Character Creation: Arcology World

Long is the road and hard is the way that from the beginning of March leads to 10 characters for the month.

The Game: Arcology World
The Publisher: Basilisk Online
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

You know, reading Arcology World, I was struck by something. In some PbtA games (Magpie Games definitely, though I've seen other companies do this too) moves are generally given contextual examples so we know what they look like in play. Blades in the Dark and Wicked Ones does this, too, with the result that when I'm confused about how a rule might work, I can usually see it applied and get a sense of what the intent is. 

But the other thing that practice does is give me the sense that someone played this game and had fun with it, that there are actual stories to tell here and what they might look like. It's not enough to explain the vibe or the intent of a game, I need to know it works at the table, and yeah, examples of play aren't necessarily transcriptions of real-life games (though I've certainly used real-life games to write them), but it's an important step in seeing the transition between technical manual to actual play. It gives a game context and texture.

All of this to say, I was really excited to read Arcology World because the premise of the game - a kind of post-apocalypse solarpunk game in which crises are usually environmental rather than person-inflicted, and in which there are no rules for violence for its own sake - sounded dope as hell. And reading it, I think it's probably playable and I think it would be pretty easy to make it fun. But I also don't come away from it excited, and part of that is because there's very little flavor. I don't get the sense that anyone loves it and wants me to play it, which is a shame, because I very much do believe that someone does. (It doesn't help that there are like two pieces of art in the whole book, so the game slips into the bland theoretical very quickly.)

Anyway, let's make a solarpunk! This involves picking not one but two playbooks, one that details my method choice and one that details my role in the community. I know there was another PbtA game that made characters this way, by intersecting two types of playbooks...oh, it was Alas for the Awful Sea. 

I don't have much of a concept, and since there's not much descriptive setting to work with, I shall pick a random song and let that inform my choices.

That's "Round Here" by Counting Crows. That's...perhaps a little more maudlin than this game would usually be, but that's OK. Let's just assume that our particular community has some mental health issues, either because the people there are refugees from somewhere else, or maybe there's some kind of scarcity that's causing a problem (or, hell, some kind of pollen in the air that's making people a little unstable).

Anyway, I'll say that my character is a doctor, or whatever passes for it in the World Today. What's my descriptive playbook, though? Not Aggressive or Charming. Analytical would be the obvious choice, though I think Subtle would work, too. Actually, no, reading these again, Analytical is the best choice for what I've got in mind. 

So, I picture my character as being in his 40s, black hair that's started to get white around the sideburns, brown eyes, prominent nose and eyebrows. His name is Hamilton Banks, and he's not actually a doctor, he's just studied anatomy and medicine as much as he can. 

Fillin' in stats! Obviously Analytical gets the +2. I'll put the +1 in Subtle, the -1 in Aggressive, and Charming and Dramatic get the 0s. 

Next we choose an XP move from both playbooks. Well, from the Doctor playbook, I'll take "when you make a medical decision that puts someone or something else vital at risk to save another, mark 1XP" because that's definitely got the best dramatic potential. And from Analytical, I'll take "when you put emotions aside and accomplish your goals in a precise and methodical way, mark 1XP." Less dramatic, but I like it better for this character than the other one.

The next three steps all involve other characters and relationships, so I think I'll skip 'em because it's just me. I will say, though, that I don't really understand what step 5 is trying to say and BOY IT'D BE NICE TO HAVE EXAMPLES.

Anyway, last thing is to take two moves from the playbooks (either one from each or two from one). Let's have a look. 

OK, so from Analytical, I will take...fuck me, why don't these moves have names? It's the one that lets me watch and get a read on someone, and then ask "if I were to [do a thing] how would you react?" which as I think about it is not a well-written move, but I like the intent. 

And then from Doctor, I'll take the one that would give me a bonus to pressure someone to do something medically beneficial. 

And that's it, kids. Very disappointed in this game.

Pugmire: Two Heads Are Hungrier Than One

Yesterday we ventured again into the mystical realms of Pugmire! Here's last time.

The Pioneers take a bit of a rest in a dank corner of the dungeon, chaw on some jerky and rub their aching muscles. Dire Newfoundland heads back into the bigger room where the prisoners they'd free were waiting, deciding that he could best be of service by making sure nothing came along and turned them into zombies (also his player was out). 

As they rest, the Pioneers hear a disturbing sound - it sounds like someone screaming, but behind the walls! They follow the found as best they can, and after a couple more twisty-turns in the corridors, the hall empties into a big room with some source of light.

Gelert Sausagedog peeks around the corner trying to be sneaky, and sees some truly horrible sights. There's a cat (that's not horrible! No, wait, it gets worse) flanked by a couple of obviously undead bodyguards. She's wearing black robes similar to the ones worn by Capulet von Mau, the cat that led them into the dark and then vanished. But at the end of the room, they see a true monster!

The giant creature has a body like a dog, but much, much bigger. Worse, it has two heads on its massive shoulders, one cat and one dog! It's holding a cat above its mouths, dangling him by his paw, clearly about to devour him! The cat is already wounded, wearing a hospital robe and bandages dangling from wounded limbs - this is obviously Buddy von Rex, the cat they came down here to find. They'd better hurry!

The robed cat notices them and the giant's cat head gives out a screech, and Petunia Pibble leaps into action! She casts a Shatter spell and a deafening boom rings out, centered on the robed cat. She grimaces; her zombie slaves don't much care about the noise. Peppa Papillon casts a spell of her own, throwing her Spiritual Weapon (a fearsome stick!) into the fray! It bops a zombie and the awful creature falls apart! This fight will be quick and easy!

Sausagedog realizes that while the cat head on the giant might be screeching, the dog head is still ready to eat Buddy. He races across the room, leaps into the air, and tackles Buddy right out of the giant's grasp! Unfortunately that puts him up against a wall and right behind the giant, which turns and smashes him with a bone club in one hand and terrible claws in the other. Sausagdog snaps a picture with the device he was given, but the hit is too much for him, and he falls, slowly succumbing to his wounds.

The robed cat hisses and starts conjuring magic, but Petunia counters it and sucks the spell right into her fidget spinner! And then a roar of wrath from the back of the melee - BOOMER PITBULL!

Boomer charges into the room and hurls his hand ax at the giant. It lodges in the meat between the creature's heads and blood spurts from the wound - this monster isn't undead, and somehow that's worse. But Boomer isn't interested in that, he keeps going, bringing his maul around and whacking the thing! The giant's attention is now fully engaged, and it rounds on Boomer. 

Peppa normally stays out of direct combat, preferring to support and bless her team and let her Spiritual Weapon do the fighting where necessary. But she can't let Sausagedog lay there dying! She casts Zoomies on herself and races across the battlefield, nimbly dodging around the giant and winding up next to her injured companion. Boomer, meanwhile, strikes again with his maul, and the giant lashes out - but somehow manages to miss! Its massive bone (lol) club strikes the ground next to Boomer hard enough to shatter. 

Meanwhile, the duel of mages continues! The cat flings another spell, or rather tries, but Petunia handily counters it and hits the cat and the remaining zombie with an acid arrow. The remaining zombie advances on Petunia, but is far too slow to get there and do any damage. Peppa casts Spare the Dying on Sausagedog and revives him, and Sausagedog tries to hide to get in a good shot on the giant, but the giant turns, points one head at Sausagedog and one at Boomer, and strikes them both. Boomer is hard to hurt, but Sausagedog is down once again! Boomer strikes the giant with his maul, but mistimes the hit and the giant wraps a massive arm around him and pins him!

Petunia coats the cat in a Grease spell, and the cat hisses in rage and vanishes. The zombie advances but Petunia drops it into a pile of slush (ew) with an Acid Arrow, and Peppa revives Sausagedog again. This time, Sausagedog moves away from the giant, into the darkened corner of the room. He sees a huge pile of offal, discarded clothes, and filth - clearly the giant's bed. He hurls his lantern into it and sets it ablaze. The giant howls in rage and flings Boomer into the fire, and Boomer collapses, burning! IS THIS END FOR BOOMER?! (It is not.)

The cat teleports out of the grease and reappears near Petunia, casting a spell at her that saps the moisture from her body and makes her snoot all dry and flaky (ew), but having not taken any damage so far she tanks it just fine. She throws some Magic Missiles at the giant, and the cat vanishes again. The giant is injured now, but Sausagedog is still wobbly, Boomer is on fire, and Peppa has backed Buddy into a corner to hide him.

But then Boomer rises like a crispy avenging angel from the fire (he got a triumph on his Death Save and regained some health) and leaps back to battle! With one mighty swing he knocks both heads off the giant, and the monster's corpse collapses to the ground!

The cat reappears, but then dissolves into pearlescent magical droplets and reappears a little further down the hall, and runs for it. She gets around the corner, and the dogs realize there's no way they're going to catch her. They talk about resting, but Buddy advises that they get to the surface quickly - the cat (one Rags Officecat von Angora) is likely to get some more undead servitors and come back, and the dogs are in no condition for a sustained fight.

They get to the Ministry of Health and receive medical attention. A day or two later, the Mayor of Port Matthew, Blinky von Rex, visits, and tells them that the city guard has carefully picked through the lower levels of the Ministry, found and cleaned out more undead and more monsters, and freed more prisoners. The Cult of the Ebon Skull has been routed, though Rags remains at large. And the Ruling Council of Mau wants to thank them for their service! If they would be willing, they will transported in style to the Monarchy of Mau to meet them? 

The Pioneers happily agree (Sausagedog: "Finally, we get thanked." Blinky: "I literally thanked you 45 seconds ago." "Sausagedog: "I mean properly, like with a medal."). They rest and recuperate, and prepare to undertake the next leg of their epic journey! (Which involves leveling up, but also converting to the new Realms of Pugmire rules!)

Character Creation: No Thank You, Evil!

Same energy as "get thee behind me, Satan" but without the baggage.

The Game: No Thank You, Evil!
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played this (kinda missed the window when my kids were young enough to be the target audience) but it's very similar to Cypher, which I know
Books Required: Just the one

Much ink has been spilled on the subject of RPGs made for kids, so I'm not going to go into that here. Reading this game, it really is a lot like Cypher, except that it uses a d6 and a target number rather than a target difficulty (which then gives you a target number). You still spend or activate stuff to lower the target number, and you still make characters as "Adjective Noun that Verbs" (well, there are three levels of complexity, so if you're a very young child you would just use the Noun, and so on up).

Setting-wise, you're playing kids going on adventures in Storia, which can be accessed by going Under the Bed, Into the Closet, Out the Window, or Behind the Bookshelf, depending on what genre you want (going Under the Bed leads to the scary stuff, f'rex), which is a set-up I really like and may yoink for a game sometime. Anywhichway, let's make a character.

So first we pick a Noun. I think I want to be an Astronaut, since I just watched Apollo 13 for the first time the other night.

For my Adjective, I'll take Cool. Astronauts should be rockstars. That adds one to my Smart pool.

And now for Verb, I could take Flies Through the Sky and that would make a lot of sense, but I'm going to take Eats Ice Cream because, well, astronaut ice cream, yo. I can give a target of my choice brain freeze, which shouldn't happen using astronaut ice cream, but whatever, it's magic. Or science.

And I get a Companion! Awesome Alien would make sense, but I'm completely in love with Robot Dog.

My Robot Dog's name is ARF (Augmented Robotic Friend)! I think he looks more or less like that picture, except maybe not with all the exposed wiring. 

And that's basically it! My astronaut's name is Joe Ckul (it's pronounced "cool"; the c, or perhaps the k, is silent). Joe trained and studied hard to be an astronaut, and he loves the science and the exploration and all, but mostly it's about the astronaut ice cream because you just can't get it anywhere else. Joe and ARF are ready to blast off! Zoom!

Movie #781: The Sting

The Sting is a heist/comedy starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Eileen Brennan, Harold Gould, Charles Durning, Robert Earl Jones, and Dimitra Arliss. 

Johnny Hooker (Redford) is a small-time grifter who manages to pull off a surprisingly profitable con alongside his mentor Luther (Jones) and their partner Erie (Jack Kehoe). Turns out that was surprisingly profitable because they robbed a carrier for Doyle Lonegan (Shaw), a ruthless Irish gangster who promptly has Luther killed and puts out a hit on Hooker. 

Hooker, pissed off and looking to bankrupt Lonegan (because he doesn't "know enough about killing to kill him," which I thought was an elegant way to put it), hooks up with Henry Gondorff (Newman), an experienced con, and together the two of them put together a grift to take Doyle for half a million bucks. This being set in 1936, that's a lot of money. 

There's a lot more to it, but getting into it would involve explaining the con and I don't wanna. Instead, let's talk about the movie. 

Doing a caper film requires having the caper work, but look like it's not going to so that there's still some tension, but then having it all come together so the audience gets to go "oooohhhhh" at the end. Successful caper films, like this and Ocean's Eleven, work not because the plan goes off without a hitch, but because it works despite the hitches and/or what you thought were hitches were actually part of the plan. Unsuccessful caper films tend to flounder not necessarily because the plan doesn't make sense, but because they aren't told with enough panache to get that "oohhh" moment at the end (offhand, Ocean's 8, which wasn't a bad movie but looking bad I can't remember much about it). 

The Sting is one of those movies that is so seminal to the genre that it's basically a caper film before there had to be a lot of crazy twists. Like, the false hitch is that we're led to believe that an FBI agent (Dana Elcar) has flipped Hooker and is going to turn on him, and there are a couple of moments and beats that make it look like he might. If you're watching this movie in 2024, you can see the twist coming a mile away (the "agent" is really part of the gang and the whole FBI thing is done as a way to get an actual cop (Durning) off Hooker's tail), but the movie still all holds together because the con is clever on its own.

And, of course, the cast is amazing, the production design and costuming are perfect (thank you Edith Head), and the movie is nicely paced - I don't remember it ever feeling slow or rushed, but it moves along nicely and gives you time to digest what's happening rather than trying to dazzle the audience. 

If I have a point of criticism, it's that a lot of the supporting cast is kind of interchangeable, and the moment where the assassin sent to kill Hooker (Arliss) gets shot in the head is kind of out of nowhere (actually that whole subplot I didn't love, mostly because I felt that her not killing him while he was asleep was something of a plot hole and it was kind of done to pull a fast one on the audience, when the rest of movie is really above such shenanigans). These are minor points, however. The movie is funny and bright, and deserves the acclaim (it won a bunch of Oscars, including Best Picture).

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: Strange Days

Character Creation: Forthright

The dogs are snoozing next to me on the couch, the peepers outside herald the arrival of spring, let's make a character.

The Game: Forthright Open Roleplay
The Publisher: Room 209 Gaming
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I don't think I quite realized how many generic (or "setting agnostic", if you like) games were out there. The worst of them just look for slightly different ways to apply numbers, but at the guts of it, they're D&D - physics emulators with the lion's share of the game mechanics bound up in combat. The best of them are games like Fate and SWADE that actually have things they do well and some intrinsic flavor. If a game like, say, The Wildsea is a paella, full of flavors and different ingredients and textures, then a game like Fate is at least a strong broth and something like GURPS is...I dunno. The boiling water into which you can mix whatever you want, which assumes you have ingredients and seasoning on hand and know how to combine them. (I think that's a pretty solid metaphor, actually.)

So where does Forthright fit in? I think it's closer to broth than water. System looks simple but it's very much geared towards representing story beats rather than what a character might physically be able to do. Action collapses down to fighting, intrigue, and mystery, and the game asks the players to consider not only the standard session 0 stuff (lines and veils, game world) but also which of those three things they're most interested in.

Would I run it? I don't know, but I wouldn't outright refuse to run it, so that's something. Let's make a character!

Of course, this being a setting-less game, I need, well, a setting. Fortunately, there's an example of play running through the book, and it gives me this:

The PCs in this game, as described by the ongoing examples, are kind of first-responders that travel around and investigate when portals open (which, gotta be honest, sounds like a pretty dope setup for a game, and I think would work nicely in Cartoon Action Hour). 

So with that in mind, if that's the set-up, who would I play? Hmm. OK, my character is actually from another universe, and fell out of a portal one day. His home dimension, Veritas, isn't technologically advanced and magic there is highly restricted. As such, Orlos (for 'tis his name) doesn't have any idea how to even go about describing where to find his home, much less using any of the tech on Everos to get back (assuming such tech even exists, which I don't remember offhand).

Orlos was a night-runner in his home city of Zelloss. The night-runners are a kind of guardsmen/early warning/courier sort of affair; they patrol the high walls around the city and watch for incursions from the Hollow (what exactly the Hollow are isn't important as they don't exist on Everos, it just sounds scary). So I picture Orlos as average height, lean, lithe (as are so many of my characters), brown skin, black hair, brown eyes, maybe played by Rahul Abburi. 

Cool, so what's next?

Did the first step already, nifty. Principles, then? I'm meant to have two or three, so what's Orlos all about? I think he wants to get home, so "Find a way back to Veritas" is a good first principle. Oh, wait, the first one is the group's collective raison d'etre, which is The Vanguard, so that's fine.

Stats! This requires knowing our level of play (Mere Mortal, Heroic, or Superheroic). The examples don't address this, but based on context I can't imagine these characters are Mere Mortals, so let's assume they're Heroic. As such, Orlos gets 30 Luck and +2, +1, and 0 to split betwixt Fight, Talk, and Skill. 

It's not explained especially well, but Skill can cover physical stuff that doesn't involve fighting. For Orlos, I'll put Skill at +2, Fight at +1, and Talk at 0. Orlos just barely speaks the language here and he's trained as a running and observer, not a talker.

I get a Fighting Stance for Orlos; I think Whirlwind makes the most sense here (it's about quickly doing damage and I think Orlos is decent with knives). For Persona, I think Agent is most appropriate - Orlos is a stranger here so he's an agent of the Vanguard and that's basically his social role. No slot for it on the sheet, can't be that important. 

For Skillset, I know I want Orlos to be an Athlete.

Now I get three Boosts, which can be superpowers or just things I'm good at. For Orlos, Acuity is good (increases his senses and lets him recognize targets at range). I'll take Fast (for pretty obvious reasons). I kinda want something relating to Orlos' otherworldly heritage. Let's take Unusual Locomotion and say that Orlos, like all night-runners, is trained in the art of scampering up walls and vertical surfaces, even upside down (though he can't stop moving if he's upside down).

Relationships! I'm meant to have someone within the Gamescape that I'm friends with. Let's say Orlos made friends with a Queen's Guard named Ampha. Ampha is tough and brusque, but recognized a kindred soul in Orlos and helped him get acclimated and learn the language. She's kind of a big sister to him.

Finally, I'd get a Sanctuary. In the running examples, the group comes up with a spaceship called Thunderwing that acts as a group Sanctuary, so that's fine. If I were actually playing I'd add a Boost and stuff.

And that's pretty much it! Orlos would be a fun character, I think. His arc would probably involve trying to get home and unleashing the Hollow on Everos, or perhaps choosing to remain here because getting home would summon the Hollow. 

Character Creation: Bulldogs!

Arf! No, bulldogs are more like "bwoof!" I think.

The Game: Bulldogs!
The Publisher: Galileo Games
Degree of Familiarity: Some, but not with this edition
Books Required: Just the one

Now, I know what you're thinking: Didn't you do a character for this game almost a decade ago? Well, fictional reader who's not only been reading this blog that long but actually remembers the characters I've done, I did, but that was for the original edition of the game which used a pre-Core Fate version (similar in many ways to Spirit of the Century or Diaspora). I also wrote a review of that version, it's linked in the chargen post if you want to read it, but I think what I basically said was "this game is cool, but would be better in Fate Core." And here we are.

This edition of Bulldogs! isn't quite the normal published Fate Core; it's self-contained and tweaks some of the rules, but the Aspect system is the same and that's basically the most important thing about a Fate game (IMO). The central premise and setting of the game don't look like they've changed much. In brief, there was a big ol' war between two galactic empires, they called a truce and there's a neutral zone between the two, which is where much of the action takes place. The game is centered around the PCs' crew of ne'er-do-wells (I suppose you could be do-wells, but where's the fun in that), doing odd jobs and teaching alien women to luuuuuv (if, by that, you mean delivering cargo). 

I run into the same issue I often do with games like this; I ain't gonna take the time to make up a whole ship and captain because it's just me and typically that would be a whole-group endeavor. Conveniently, there's an example of both in the book, so just like last time, we'll assume my character is on that crew. The Black Watch is a garbage scow, but more importantly, the captain is Templari ex-military and definitely has some history that the crew don't know about. That's all very cool, I can roll with that.

So with that in mind, what would I like to play? I think I want to make a Hacragorkan. They're kinda space-orc/Klingon types; big, green, tattooed, very into battle with hand weapons. I dunno, just sounds good today. Aspects work a little differently here; species have six Aspects (called "heritage Aspects") and I pick two. I suppose I could customize a bit if I wanted to, but let's conceptualize a little first.

Tor Torgat (for 'tis his name) is the child of a pair of mercenaries. His parents were part of a skirmish in Templari space in which they bested a battalion of the Nova Legion (so the legend goes). Tor is aware that Jocaar Laf't (the captain of the Black Watch) was a member of that battalion - he is, in fact, the last survivor. Now, did that battle with the mercenaries wind up disgracing him and leading him to his current besotted state? Who knows. But Tor regards him as unfinished business for his family, and sought him out to finish that battle...

But then actually met him, and realized he was a drunken shell of his former self. Tor was outraged. He wasn't going to get any glory for killing a pathetic drunk. He got a job with TransGalaxy and actually requested Class D (which isn't something people do), so he could get on the crew of the Black Watch and help Laf't become successful and clean himself up. And then he'll kill him in glorious combat, just as Mom & Dad would have wanted!

Cool, good start. Let's pick two heritage Aspects. 

I actually kind of hate these. Like, they're fine, but they're all very samey. Well, whatever. I'll take My Hands Are Hammers and Unstoppable. 

Right, five more Aspects. One is Aptitude, so what exactly do I bring to the crew? Fighting, doy, but I think in Tor's case he raises morale. So let's call that Aspect "Cheer Up, My Friends!" 

Next, I get a Class D Aspect, explaining why I'm here. I already figured that out, it's to Make Captain Laf't A Worthy Foe. Or, wait, the next Aspect is meant to be about the captain and my character's relationship to him. Hmm. I don't want two Aspects that are so close in tone, so I'll change this one to I'm Here By Choice, and I'll make my Captain Aspect Our Battle Shall Be Legendary!

Finally, I get two Aspects that are meant to be about other crewmates. There's an example character called Ppbrawl, who reminds me a lot of the lion-dude from the Wing Commander games, so I'll give myself the Aspect Ppbrawl Is My Comrade-in-Arms, and leave the other one blank (I could do that and then define it in play).

Cool, now I get to do the Skill pyramid. Standard stuff, 10 Skills, one at +4 and so on down. I'll obviously put Fight as my top Skill. I feel like Tor has some social prowess (he'll need it), so I'll make Provoke and Rapport my Good Skills. Similarly, I think Empathy should go in Fair, and I'll put Survival and Resolve there as well. Finally, for my four Average Skills I'll take Physique, Athletics, Command, and Contacts.

Stunts! I get two free ones, and then I can spend Refresh to get more if I want (Refresh is a little weird in this game, but I'll get to that). I kind of want a stunt to reflect Tor's heritage as a proud warrior, and I want one to reflect that he chose life in Class D. For that latter, I'll say he's Above All This, I get a +2 to defend with Resolve against social attacks on my station or position. For the former, we'll say he's the Child of Kag Torgat: +2 to Create an Advantage with Contacts among soldiers or mercenaries.

Speaking of Refresh, I lose 3 because of my species abilities, which actually total 4 but WTF. So I get Quick Healer, Pugnacious, and Dangerous Bearing. That also means I wind up with 3 Refresh, because I didn't (and don't intend to) spend any to get more stunts or gear.

And that's pretty much it, because I ain't gonna bother with gear! Tor is big and green. He has swirly tattoos on his arms and legs, but his torso is clean because he intends on dedicating his whole chest to a tattoo commemorating his battle with Jocaar Laf't - once it happens. 

Character Creation: Judgement Day

"Every day is Judgement Day." - Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs & All

The Game: Judgement Day
The Publisher: Mystical Throne Entertainment
Degree of Familiarity: I know SWADE pretty well, and of course I'm no stranger to judgement
Books Required: Judgement Day plus some version of Savage Worlds or other

Judgement Day is pretty simple at the guts of it; it's a monster-hunting RPG in which characters are members of the Catholic Church, specifically the Inquisition (which, in-universe, was about hunting actual monsters rather than religious hysteria and power acquisition). It's got rules for three eras, Crusades (12-15th century), Victorian, and modern day, but I'm only making one character.

So...I dunno. On the one hand, modern would be the easier character to conceptualize, followed closely by Victorian, but those are also settings that I feel like have a lot of representation in the project. On the other hand, doing a character in the Crusades setting is a little harder to wrap my brain around because I don't know the era too well. Ah, what the hell, the system is easy so even if the conceptual stuff takes a little longer, the mechanical stuff won't. Let's do an early Inquisitor.

Hmm. One of the issues here is that the period covered here is more than 300 years (1149 to 1450), which makes concept and setting stuff a little tricky. I'm not a historian, but I'm pretty sure the political landscape in Europe changed a lot during that time. OK, fuck it, let's randomly pick a year for my dude to have been born...1250. That means he's likely to be active in the 1270s. And what was happening in, say, the Vatican during that time? Oh, wait, Thomas Aquinas died in 1274 at a Cistercian monastery. I can work with that.

So let's say my character was a young herder who was chasing after a runaway colt. He chased it to the Appian Way and saw Aquinas struck down by...something. He was never ever to fully describe it, he just remembers that it had too many eyes and wings and teeth. Although he was terrified, he fell to his knees and prayed, and the creature did not kill Thomas but fled (now, whether or not it was his prayer that drove it off is unknown, and not really relevant anyway). He helped Thomas on to Monte Cassino, and later that day members of the Inquisition arrived. They told everyone that Thomas had hit his head while riding, but the young farmer knew better and started to say so. The Inquisition told him that there were battles happening against Satan that the greater populace knew nothing - could know nothing - about. But they gave him the chance to join that fight, since he clearly had courage. He took the name Acacius and became an Inquisitor!

There, good start. Obviously Acacius is human (really the only choice here), so let's move on to Attributes. I think we'll just go d6 across the board for now.

Skills! This game predates SWADE, but whatever, it's not hard to convert (really just comes down to arranging Skills). So I get a d4 in the four Common Skills, and then 12 more.

Well, I'll bump Notice and Athletics to d6. I'll take Knowledge: Demonology at d4. I'll take Riding d6, Fighting d6, and what the heck, I'll bump Stealth and Persuasion up to d6 as well. Oh, Survival probably makes sense, we'll put at d6 there. Hmm. I guess let's put a d4 in Battle, too.

Hindrances! Let's take Overconfident (if God is with us, who can be against us? Lots of things, turns out). For similar reasons, I'll take Death Wish - it's not that Acacius wants to die, he just expects to. And just for flavor I'll take Anemic; Acacius is pale and prone to illness and fatigue. 

Edges n' stuff! I get a free Edge for being hooman, and I kinda want the Inquisitor Edge (otherwise I'm an injunctive, not an inquisitor), but it will requires rearranging a couple of things because I need a d8 in whatever field of study I specialize in. I think it's gonna be Demonology, but I only have a d4 right now. Hmm. I'll move that point out of Battle to give myself a d6, I'll use two of my "points" from Hindrances to jack it to d8 (I need two because it's higher than my Smarts), and I'll use those last two points to buy the Inquisitor Edge. Oh, and I need Spirit d8, too, so that's where those last points are going.

Pace 6, Parry 5, Toughness 5, easy enough! Acacius is 25 or so. He's got black hair but his skin is lighter than his siblings' (he's always been pale). He's trained with a club, dagger, and sword, but he's not comfortable wearing armor, though of course if the Inquisition gives it to him he'll don it. Acacius has learned a lot very quickly, and he hopes to read the rest of Thomas' works some day, but at present he's a little busy fighting demons n' shit. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he suspect he'll run across the demon that felled Thomas Aquinas some day, and he suspects he won't live through that encounter...but if he has anything to say about it, neither will the demon. 

That'll do it!

Epyllion: Toverinn and the Shadow Llama

Back to Dragonia! It's been a while, but not, like, "five months" a while at least. Here's last time.

Our draconic heroes are around a campfire with four other draconic heroes, having just played a couple of rounds of Capture the Flag. As they settle in, Arlo, the athletic and energetic drake who initiated the game of Capture the Flag, tells a story about a match dre saw near the Twisttail Falls, between the Brightwing Clutch and the Black Forest Wanderer Clutch (the Brightwings won, but it was close!). When he's finished, he looks around at the clutch, clearly expecting a story from one of them.

Zeblek rises to the occasion, telling a story about the time dre he was traveling with dris friend Mephather in the Tearwing Desert, and dre saw a battle between the immense, dreaded rhinocepig and the equally immense equally dreaded girralrus (which is normally an aquatic creature, so what's it doing in the desert? It must be on holiday. Or Zeblek is making this shit up). Dre claims that the rhinocepig ate Mephather, but dre recovered. (During this, Stars flips through dris book in exasperation looking for these creatures.)

Niche nods and tells a story about Bellak of House Semscale, a dragon with no wings who was the sole survivor of dris clutch. Dre escape the clutches of the roc, a huge bird-monster that snapped up and devoured the rest of the clutch when they tried to fly away. But Bellak slithered into the ground and waited the monster out, and thus survived. The clutch notices Niche shoot some very pointed looks at dris clutch-mates during this tale...

Stars takes up the baton, as it were, and tells a story about the squotter, a creature that looks really cute if you see it from the face up, but below that it just has too many legs. But it makes these really nifty gurgle-squeak kind of noises, and if you see it move in the water it's oddly beautiful and graceful. Dre shows a sketch of it in dris book, of course.

Plum, the poet, tells a story in verse about Lurin the Grey, a dragon that traded away all the colors in dris scales for the ability to fly higher and further than any dragon. The tale goes that dre flew all the way to the Stone Moon, and there dre stayed forever. Plum shoots Niche a look during this tale.

OB jumps in and tells a story of the moons, illustrated with a length of cloth - start out with a circle to represent the Void Moon, fold it into tight square to represent the Stone Moon, make tiny cuts to make it into a flower-like thing to represent the Spirit Moon, pull it apart to represent the Storm Moon, and toss it into the air whereupon it disappears! (Liberty Moon.) 

Tavi says that dre has a more recent story to tell, whereupon all of dris clutch-mates groan ("Not this again"). Tavi insists, though, and tells everyone that when the clutch was headed here, they passed a swamp that Tavi has since dubbed the Singing Fen (Stars: "What's a fen?" Toverinn: "Another word for a swamp." OB: "I think if a fern grows in it, it's a fen."). Some voice called out from the swamp that sounded like no creature or dragon that Tavi had ever heard, but the clutch didn't stop to check (and Tavi seems a little salty about that).

Finally, Toverinn tells the story of how the clutch rescued and befriended the majestic turferants near the Black Forest. Everyone flaps their wings in applause (except Niche and Stars, of course), and shortly after, Niche leaves the campfire and wanders out into the woods.

The others watch them go, and OB mentions that Niche seems kind of upset. "Yeah, dre does that," says Arlo, somewhat dismissively. Tavi is more sympathetic, and mentions that Niche often feels put upon or left out because of dris lack of wings. The clutch suggests that someone should go talk to them, but Plum says that dre probably doesn't want to hear from dris clutch right now. Maybe one of you could?

Stars agrees, and goes into the dark to find Niche. Dre finds them lounging in a tree, and climbs up next to them. The two of them talk about what it's like to be a dragon with no wings, and Stars gradually gets Niche to open up about what's bothering them. Mostly it's that dre feels like dris clutch has been sticking to flatlands lately, and Niche can glide, but needs to get some altitude to do it. Also, it seems like when the clutch does acknowledge dris lack of wings, it's in the context of casting magic or building something to compensate, and Niche doesn't feel like dre needs to be fixed, just maybe accommodated sometimes?

Stars listens and can relate - dre is also wingless, but feels at home in the library so it's not usually a problem for them. Dre agree to talk with the clutch and put forth some of these issues, and maybe suggest a side trip to south of the Goldpeak Mountains (rather than going north around them, as they'd intended). The two of them head back to the fire and Stars puts forth this suggestion. 

Arlo is initially skeptical (dre doesn't seem to get what the issue is), but Stars explains that south of the Goldpeaks is the Great Goat Valley, wherein one can find the craft gynx, the dangerous and standoffish guck, and the elusive and nigh-mythical gunicorn. Lots of opportunity for trials of athletic prowess (and, into the bargain, high valley walls for gliding). Arlo finally agrees and seems to get it, and everyone beds down. 

In the morning, the clutches say their goodbyes. The characters decide to check out the Singing Fen, since they don't have anything else pressing on their time.

They head back west a bit, and as they travel the ground gets wetter and the tree cover gets more dense until finally they find themselves in the swamp. They wade through deepening water, and as the Storm Moon rises, they hear it - a song reverberating from all around them, echoing through the trees, but from no single source. It is strange and otherworldly, and Stars tries to find a dry place to sit to check out what kind of creature might make such a sound.

Unfortunately, dre doesn't notice that the little mound dre are sitting on seems to have arms, and they're slowly reaching up! OB and Toverinn do notice, however, and shout a warning, but Stars isn't able to jump clear. Instead, dre tosses dris book to OB, just as the creature grabs them and rolls over, carrying them under the water.

Toverinn yelps in horror and casts moon magic, trying to use the power of the Liberty Moon to free Stars. The magic escapes, but Stars does not - and Toverinn feels something go free in the swamp. 

Meanwhile, Stars calls on moon magic of dris own! Dre summons up the Storm Moon and blasts the creature back, opening a trench in the water. Before it fills in, the drakes all see the creature. It's got a long, cigar-shaped body, a roundish mouth, brackish fur on its face, and long arms with cunning fingers. It sits back on its haunches and prepares to spring! 

OB calls on the Storm Moon and calls up a huge boulder between the creature and Stars. Zeblek also calls on the Storm Moon to force it back, and the creature apparently decides its had enough and slithers away. The drakes all cluster on the rock that OB called up and Stars checks dris book - that thing was a macaqueodile, a ravenous and mysterious creature that few have seen (because they tend to eat witnesses). 

The drakes try to shake off that encounter, and OB realizes that singing has changed. Now there's three voices, all singing in a weird, dissonant harmony - and OB feels Darkness in the song. Dre also realizes that it started when the Storm Moon rose, and two of the drakes called on the Storm Moon during that battle, so the song is obviously connected to the Storm Moon somehow. 

Zeblek suggests getting the heck out of the swamp and finding an older dragon to help - this is beyond a bunch of raw-scaled drakes. The others aren't necessarily ready to throw in the towel yet, but they do feel like they should get to dry land and sleep, maybe come back during the day. They start heading back the way they came, with Toverinn leading them, but after walking for a while Toverinn realizes they are all lost. In the distance, though, Toverinn sees a light, like a campfire, and starts walking towards it.

Dre also realizes that some other creature is walking next to them. It's a quadruped, but that's about all Toverinn can tell without turning to look, and dre are a bit too scared to do that. Finally, dre pluck up the courage to speak to it, and it speaks back, in a small and lost voice. 

Toverinn turns to look, and realizes that it's a spirit, all shadows and swirls. It's got a long neck and hoofed feet, but also big wings tucked onto its broad back. None of the other drakes can see it, so they watch while Toverinn converses with it. Toverinn introduces dremself and asks the spirit's name, but its asks "what's a name?" Toverinn replies that a name is what your friends call you, and it asks "what's a friend?"

Thinking about it, Toverinn explains the concept, and the spirit says that it doesn't have friends, or a name - it doesn't have much of anything, really. It does advise not following the light - the macaqueodiles like to swim beneath those lights and devour anyone that finds them. Toverinn asks if the spirit knows a safe place, and it does...if the drakes can fly.

Toverinn relays all this and dre and OB pick up Stars, and they all flap their way over part of the swamp to a ring of mangroves. The circle is wet, but the trees are too tightly woven to allow any of the bigger, more dangerous creatures in - nothing but the croaks of the fremurs in the trees. Toverinn calls on moon magic to make the spirit visible, and the other drakes talk to the shadowy owllama. It remembers that there were four in the sky instead of five, and that's when the song started. It also remembers that maybe it used to have a body, but now it doesn't anymore. The drakes figure that this is also tied to the Storm Moon somehow, and as such, OB suggests naming the spirit Sprinkles (because that's like a storm, but like, gentle and pleasant). Sprinkles agrees, and everyone tries to get some sleep.

Character Creation: Sufficiently Advanced, 2nd Ed

I'm on spring break, and I've got nothing in particular going on today, so I decided to do a character for a game I'm not terribly interested in since I have time to go pet a dog when I get bored.

The Game: Sufficiently Advanced, 2nd Ed
The Publisher: Valent Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I hasten to add, however, that there's nothing wrong with this game or its fantasy-based cousin, Sorcerously Advanced. I've read the first edition of this game, Sorcerously Advanced, and now this edition, and I have the same comments across all three: The game looks like it would be fun to play with a GM that understood the game and with a group that not only grokked the mechanics but was interested in the philosophical discussions that would comprise the game. I do not have such a group, and I have no idea how I would pitch this game, because the "game play" appears to consist mostly of deciding upon numbers and then using them to craft narrative.

That, of course, is the essence of most RPGs, but in most cases the dice decide the numbers for you, and that seems to make a difference. The idea of a conflict being a foregone conclusions just rubs me the wrong way, even though I know that's a big oversimplification of the game.

Well, anyway, the second edition looks a lot more polished and interesting than the first, as well it should be, so let's make a character.

Unlike 1st ed, there are several "universes" that one can use, each of which implies a different style of play and overarching game-world assumptions. Since I used the Patent Office for the 1st ed character (since that's the only one there was), I'll pick a different one today.

I like Sublight:

 That's a cool setup, I think. The process of chargen is thus:

So I need a concept. My brain is slowly coming back online (I started this process, and then was savagely attacked by a nap), so I think I'll let my old pal "Shuffle the iTunes" give me a concept. Just a moment.

Oh, well, that's perfect. That's "Black Sun" by Death Cab for Cutie, and it has this "everything is flowing toward entropy and therefore peace" vibe to it, which is highly appropriate for this setting. I think I want my character to be interested - nay, obsessed - with seeing how it All Ends. Traveling ever forward in time, 100,000 years at a jump (from his perspective), until eventually either the tech gives out or the universe does. But why? The lyrics also suggest some unspeakable sin somewhere in the past "There is grace within forgiveness/but it's so hard for me to find"), so that might be something to work in. 

I think that's probably enough to get started. Next step is to pick a Civilization. Note, however, that in this universe, Civilizations exists but Societies are more important. Oh, Disciples of the Void is perfect. Sure, it's designed for a setting with wormhole tech, but it works in Sublight, too. The Disciples believe that the universe has grown too noisy to hear the voice of God, so they go where there's true stillness to hear it. Since this setting emphasizes Society over Civilization, I think my character is probably an adherent, but mixes in the beliefs of the Disciples with (whatever I'm getting from Society). 

Speaking of which: I think I'll go with Hospitalers, folks that go from place to place to help out. That's a little more upbeat than I was thinking, but actually I like it - my character knows that All Things End, but just because we're all on that downward slope to Nothing doesn't mean that what's happening "now" isn't important. I think that sometime in his past he caused some great, maybe even planet-wide suffering, inadvertently or otherwise, and it's not so much that he's trying to atone (because what is "atonement" anyway?) as that suffering is, on balance, less desirable on a moment-to-moment basis, so why not try and reduce it? 

Right, next we choose a Neuroform. We're gonna go Baseline Dynamic (that is to say: I'm a dude with a body). Moving on.

Core values! This is pretty simple. I get Self-Preservation, because everyone does. I get two from my Civilization, and they're Privacy and Worship. I get one from my Society (Charity), which is my free pick, and normally I'd leave the fifth one blank and express it in play, but since it's just a chargen exercise I shall name the last one as Inevitability. 

And then I have to rank these 1-5, with 1 being "I'm not fully convinced" and 5 before "I will die for it." I shall put Self-Preservation at 2, Charity at 4 (has to be 4 or 5 under the rules of this universe), Worship at 2, Privacy at 3, and Inevitability at 4. 

Themes and Descriptors! (This game has a lot of Capital Terms.) Themes are metagame thingies that get activated in play through Twists, within a given, well, theme. I get to pick three and give them Descriptors. Let's see here.

Well, I know I want Wonder and Terror, but what about the third one? How about Romance? Probably not something that would come up in an actual game, but I like the idea that my character gives his love freely because, well, how can you not, in the face of the inevitable? 

So for descriptors, let's go with The Vastness of Space (Wonder), Dark Corners (Terror), and My Love I Must Away (Romance). 

Capabilities! These are pretty much what is says on the tin, generally revolving around various kinds of technology and the extent to which the character has assimilated it. Beginning at the beginning, I want Biotech 3, allowing functional immortality. Cognitech 3 sounds about right, that's when you start having weird enough dreams that they'll make you obsessed if you don't process them. Metatech 2 is fine; I don't see this guy as being able to do really out-there social stuff. I'll take Nanotech 2 because I think anything higher would be really hard to play and keep this concept intact...no, actually being able to read gravity waves plays into concept, so I'll bump it to 4. Finally, Stringtech can be 1 (he's no deadlier than any other person), but I think it used to be much higher. 

Expertise! I'll choose Professional for my Baseline Expertise, here, which gives me three Professions rated 1, 2, and 3. I'll take Courtesan 1, Explorer 2, and Spacer 3. And then I'll take the Omnicompetent Enhanced Expertise, meaning I get an automatic 2 in any situation where Expertise is relevant (basically I Know Things). 

Import and Tech! My Tech score is the average of my two highest Capabilities, minus one, plus one for my Omnicompetent, so that's 3 (([3+4]/2) - 1 +1). Import is 10 - Tech, so 7.

And that's everything but a name. The game suggests Japanese and Chinese naming conventions for the Disciples, but given that Society is more important in this universe, I don't feel too constrained there. Let's name him Sing. It might be a Chinese name, or it might be short for "singularity", or who knows. If he ever knew for certain the genesis of the name, he's edited that memory out, and in the end, it doesn't much matter. 

That'll do it! This process was definitely more intuitive than the last time I did this game, but I'm still in no particular hurry to play it. If I were still able to go to cons and I could try this out, though, I think I would. 

Movie #780: Steel Magnolias

Steel Magnolias is a romantic dramedy starring Julia Roberts, Sally Field, Shirley Maclaine, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah, Dolly Parton, Tom Skerritt, and Dylan McDermott. It...was not my favorite movie, and I'm not entirely sure why I own it.

In the most country-fried locale you can imagine, Shelby (Roberts) marries Jackson (McDermott), and the first act of the movie is mostly about their wedding as we meet all of the important characters: Shelby's harried mother M'Lynn (Field), her hairdesser and friend Truvy (Parton), former first lady of this podunk town Clairee (Dukakis), curmudgeon and also grouch (yes, she's both) Ouiser (Maclaine; side note, the names in this movie), and Shelby's idiot father Drum (Skerritt; see what I mean? Drum?), and new girl in town Annelle (Hannah). The wedding goes off more or less without a problem, despite Drum shooting a gun into the air to scare birds away and Shelby suffering a hypoglycemic attack while getting her hair done. Oh, right, Shelby has diabetes, and has been advised not to have children. I'm sure this won't become an iss-

A few years later, Shelby and Jackson have had a little boy (C. Houser as an adorable one-year-old, later Daniel Camp as an adorable 3-year-old), but Shelby's kidneys are failing, so M'Lynn donates one. It takes, but she dies a bit later anyway, so then we get the funeral scene and Sally Field being quite naturally angry and heartbroken and Annelle, who has gone from shy and unsteady to a party girl to insufferably Christian spouting stupid platitudes about God working in mysterious ways, until the movie can't let the moment breathe anymore and Clairee and Ouiser act adorably bitchy and everyone laughs.

Fuck me, I hated this movie. It's the same kind of glurge we get in Fried Green Tomatoes and, later, The Blind Side. Maybe it's just because I've had bad experiences in the South, maybe it's because I hate their breezy, two-faced, snide, lazy, overly-Christian culture, maybe it's because there's very little about these characters that's interesting. Dolly Parton's Truvy and Shirley Maclaine's Ouiser are the only ones I really liked watching, and Ouiser kind of winds up being a dumping ground for everyone else by the end of the movie. 

I was under the impression that this movie got Oscar noms and I was grouchy about that, and then I learned that it only got one and that was for Julia Roberts, which, like, OK, she gets to be all sad that she can't have kids of "her own" and then does it anyway and dies, so that's good Oscar bait. She didn't win, she got beat out by Brenda Fricker. Anyway I hate this movie.

My Grade: D
Rewatch Value: IINIAIFWT

Next up: The Sting

Chill: Fly Away, Blackbirds

Well, it's been five freaking months, but we finally got together and finished this Chill case. This is serving as a kind of series finale for this campaign, although we're going to start another Chill game with a different group (the one that just finished Cairn, actually). Normally I would talk a little about the game and what it was like running it, but like, it's Chill, if you're reading this blog at all you're probably familiar with my thoughts on the game, so here we go.

Last time, the envoys were (mostly) in a fairly safe place. Vicki had been dropped off at the home of Isabel, the little girl she babysits from time to time (and that was menaced by big waxy dogs back in this case), which is only a problem inasmuch as she had ordered that Uber to go to the hospital to retrieve Zoe. Hector, Jennifer, and Willa pick her up and then go to the hospital while Zoe tediously signs herself out AMA (both her legs are broken, she's in a wheelchair, we should really wait to see the x-rays...nope, OK, well, good luck) and the envoys head home.

As they approach the ranch, they notice that there are a lot of blackbirds in the trees, which they quickly realize is a sign that the mysterious and terrifying Blackbird Man is about. They park in front of the ranch and Vicki goes inside to look around. She notices right away that the door is slightly open, never a good sign. She calls out for people - Beth Anne? Darnell? - but the only one who responds is Dusty, the dog (who, for what it's worth, is fine and seems happy to see her). She calls everyone else in, and they back the car up to the ramp to get Zoe's wheelchair in. Vicki, meanwhile, calls the landline to the silo.

Darnell answers, measured but obviously scared. He tells Vicki that Tonya (Mike's wife; I'm not going through the whole backstory of Mike, Carl, and the Burley Five, if you really want to hash it out read this then this) arrived, but as soon as she got out of the car the birds attacked her. Darnell managed to get everyone into Tonya's car and then drive it down to the silo, and then get everyone in to the panic room (which, you'll recall, is protected against both physical and Unknown intrusion). They're safe for the moment - a few pecks, but nothing serious. He doesn't know where Beth Anne is, though.

Vicki reports this everyone else, and they decide to drive the SUV down to the silo and check things out, see if they can find the Blackbird Man, and figure out what to do next. They grab some weapons (Vicki loads a shotgun with birdshot, they give Zoe a tennis racket to bat away birds), load Zoe back into the SUV and drive down the hill to the base of the silo. More blackbirds, and they kind of puff themselves up when they see the envoys, but nothing hostile.

They walk toward the silo, and Hector, pushing Zoe's wheelchair, suddenly hears a strange chirp sound from just off the road. He is compelled to follow it, and turns the wheelchair towards the edge of the road. Everyone notices, fortunately, and calls out to him, but he can't or doesn't hear them. Zoe bonks him with the tennis racket and he lets her go and keeps walking. Vicki, remembering that something very much like this happened to Mike right before he got lured into a field and kicked in the head by a damn horse, uses Telepathic Sending on Hector and snaps him out of it. 

He stumbles back and reports what he heard, and the envoys move away from the woods. They approach the silo door, and the second a hand is on it, the birds attack! The first thing that happens is a terrifying screech that chills them all to the bone and drives them back. And then the birds swoop in, pecking and scratching at all of them. Willa gets it the worst; she's in the back of the group and has the least protection. She staggers back and suddenly feels thin tissue in her body - the frenulum under the tongue, the tissue holding her pinnae to her head - start to tear. Blood pours into her eyes from the wounds on her scalp, and she panics (she's had a phobia about blood ever since watching her own pour out of a bullet hole, courtesy of hímin pik'i'x). 

Hector yanks the silo door open, which turns out to have been unwise, as the birds flock in and start pecking Mike and Carl mercilessly. Hector grabs Zoe's tennis racket and runs in, smacking birds away and trying to protect them, and Vicki follows, trying to do the same with the butt of her rifle. Outside, Zoe scans the area and sees the Blackbird Man standing just off the road in the trees, and points him out. Jennifer runs over and uses Heal on Willa, closing some of the worst of the pecks. Willa follows Zoe's shouts and sees the Blackbird Man, and readies herself for battle.

Vicki comes back out of the silo and shoots at the Blackbird Man, but misses. Jennifer shoots and hits, but the bullet passes harmless through him. But then Willa charges up and slams into him using Astral Attack. She knocks him down and punches him, her power disrupting his Evil Way. The birds all flock out of the silo again and swirl above the melee, and Darnell shuts the silo door. The envoys rush over and Vicki tries to hold the Blackbird Man's legs down, but her hands go right through him. He's incorporeal, which means only Willa can hurt him...and she's running out of steam from blood loss.

(Also, to break narrative for a moment, we had an interesting little mechanical thing happen. See, Master level Astral Attack prevents a creature of the Unknown from using disciplines of the Evil Way or turning tokens light, which wound up saving Willa's bacon because I rolled a botch that I couldn't correct by turning tokens. The Blackbird Man also couldn't Change Self into birds and escape. But the bad news is, without being able to turn tokens light, I also couldn't give the players any light tokens to use, and by this stage in the game they had basically ticked all their takeaways and Drives, so we were all pretty much at the mercy of the dice, and the dice were not being terribly kind.)

Willa beats on the Blackbird Man a bit, and the others shoot at some of the birds, though all this does is make a couple of them disappear (they're apparently manifestations, not actual animals). Willa falters, and the Blackbird Man transforms into a bunch of birds and joins the flock, and then swarms her again. The other envoys watch helplessly, and Zoe realizes that the Blackbird Man isn't attacking any of them, and didn't attack them until they opened the silo - it's targeting Carl and Mike and anyone it sees as a threat. She yells to Willa to stop fighting, that it won't attack her if it doesn't feel threatened, and Willa, seeking to break the attack for a moment, uses the last of her strength to raise a Sphere of Protection.

The birds are driven back, and settle in the trees. The envoys pick themselves up, get back in the SUV, and go the hell back to the ranch. Vicki cleans up Willa's wounds and talks her down (using the Calm discipline to help her mental state), Hector goes to the kitchen to make some dinner ("Got any ground beef? I'm craving a cheeseburger"), and Jennifer looks around for Beth Anne. Her stuff is gone, her car is gone, and her phone goes straight to voice mail. Vicki notes that if they didn't have bigger problems, she'd definitely make that a priority, but maybe Beth Anne left to take Jaworsky out of the equation? No one is sure.

Zoe calls down to Darnell. Darnell and the others are OK - again, a little pecked up, but not fatally. The good news is that the silo is equipped with food and water, and they could hide out there for a while if they had to. The envoys decide to clean up, rest, and talk this through, and come up with a plan for tomorrow.

They talk about Kim Comey, the unfortunate woman whose death from cancer six months ago seemed to kickstart all of this. They reread the letter that she wrote to Carl, her brother, wherein she describes what happened when the Burley Five were kidnapped - the Blackbird Man appeared and saved them. They even watch Damien: The Omen II, since the Blackbird Man's appearance was modeled on William Holden's character from that movie, but upon watching it becomes clear that Kim just took things she half-remembered from a movie that scared her and made a boogeyman (also that the first one is better, but that's neither here nor there). 

They call back down to the silo and talk to Carl about Kim's life, looking for anything they could use to explain and therefore hurt the Blackbird Man. Kim wasn't married (Carl suspects, though never really knew, that she was asexual), she worked in an executive assistant/clerical kind of capacity, she liked her job well enough, she volunteered at animal shelters, she painted sometimes. "I want to tell you how amazing she was," says Carl, "but I guess you had to know her. But she really was." Over the course of the conversation, the envoys learn that the car Tonya was driving contains a box of stuff from Kim's desk at work. Carl asked Tonya to get it, but couldn't bring himself to go through it before now.

Hector and Vicki go down to the car and retrieve the box. They notice that once the box is out of the car, the birds fly down on perch on it, but they don't bother the envoys. They bring it back into the ranch and open it up; it's full of desk decoration, pictures, and tchotchkes. Nothing in the pictures seems immediately relevant - there are pictures of Kim and the other "Burley Five", but not posed in any way that brings the kidnapping to mind. There are pictures of her and her brother from when they were young, but they're clearly new prints of old pictures. Carl tells the envoys that their parents sold their house right after the kidnapping and they haven't been back.

Vicki gets on SAVEpoint and does a bit of research. There's not much about creatures like the Blackbird Man (because he's what SAVE would call a "unique being"), but since he's so heavily connected to a particular person, maybe think of him like a ghost? There's probably something related to Kim that can be used to disrupt or banish him. Willa, the group's resident ghost expert, thinks this through, and opines that it's probably not a place or an object specifically. The Blackbird Man resembles a ghost in some ways, but he isn't one - he wanted to protect Kim, couldn't, and is now lashing out. 

One of the things the envoys find in the box is a worry stone, so Zoe uses Postcognition. She witnesses a phone conversation wherein Kim talks to her doctor (one Arun Das, whom the envoys learned recently died after falling from the fourth floor of the parking garage at the Boise Cancer Institute; Carl confirms that Dr. Das was Kim's doctor). He doesn't tell her the news over the phone, but as Kim says when she calls Carl a moment later, if it was good news he would have just said it. She leaves to go with Carl to receive what is assuredly a terminal diagnosis, and Zoe reports all this to the others. 

The envoys decide to sleep on this, rest and recuperate. In the morning, they call in Jordan Ramsey so they have a bit of Protective Art on their side, and she draws a Line of Defense around Willa. Willa uses Voice of the Dead to summon the Blackbird Man, and feels a flutter of wings as he inhabits her.

She tries to question him, maybe find a way to make him realize that Kim is gone and that's no one's fault, but as she does she realizes that the Blackbird Man isn't fiendishly, inhumanly intelligent like other creatures she's encountered (like Jaworsky). The Blackbird Man is barely intelligent. He knows exactly as much as he needs to know, and what he knows is "protect Kim". But now she's gone and that seems to have broken him a bit. Willa suddenly feels a compulsion to investigate a chirp on the other side of the room and takes a step before she realize what's happening, breaking the Line. The Blackbird Man escapes her, and the envoys consider their options.

The one thing they know seems to harm the Blackbird Man is Willa's use of Astral Attack. Hector theorizes that the worry stone might also work - why did the birds not perch on the car until after the box was gone? - so maybe that would work as a weapon if charged with the discipline? The envoys gear up, putting on the thick leather jackets they bought a while back when fighting those dogs, Vicki loads her shotgun with rock salt, and Zoe stays the hell in the ranch, recognizing that she's mostly a liability at this point. 

The five of them (Jordan comes with) head down to the silo again. Willa activates Eyes of the Dead and spots the Blackbird Man. She walks purposefully at him, intending to tackle him again, but he turns into birds and flies away. Hector checks the car again, figuring maybe they missed something, and the birds start to swarm again. Willa manages to get the drop on the Blackbird Man and hurls a knife, charged with Astral Attack, at him. It strikes him and locks him in place, and she tackles him. 

She stabs him a couple of times, and he stabs her right back, slicing her arm open pretty good. She powers through it (behold the power of adrenaline), and keeps attacking, and the Blackbird Man goes limp. He's not solid, exactly, but the Astral Attack manages to keep him from fleeing. Willa grabs the worry stone and smashes it against the side of his head, and then shoves it into the wound she made in his chest.

The Blackbird Man's eyes snap open and he screams in pain, and the bursts into birds...but this time, the birds crumble in mid-flight. The other blackbirds in the trees around them disappear as well, and everything is quiet. The envoys help Willa into the silo so Darnell can stitch up her arm, and they're left with one lingering question...where's Beth Anne?

Epilogue: The badlands of South Dakota. A young woman pulls into a gas station to fill up. While paying, she spots a car air freshener in the shape of that delightful fuzzy monster from the other Warner Bros cartoons, Gossamer. "Give me that, too," Beth Anne says, in a voice not entirely her own. 

FIN...?

Character Creation: Blood & Bone

I'm not going alphabetically and I didn't pick this to continue a "Blank & Blank" theme, it's just a short game and I don't have all day today. 

The Game: Blood & Bone
The Publisher: Arcana Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Now, see, this game I like. I don't know that I love it enough to put it on my "run me" list, but it's definitely one of those games that if one of my players came to me excited to play it, I'd give it a whirl. What's the difference between this and, say, the last game I did? WELL. 

For one thing, the graphic design. If you had asked me years ago, I would have said that doesn't matter much, but:

Battleaxes & Beasties

Blood & Bone

I don't know, Blood & Bone just seems...I guess warmer? Like the book wants me to read it? 

Also, the writing is much friendlier. Both games assume a high level of violence and lethality, but the attitude in Blood & Bone is "this world is violent, grim, and brutal and here's the in-setting reasons for that", whereas in Battleaxes & Beasties it's more "this game is violent, grim, and brutal, and that's because that's what Pappy Gygax would have wanted." The game's rules are explained up front and they're pretty simple: Roll a d20 + a skill die + an attribute vs. a target number. If you've got Advantage roll 2d20 and take the better one, there ya go. Meanwhile, Battleaxes has multiple rules' complications and they don't even tell you how they work in the players' section. It feels obtuse. And, there's no real setting info (or if there is, it made no impression), whereas Blood & Bone talks about how there's no real magic in-setting except for "the Blooded", and it's real easy to find the section on that concept and the book explains it in context. 

Nicely done, I think. Let's make a bloodybones or whatever.

The setting is detailed and evocative enough that I could probably do my trick of randomly picking a page in the world chapter and basing a character off it, but the chargen section also gives us an example campaign setup:

So that's pretty cool, lots going on. I think I want my character to be a bastard son of the current Lord Thorn, not really acknowledged as anything other than a hanger-on, but everyone knows who he is. For his part, young Vikus (for 'tis his name) isn't really interested in being nose-in-the-air nobility, but he would quite like to be welcomed back home and granted some measure of power just because that would acknowledge that they need him. It's nice to be needed. 

Oh, chargen consists of:

So the first thing we do is Beliefs. Beliefs are meant to be unambiguous and active; I want X, and because I want X I'll do Y (more like a goal, then, maybe? But the Belief part is pretty intrinsic). The World Belief is meant to connect with some part of the premise of the campaign specifically, and since Vikus's concept revolves around his relationship with his family and his status as a kind of outcast, it seems like I should include that. So:

The Lord of House Thorn is my father, but that isn't enough to make me his heir, even though it should be. I will make myself indispensable to House Thorn and make it impossible for him not to claim me as his son. 

Next, I'm meant to do an "Other Belief," but that's meant to involve another PC. I don't have any of those, but there are a couple of examples included with Beliefs so I have a some sense of those characters, so maybe I can springboard off one of those.

Oh, that's funny, one of the example characters is also a bastard of Lord Thorn, but one who was accepted. Well, I'll ignore that one since it posits that Lord Thorn is dead, and focus on Malik, who believes that House Thorn is the only thing keeping the Galloping Hordes (or whatever) from taking over eastern Tarn. He's kind of a loyalist. Let's say that:

Malik is loyal but hopelessly naive. If he isn't willing to compromise his loyalty in service to the greater good of the House, then I will do it, but I will shield him from these harsh realities. 

And, finally, we have a Self Belief. This ties into the character's philosophical core, so what is that for Vikus? 

Where is my loyalty? Am I loyal to the family that rejects me, or the people that scorn me, or only to myself? If I am to take the House, I need to know. 

OK, not bad! I think I've successfully differentiated Vikus both from the example character in the book (which I didn't realize at the get-go had a similar arc) and Edmund from King Lear. Next we choose a Complication! "Bastard" is one of the ones listed (though they're not in alphabetical order, boo), so I'll go with that.

Now we get 5 points to split up between 4 core Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Mind, Presence). I can take 0 in an Attribute, it just means I don't have anything to add to checks. I could also go 2/1/1/1 if I want a positive score in all of them, but eh. I think Vikus needs something to help him stand out, so let's go Strength 1, Dexterity 1, Mind 3, Presence 0. 

Skill Points! I get 6, and every point raises a Skill by 1 rank. Let's see, what's Vikus good at. I feel like he probably has some combat training, even if it's just from practice fighting bandits and bullies, so I'll bump Fighting up. I've never been sorry about taking Stealth, and I feel like Learned and Perception make sense, so I'll go 1 rank in the first two and two in the second two. 

And now I get three Traits, which it looks like are Advantage/Feat kind of things. Let's see now. I'll take Subtle (gives me Advantage to blend in to crowds), Traveled (increase three Skills one rank; I shall increase Insight, Manipulation, and Thievery), and Bloodsense (Blooded powers are harder to use on me; I like the idea of that being something Vikus got from his mother rather than Lord Thorn). 

So now that that's done, I can fill in Combat Attributes (since they can be raised by some Traits), so Alacrity 4, Vitality 4, Evasion 11, Armor 11 (assuming I'm not wearing any), Power n/a (only applies if you're Blooded), and Tenacity 1. 

And that's pretty much it! Let's say Vikus is just as pale as most folks from Tarn, but has weirdly light brown eyes (from his mother). He spends much of his time learning from whoever is willing to teach him something interesting, and he's learned that it's safer if he doesn't make much of an impression. For now.