Root), and Russelet helps clear living space north of Cairn.
The circus rolls into town, and the Knights, the Lord Mayor, the Captain of the Guard, and some other notable citizens are there to greet it. The lead carriage is driven by a rat in silver clothing, and the side of the carriage reads "STORMWIND CIRCUS". She disembarks and introduces herself as Sumna Stormwind, the owner and proprietor.
Introductions are made all around. Rumdiggle asks to meet the musicians, possible to perform? Sumna points her in the right direction. The Knights also see an otter riding up on a daggertusk. The otter slides down and asks if he can take the daggertusk (named Oof) off to find some food. Said otter introduces himself as Memm Nightriver, the beast tamer. Rummy is immediately taken with him and Oof, and he promises to introduce her to the rest of his menagerie.
Sumna also notes that her fortune teller is a bat named Crau Leatherwind - perhaps she is related to Russelet? Russelet actually isn't sure; his mother died when he was very young and he doesn't know much about his family history. Sumna happily accepts Ratatosk's offer of fireworks, too.
The circus gets started on setup, and the Knights help out as they can. Snootabur accompanies Sumna to the center of town where the main event is getting set up, and meets Barlet Bluescale, the business manager. Barlet is a strange creature - scaly, but not like a frog or toad - and he licks his own eyeball occasionally. Snoot politely asks what he is, and he responds that he's a "gecko." He's very polite and professional, and takes care to stipulate that since Cairn is providing the fireworks, they're responsible should anything go wrong ("not that I think it will!").
Russelet meets Crau as her tent is being set up by the roustabouts (mostly pika, some hares and groundhogs). They spend the afternoon talking about family; her family is from Sweethorn Roost, a treetop community not far from Cairn. They figure out that they are related, if distantly.
Rummy meets with the musicians and the reception is somewhat cool until they realize that she is genius behind "Yeet the Noodle", and invite her to play with them. Rummy is vibrating with excitement, and puts on her best hat!
The show that night is well received by all. It begins with clowns and tumblers, mostly pika, but lead by a hare who assembles the pika into a choir and then "tunes" them until they sing on key. Memm does his "vicious beast" act with Chomp, his stripefang, and then calls on Sleek, his daggerbeak, who swoops in carrying Fosted Nighttail, the squirrel acrobat! She performs her aerial act with Sleek, Memm, and Zigri Woodberry, the beaver strongman, and the crowd goes wild. And, finally, the musicians perform, ending by calling Rummy up to sing "Yeet the Noodle", and Sumna joins in to sing harmony.
Everyone goes home tired but happy, and the next day, the carnival games are set up. They're all run by rats, all are dressed the same, and they all call each other "Kenny." Snootabur wins a little carved gecko at an archery booth, while Ratatosk is introduced the joy of fried foods. Rumdiggle, who probably should have slept and hasn't, stops at every single booth and then goes to chat with Memm.
Memm is giving the kids of Cairn rides on Oof (he mentions that he tried a "savage beast" act with Oof, but no one bought it), and invites Rummy to come watch him train his animals in the afternoon. He mentions, too, that there's a raffle - anyone who wants to can contribute an item (or money, if anyone uses it), and then on the last night of the circus there' a drawing. The prize is enough food to get a small family through the winter, all of it dried and nonperishable. All of the Knights enter the raffle: Rummy adds in a scarf she knitted, Snootabur contributes some arrows, Ratatosk tosses in a potion, and Russelet gives a bauble made of a beetle shell.
That evening, the games close up and the carnies take a break. Russelet, who did sleep during the day, is heading into town when he passes the Root and sees a pika being thrown out. He asks what happened, and the pika says he was thrown out for picking pockets - even though he wasn't. Everyone assumes pikas are thieves; he's used to it. This bothers Russelet, who talks to the constable (Juffin Longbottom) and puts forth setting out some community property, since pika aren't "thieves" so much as they don't really recognize personal ownership. Juffin is nonplussed; clearly he thinks of them as thieves no matter what they call themselves.
Russelet goes out to the roustabouts, and winds up meeting Quolon Dayborn, a pika large enough to be mistaken for a groundhog. He's the head of the rousties, and also kind of the paterfamilias (most of the pikas here are related to him), and he tells Russelet that all is well - they're used to traveling and staying respectful and they won't be stealing. Russelet thanks him and tells him to let him know if they need anything, and heads back to town.
The carnies are getting ready to perform again, and Rumdiggle finds Sumna talking to another rat who looks a lot like her. Remembering that the Stormwind Circus is a family business, she firgures they're related, and indeed, she introduces him as Dirk, her brother. Dirk scampers off, and Rummy chats with Sumna. She says that she'd love if Rummy played with them tonight again - "Yeet the Noodle" is a great closer. Rummy says that she's amazed by everything the circus brings and how it's all managed, and Sumna says that in every town, they tend to lose someone to falling in love or just finding a place, but then, they also pick up talented new performers. Sumna hears a whistle and has to go off and be a boss, but Rummy hears an "ahem" from behind her.
It's Barlet, the gecko manager. He clarifies that Rummy is indeed the writing and composer of "Yeet the Noodle," and then leans in conspiratorily. "Just to clarify," he says, "that was Sumna offering you a job." He heads off, and Rummy sits down with a heavy thump. She suddenly has a lot to consider.
