Capers: Egan's Rats

Last night we played a one-shot of Capers (I made a character some years back for my project).

So here we are in St. Louis, MO, in 1922. We're in the midst of a raging gang war between the Hogan Gang and Egan's Rats. Willie Egan himself was gunned down in front of his saloon last Halloween, two of the three guys that killed him have already been shot in retaliation, and shit is, as they say, getting very real. 

Into this mix, we have our characters, all working for the Egan gang (now under the leadership of one Jon "Dint" Colbeck):

• Caleb "Crimes" Doe: Pickpocket, thief, and lifelong gangster (he's actually a cousin a couple times removed of Willie Egan, so he's got a personal stake in all this). Crimes is a Caper with the power to move objects with his mind and shunt things into a dimensional pocket.
• Augusta "Auggie" Valentine: Auggie dresses as a man and really thinks she's killin' it. She's trying to make her way in the Egan family as a con artist or however else she can be useful. She grew up on a farm, and she's not going back. She's a Caper with the power to influence others' emotions.
• Oskar Weber: Oskar fought for the Germans in WWI, but then emigrated to the States and wound up here in St. Louis, working for an Irish gang (funny how life works). Oskar is capably violent and has no time for your nonsense. He's an Exceptional.
• Claudette "Ritzy" Carlton: Ritzy is a performer, flapper, and social climber. She's presently in mourning for Willie Egan because she was his girl, or that's what she tells people. She's a Caper with a Sonic Scream and the power to manipulate probability.  

Our heroes (so to speak) are tasked with an unusual errand: There's going to be a big fancy gala in two nights at the St. Louis Art Museum. During that gala, the Hogan Gang is going to move a bunch of casks of whiskey from the storeroom into trucks. They're going to steal the whiskey. How they do it is up to them; Dint Colbeck makes it clear he'll provide men or resources as needed. The characters have a couple of days to do research. 

Auggie and Ritzy go to a Hogan-run speakeasy in hopes of ingratiating themselves. Upon arrival, they find that one of the people in attendance is none other than James "Jellyroll" Hogan, the head of the Hogan Gang. Ritzy seizes on the opportunity and makes herself look available and interested, and Hogan invites her over for a drink. Meanwhile, Auggie chats with the bartender and manages to get enough of an in that the guy asks if Auggie can drive. She responds that she used to drive tractors, but sure, she could drive a truck. The guys tells her they need drivers, show up at the SLAM in two nights and be ready to work.

Ritzy, meanwhile, is schmoozing with Hogan. He asks about the cute little black half veil she's wearing, and she says she's in mourning. Hogan asks for whom, and she tells the truth: Willie Egan. There's a moment of tension (it was, to say the least, a bold strategy), but instead of recognizing the obvious red flags, Hogan is intrigued and amused. Ritzy mentions that she's a performer and Hogan asks if she wants to sing. Ritzy, therefore, winds up on the stage at a Hogan-run bar singing to a bunch of enemy gangsters while Auggie shoots whiskey and contemplates how she got here...but they have a solid in.

Crimes and Oskar go case the museum at night. Security guard(s) in the main portion, but the loading bay doors are locked from the inside. There's also a smaller door for people, while Crimes deftly opens (well, he tries opening it with his powers, fails, and then realizes he can do this much more easily with his lockpicks; Oskar rolls his eyes, not for the last time!). They enter and immediately hide, as someone comes downstairs with a flashlight. She's not a guard; the criminals guess she's museum staff. She picks up a piece that Crimes knocked over and her fingers glimmer red, indicating that she's a Caper. It's not clear exactly what she's doing, though, and she just makes a kind of "huh" noise and leaves.

Checking the place out, Oskar and Crimes find the casks. There are 32 of them and they each weigh close to 200 pounds - no way are they getting these out by themselves. Plus, there's a bunch of stuff in front of them. Clearly this is going to get moved before the gala, which is why Colbeck told them to hit the museum that night. They check the office in the storeroom and find some shipping schedules, but nothing that's going to help them - it's all legit museum business. 

The criminals convene the next day and come up with their plan. Oskar does some quick napkin math and calculates that the barrels will fit on two trucks - more than that and it'll look like a convoy and draw suspicion. Auggie is already set up to drive one of them. If they disguise Crimes, he can also drive a truck, they can steal them and drive them to the docks per Dint's instructions. Ritzy can go into the gala proper and monitor things from up there, make a diversion if need be. 

The only wrinkle is that Auggie doesn't actually know how to drive.

Crimes spends the rest of the day trying to teach Auggie, and Auggie gets it in theory, but doesn't really have the muscle memory yet. Ritzy then pulls out her peroxide (she's a bottle-blonde) and dyes Crimes' hair, and she and Auggie make him up. Auggie also manipulates Crimes' feelings to make him joyful about all this...but when it wears off, Crimes starts weeping (he hasn't been actually happy in a long time).

The night of the gala, Ritzy shows up and is immediately approached by Max Greenberg, one of the higher-ups in the Hogan Gang, who escorts her around and shows her the art. Down in the storeroom, Auggie joins the Hogan boys, and sees that James Hogan is overseeing this personally (which is a little odd). Crimes gets into the drivers' seat of a truck, and Oskar lurks in the shadows. This works OK until he gets a little too close to the action and one of the Hogan boys spots him.

Oskar reaches out to grab him, but he clocks Oskar in the side of the head with a length of wood up his sleeve. He tries to call out for the others, but Auggie spots him first and uses her powers to make him feel depression and hopelessness. His face falls and Oskar sees the same horror and despair on his face that he saw on so many guys in the trenches, but he doesn't let that stop him, he punches the dude in the face and runs back around the corner.

By now more guys have approached, and Auggie claims that he tripped over the barrel and hit his head. Hogan tells Auggie to get back to work, and the first truck (Crimes') is full, whereupon Crimes takes off with Oskar riding shotgun.

They get a couple of blocks away when Crimes notices they're being followed. He hits the brakes, and one car zooms in front of him and stops while the other pulls up to the driver's side - and both produce a gangster who starts shooting!

Crimes drops down behind the door, and Oskar returns fire. Crimes floors it, with Oskar hanging out the side and shooting at the car behind them. They're both hit, but Crimes is a superb driver and escapes the assailants. 

Meanwhile, at the museum, Hogan goes upstairs and finds Ritzy. He invites her to accompany him to a little private celebration - it's not a glamorous ride, but it'll be fun. She agrees, and they go downstairs and get in a car while Auggie gets in the other truck (and, luckily, doesn't have anyone riding along - she notices, though, that there's a Tommy gun in the seat next to her!). She gets the truck going with some difficulty, and they all start heading toward the docks - but then Ritzy looks up and sees the headlights right before the car is broadsided.

Ritzy is thrown from the car, but otherwise unhurt. A couple of guys get out of the attacking car, and she recognizes them as Russo gang members. They approach, guns drawn, and she screams at them, hoping to knock one down, but is out of breath from the crash. Auggie, seeing this happen, stops the truck and runs up with the machine gun, spraying the Russo boy (he hides behind the car door, but is pretty pinned down).

The other Russo takes out the Hogan gangster trying to crawl out of the car...but that leaves James Hogan. Hogan slaps the gun out of the guy's hand and pounds his head against the car, and Auggie fires another volley at the gangster. Ritzy tries another scream, but loses control and all it does is make everyone's ears ring.

(Side note: I like this system, but I'm not crazy about the fact that using powers isn't very reliable. Also the system for powers isn't uniform; Auggie's Influence Emotions uses Charisma and so she actually has a decent chance of success, but Sonic Scream is just a Power draw, meaning Michelle got one lousy card to use it. It is also possible I was doing something wrong since I'd not played this before, but it's definitely something I'd need to suss out if I were going to run this more.)

That last gangster doesn't last long, though, and the three of them head back to the truck (the cops are on the way). Auggie convinces Hogan to get in the back with Ritzy, and actually manages to drive smoothly this time...right to the docks.

Meanwhile, Crimes and Oskar have arrived there, albeit on a blown tire. Dint Colbeck and some Egan boys are waiting, along with a red-haired woman that they don't recognize. Colbeck greets them warmly and has one of this boys tend their wounds, and has the rest of them unload the booze and put it on a boat. Crimes hears Colbeck ask the woman if "it" is here, and she says it's not. "Must be on the other truck, then," says Dint. "That's on the way, yeah?" Crimes can only shrug.

But yes, about an hour later, the other truck does show up. Auggie frantically waves to Colbeck and he approaches, and she whispers that Jellyroll Hogan is in the back. Colbeck grins and tells her to get him out without drawing suspicion. She goes around back of the truck, opens the flap, and has him step down...whereupon Dint Colbeck, standing behind him, shoots him in the back of the head.

Blood and brain matter splatter onto Auggie's face. Ritzy, watching from the truck, gasps - Hogan was nice to her. Colbeck, meanwhile, grins and spits, and then looks to Crimes. "That's the last of the bastards who killed Willie," he says. "Now let's get these barrels down." 

As they're unloading, the redhead stops one of them. "This is it," she says. Colbeck has the other 31 loaded onto the boat, and then cracks open the last barrel. He offers the characters a shot, and Oskar and Crimes take him up, which makes it all the worse when he has his boys pull a body out of the cask.

He nods to the woman. "OK, Switchboard, do your stuff." She touches the corpse and its eyes open. 

"Who are you?" Jaime...Torres. "Who killed you?" Max Greenberg. "Who killed Willie Egan?" John Doyle...Luke Kennedy...James Hogan. 

Colbeck nods - they knew most of this already. But then Switchboard asks a strange question. "Who's you father?" Álvaro Obregón. 

Auggie has heard the name, but isn't sure where. Oskar knows who that is - he's the President of Mexico. 

Colbeck has his boys seal the body back up, and then tells the characters to skedaddle. "You know," he says, "I was fifty-fifty on letting you walk out of here - no offense, but the less people who know, the better. But then you brought Jellyroll Hogan, and that's just delightful." Crimes kicks the body into the river, and they get into a car and driver off. As they do, they see Colbeck push down on a plunger and the boat explodes. The whole thing was about the body in the cask, not the whiskey itself. 

The characters drive off, presumably to find a doctor for Oskar and Crimes. The others might want a drink, too.

Character Creation: Asunder

Yay! The final game on PDF!

You know, it's not that I mind having a game in PDF only. It's just that I don't really feel like I own it, like it's on my shelf and a viable contender for running, unless I can pluck it off my shelf and look at it. When I come across games in PDF that I like (like this one, actually), my usual go-to is to buy hard copies. 

Now, this game I backed on Kickstarter and it was fulfilled about two years ago, and looking back on it now, I wish I had plunked down the $90 for hard copies (it's one of those annoying games with a GM book and a Player book). But the reward levels are kind of garbage; $40 for just the PDFs? $90 gets you the hard copies, but no stretch goals? Fuck off. But the game made a cool hundred grand, and dammit, it's good, so what do I know. And I'm gonna wind up spending a lot more than $90 on it because I do want the hard copies after all. Maybe I can find them cheap on eBay or something. 

The Game: Asunder
The Publisher: Gifted Rebels
Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played this, but it's the same system as Shadow of the Demon Lord and I know that pretty well
Books Required: Just the one (that'd be the Seeker's Guide)

Minor gripe: The PG is the Seeker's Guide. The GM book is the Keeper's Guide. These are not sufficiently different to keep straight in my brain, especially since PCs are called "Seekers" which is also unnecessary. 

I know I've spent several paragraphs bitching about this game, but I actually really like it. Like Shadow of the Demon Lord, it's a fantasy setting with some personality and some bite to it. It's a "world without metal," in that the gods fucked off and took all the metal with them, so there's lots of biological and bone or wooden or stone materials going on. All characters are human, but depending on where you're from you have access to different kinds of magic. The basis of said magic is something I really like: When the gods fucked off, their Essence settled and bonded with whatever was nearby, so the Seafarers have ocean-based mutations and fish-powers because Essence bonded with the ocean. There's a whole civilization that bonds with animal companions, and another that bonded with plants (but sometimes insects). And then there's a bunch of demon-hunting martial artists...the game kinda kicks ass, is what I'm saying, and it passes the Chupp test beautifully. 

It passes said test so well that I'm actually gonna roll a die to determine my Origin, because I like them all. A roll of 2 gets me...Pacari! Ooh, these are the ones that have animal friends. I'm not mad about that!

As with most SotDL games, you start off at level 0 and at level 1 would add a Novice path, but I'm just gonna make a starting pleb. 

I'll need to choose an animal companion, but I'm actually gonna wait to do that until I roll on some of the random tables because it can affect things. 

So I get the stuff in that box, I speak Trade and Pacari (the dialect of my particular tribe, anyway), I have access to the Beast Bond and Beast Aspect Essence Trees (which doesn't mean much as a level 0 character). What's next? 

Let's roll a d20 for Background: 4. "You were a huntermaster for your tribe." I can roll with that. Maybe my bonded animal is some kind of hunting canid. Fatal Flaw: 3d6 roll (weird) gets me 12: "You thrive in the heat of battle, always seeking physical combat." Maybe that's why I'm not a huntmaster anymore; I kept looking for good fights rather than clean kills. A d20 for my Beast Bond is: 15, great speed (my Speed goes up to 13). Age: Middle-aged adult, 36-45. Interesting. Maybe the craving for combat came later, or maybe it's been building for a while? Build: Average in height and weight, that's fine. Appearance: Also average. 

That's a pretty good start. I like the idea of my animal being a wolf-like creature. We'll say it's Medium, meaning I can pick one trait from poisonous, climber, or swimmer. Ooh, let's say poisonous, just because it's not the obvious choice. My wolf-creature has a bacteria in its saliva that is highly toxic (kinda like a Komodo dragon). I'm immune through long exposure, I'm sure. It is long and lean, kind of like a greyhound, has greenish fur and scary-ass yellow eyes, and a long, snakey tail that whips back and forth when its excited. Its name is Rusher. 

Cool, now I get two Professions. I can choose or roll, and I think I'll split the difference and pick one (Hunter) and roll for the other. Religious, Discipline of the Old Gods. Well, shit, that's a twist. I like it, though.

Stuff! Rolling on the wealth table, I get Getting By. So I get this stuff:

I get another common profession, so I shall take Animal Trainer.

And finally, I get an Interesting Thing, from the Objects table: A spear that nearly killed me once. Cool!

OK, so I think I've got my backstory. Serrai was an accomplished hunter and rose to become huntermaster of his tribe, but little by little the "hunt" started to give way to the "fight." Instead of setting up clever ambushes and traps, he set up scenarios where his party could battle a beast. He didn't even notice this shift until a younger member of the tribe, Galek, pointed it out and challenged him to be huntmaster.

Serrai won that fight, despite nearly being pierced through the neck by Galek's spear. But he won by having Rusher bite the poor guy on the ankle and slowly wearing him down as the poison took hold, and after Galek died Serrai realized that he'd been right - he had lost his way as a hunter. Serrai left his tribe and dedicated himself to the Old Gods, searching for a way to cleanse himself of prideful desire for battle. Once he's done that, he'll go back to his tribe. 

Serrai is about 40. He's bald, but wears a beard. He's got multiple scars from many hunts and battles over the years, but his face is largely unblemished. He carries a bone knife and two spears - one is his, the other is Galek's. When he returns to his tribe, he'll place Galek's spear on the young man's grave. 

And that'll do it! Offhand, I think Serrai's path would go Marauder-->Wanderer-->Packmaster, but there are a lot of other possibilities. 

Movie #796: Scream 3

Scream 3 is, of course, the last film in the first Scream trilogy (I think we're up to six now, but I haven't seen anything past 4 yet). Anyway, still directed by Wes Craven, starring the survivors from the first two movies (Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette) and adding Parker Posey, Patrick Dempsey, Scott Foley, Jenny McCarthy, Emily Mortimer, Deon Richmond, Patrick Warburton, and Lance Henriksen.

Sidney (Campbell) is still our Final Girl, but she's actually in less of the movie this time. Mostly it follows Gale Weathers (Cox) and Dewey Riley (Arquette) as they navigate the set of Stab 3, the third in the movie-within-a-movie trilogy. The actors of said movie are now getting knocked off, beginning with Cotton Weary (Liev Schrieber), who has a cameo in the movie and gets killed.

We're assured, by the marketing for the movie and the voice-from-beyond-the-grave of Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) that in a trilogy, all the rules change and even main characters are fair game, and that past assumptions get challenged and new backstory gets revealed. And, indeed, we learn that the killer (singular this time!) is Roman Bridger (Foley), the director of Stab 3, but also Sidney's secret half-brother from when her mom (Lynn McRee) came out to Hollywood and got pregnant. 

The body count is much higher, and the killer has a magical "change your voice to mimic anyone's" gadget, but beyond that, it actually feels like a step down from Scream 2. It's not a bad slasher flick, but it veers into the same out-of-tone silliness that other franchises get bogged down in. Scream has always reveled in being meta and trying to point out the tropes of the genre, but that worked in Scream (and, to a lesser extent, Scream 2) because it also broke those tropes sometimes. Here, while we're assured that all bets are off because it's the conclusion of a trilogy, it's really the same set up: everyone but the three leads and a lucky supporting character (this time it's Patrick Dempsey's Detective Kincaid) dies, and the larger impact of the killing spree doesn't seem to have made much of an impact. (Think for just a moment what a fucking circus it would be if a bunch of even minor-league celebrities got stabbed to death while working on a slasher movie.)

I mentioned when talking about Scream 2 that one of the problems that slasher movies have is that they need to have a way to isolate the protagonists from help. Scream 3 100% misses threading that needle. There is no reason that after Sarah Darling (McCarthy) dies and production gets shut down that the other cast members - particularly Jennifer Jolie (Posey) who has played Gale Weathers in all three Stab movies and probably has some resources behind her - do not get the hell out of LA for a while. The action takes place quick enough that you don't think about that, though the cast going to the party at producer Milton's (Henriksen) house stretches credulity a bit.

Basically, it's not a bad slasher movie, but it doesn't exactly break new ground, which is sad because it could have (and it should have). I hear good things about the reboot movies, though, so I should check those out at some point.

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Strange Days

Character Creation: The Deryni Adventure Game

"Deryni" is too close to "Daikini" in my brain, which immediately propels me to Willow and stealing babies from a "stupid Daikini". Anyway.

The Game: The Deryni Adventure Games
The Publisher: Grey Ghost Press
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

This game, included in some bundle or other that I bought, is based on the Deryni novels by Katherine Kurtz. There are a bunch of these (like, five trilogies plus a few other short stories and standalones), I'd never heard of them, and there were still new ones being published up till about 10 years ago (they started in 1970). As such, it's an interesting collab for an RPG, given that when these novels started out D&D wasn't even a thing. There's a foreword by the author that talks about how that collab came about and how she learned to GM (kinda). 

I haven't read the whole book; the writing is dull and it's the standard 50 pages of history and setting info without any pizzazz, in my humble opinion. Plus, it's not a flavor of fantasy that I find very interesting - it feels very Tolkien-inspired, what with the expansive world-building, but it feels...I dunno, regimented? Dry? Plus although it's a fictional world, Christianity is apparently still a thing, and that rubs me the wrong way. So with that stirring introduction out of the way, let's puzzle through this. 

We're meant to start off with a concept. As I often do when I'm doing a fantasy game with an expansive world that fails the Chupp test, I shall find something in the setting of the book to use as a plot hook. That would be easier if the PDF were bookmarked, but whatevs.

Well, there's a loose collection of city-states called the Connait that mainly produces mercenaries, so sure, let's make a merc from the Connait. Tomos, for t'is his name, grew up in a farming family and followed his older brother Daffyd off to join a merc company, and then his big brother wound up with a blade in his gut and Tomos was faced with the choice between going home and information his family, or following the company further away to its next battle. Tomos left, because he knew if he went home he'd probably never leave again, but he wonders if his family ever learned what happened to Daffyd.

Sounds good, on to the chargen bits. I can be human or Deryni; I think Tomos is pretty obviously human. He's a commoner, he's a merc...let's see. The game also asks me to consider long-term goals and relationship with the Church. I don't think Tomos' company gets to actual church much; maybe there's a priest that travels with them to absolve sin or whatever. I think Tomos has a very "oh, sure" kind of attitude towards faith - he's been attending all his life, and hasn't really thought through what all of that means. It's not optional, right?

Getting into the meat of chargen, I'm faced with the same question as with NAGS: subjective, objective, or Five-Point Fudge, and as with NAGS I shall do the latter. 

Right, so being human has no cost and no associated gifts. Being a Commoner kinda depends, but I think Mediocre makes the most sense, and that costs nada.

Cool. So now we do this stuff:

Well, let's do these in the order the book takes them, I guess? That starts off with Gifts and Faults. I get Income as one of my two Gifts, and for my other I shall take Combat Reflexes (Tomos doesn't want to meet the same fate as his brother). For my Faults, I'll take Blunt & Tactless (he's kind of coarse and he's not exactly in genteel company) and Social Stigma (merc for hire, and not from a very prestigious or reputable company). 

Skills! This is just like NAGS; I have five points, I put them in groups, depending on how many I put in a group I get a different spread of Skills. I have to put at least one point into Trade Skills, and I can't put any into Noble. 

Well, I think I'll put one into Trade, one into Athletic/Outdoor, and three into Weapons/Combat, which means I get 3 Fair/1 Mediocre in the first two and 1 Great/3 Good/4 Fair in the last. I may switch this around a bit, though, if that's too focused in combat.

Oh, it already is, because I want Daily Life Skills, too. OK, let's take one out of Combat to put there, which means I get 2 Good/4 Fair in Combat. 

For Daily Life, I definitely want Brawling and Farming at Fair. I'll take Riding at Fair, too, and put my Mediocre here into Camaraderie. 

For Trade...oh, wait, a lot of these skills overlap. Motherfucker. OK, let's do Trade first. Farming, Animal Handling, Knot-Tying at Fair, Fletching/Bowyer at Mediocre. Daily life: Brawling, Riding, and Camaraderie at Fair, Throwing at Mediocre. Athletic/Outdoor: Hunting, Jumping, Running at Fair, Camping at Mediocre. Weapons/Combat: Archery and Club/Mace at Good, Dagger, Dodging, Shield, and Axe (one-handed) at Fair. 

Attributes! Six Attributes, they start at Fair, I have two free levels to bump them up, but I can lower some to raise others, too. Let's see. Do I wish to lower any? Sure, let's lower Willpower (Tomos isn't the bravest of cats, after all), and then raise Strength, Stamina, and Agility to Good.

Oh, hey, there is a sheet for this game, but it's in the middle of the book where no one would ever think to look for it. Ah, well.

That's actually about it. Tomos, I think, would probably get separated from his company and join up with the PCs if they could pay him (or promised to), and he'd be good for a redemption arc or a meat shield. I picture him as played by Lucas Black, if he can shed that Alabama accent (although I don't know, maybe that's what folks from the Connait sound like). 

Character Creation: Interface Zero 3.0

June is winding down, I have a lot to do over the next couple of days, but I really do want to hit my 10 characters this month because if I do, I'm done with the games I have on PDF and I can start reading books again. So let's do this!

The Game: Interface Zero 3.0
The Publisher: Gun Metal Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game, but I know Savage Worlds just fine
Books Required: Interface Zero 3.0 and some version of the SW rules; I'll probably use SWADE unless there's a reason not to

So with the exception of maybe Vampire, this may be the game I own the most editions of - I made a character for the True20 version of this game way back in the Before Times, and I've made characters for the previous two iterations of the Savage Worlds versions. I feel like they've gotten better as they've gone; reading this one, I felt like the history was more readable and more interesting...

But actually, as I'm reading more closely, I'm not sure if it's actually better written (it's not bad by any means, of course) or if the concepts that it's tossing around are just more familiar. There's a lot of talk about disinformation, conspiracy via corporation, terrorism via meme, and so forth, and damn if a lot of it doesn't seem timely? And reading the Foreword to the book, that's precisely what the game is going for - making a cyberpunk game that represents the techno-shock of the current era, rather than that of the 80s and 90s. So I can get behind that. 

Let's see. The very first IF0 character I made was a hacker, the second was a simulacrum, the last was a street tough/cyber'd guy. Suppose we make a psi this time around? Or, what are they called, zeeks? 

The chargen section asks for a campaign theme, and it actually has some impact on mechanics, but let's assume we're doing a Cyberpunks game. I don't think any group I'd be in would be up for Protect & Serve, after all.

So first we need an Origin. There's a bunch of these - oh, right, the last time I did this, I mentioned that the "Ganger" Origin was written in faux-AAVE and it was kinda gross. That's been cleared up, fortunately; same basic info is conveyed, but without all the "I'm a white guy trying to write street, yo!" bullshit. Anyway, I think I'm going with Media Icon for my character, because I just finished playing Capes and Ignis is a fun character. Origins give you a free d4 in a Skill and then a choice of two that you have to take one or the other, but it's not clear whether that means you get that second one free or if it comes out of your Skill allotment. 

Well, I can't be here all day, so let's assume I get my Core Skills (Athletics, Stealth, Persuasion, Notice, and Common Knowledge) at d4, Performance at d4, and then either Research or Taunt. I'll take Research. I also get some assorted Gear, which I shall fill in on the sheet. Ooh, I get a car. Neat!

Moving along to Race! I can't be an android or a cyborg and a zeek, but that's fine. Let's just be Human 2.0. That gives me Overconfident, a d6 in Smarts and Vigor, and a Skill at d6 to start. Nice!

So with that in mind, let's think about concept just a little bit. My character was the 2095 equivalent of a TikToker, doing vids or streams or whatever they're called about how the government isn't all bad, the activists and whiners are just lazy or stupid, and really we're living in a paradise compared to how people used to live. And then somewhere along the way, they started developing psionic powers and getting flashes of people suffering, and came to realize that, no, there's actually a lot of evil and oppression, it's just not coming from "they." It's coming from millions of points of "they", if you will. They ripped out their TAP and has started doing more old-school recordings, and I think a fun first session would be them getting mixed up with whatever the PCs are doing. (I also think my character is largely agender, though it'd be fun to see if that changes post-TAP removal.) Their handle is Comet ("blink and you'll miss it!"). 

OK, so, Attributes! Let's bump Agility to d8, Smarts to d8, and Spirit to d8. Is that 5? Two for Agility, one for Smarts, two for Spirit, yep. That leaves Strength at d4 and Vigor at d6, but I can live with that.

Skills! I get 15, plus my Origin Skills, plus my free d6 in (something). I need to take some points in Psionics, of course. Let's just put three into that right now. Let's bump Research, Notice, and Athletics to d6. I'll bump Persuasion and Performance to d8. I'll put my free d6 into Driving, how about, and I'll put a d4 into Fighting and Shooting. Three more...let's put a d4 into Thievery and a d6 into Taunt.

Edges & Hindrances! I know I want Unplugged, which is Major. I'll take Magnet (Comet's got some fans still) at Minor, and I'll take Quirk (Records Everything), and that's that.

For Edges, obviously I want Arcane Background (Psionics), and I think I want Fame, maybe? Or Charismatic? I'll take Charismatic, I already have something like Fame via Magnet. 

I get three Psionic powers, and Farsight isn't available at Novice, dammit. So I'll take Empathy, Mind Link, and Illusion. 

Derived Traits! Parry is 4, Toughness is 5, Pace is 6, Street Cred is d6. 

And that's all but the shouting (and the description). So let's say Comet is blond, blue eyes, thin and kind of twinky, used to dress much flashier on their stream but has gotten less obvious since going offline. They've kind of kept the "things aren't what you think" attitude, but it's shifted focus, and Comet still doesn't have a good sense that talking shit about powerful people is likely going to get them shot at some point. 

That'll do it!

Movie #795: Scream 2

Scream 2 is, obviously, the sequel to Scream, still directed by Wes Craven, starring Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Jamie Kennedy, Timothy Olyphant, Laurie Metcalf, Elise Neal, Liev Schreiber, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Jerry O'Connell (plus a bunch of little cameos).

The movie starts off with two of those cameos - Jada Pinkett (pre-Smith) and Omar Epps - getting killed during the premiere of Stab, the movie-within-a-movie based on the events of Scream. From there we find Sidney Prescott (Campbell), attending college along with her bud Randy (Kennedy), roommate Hallie (Neal), very nice boyfriend Derek (O'Connell), and their rather creepy buddy Mick (Olyphant), but of course when news of the murders breaks, people start wondering if "it's happening again." And naturally it is - the killer follows up by murdering a sorority girl (Gellar) because she shares a name with one of the Woodsboro victims, things spiral from there, Randy gets killed, Hallie gets killed, the killer is revealed to be (spoilers) the mother (Metcalf) of one of the killers from Scream! (And also Mick, but Mrs. Loomis is the real driving force, even if Timothy Olyphant is definitely the more interesting of the two to watch.)

We watched Scream 2 and Scream 3 on successive nights, and the trilogy holds up pretty well. Not to say that either of the sequels captured the magic of the first one, but they're solid slasher movies and include enough whodunit elements to avoid some of the annoying tropes of slasher franchises (though not all; the main three actors remain intact, and while the first movie did a nice job of isolating the protagonists and making it difficult for them to just...leave when shit got bloody, there's much less attention paid to people having reasons to act genre-appropriately stupid here). Neve Campbell portrays Sidney as coping and putting on a brave face, but really I think David Arquette does the best job of making Woodsboro feel like it really happened. 

A lot of the humor comes from Stab and how the characters react to seeing themselves portrayed on film; we get Heather Graham playing the role that Drew Barrymore had in Scream, Luke Wilson as Skeet Ulrich's Billy, and of course Tori Spelling as Sidney (David Schwimmer is mentioned to be playing Arquette's Dewey, but doesn't appear). 

But what I think is missing is the meta-exploration of horror, and especially slasher, films. Sure, there's an in-class discussion (which was reshot to include Joshua Jackson for whatever reason) about sequels and how they generally don't stack up to their predecessors, but none of the movies they mention are slasher movies and there's no applicable boarder point being made in the same way that the "rules" of slasher movies were included in Scream. If your thesis is "sequels suck" but you're making a sequel, well, that's a bold choice, Kevin Williamson, screenwriter of Scream 2, because you're basically saying "my movie is inferior lol". 

I think the movie works as a kind of mid-to-good slasher movie. The kill scenes are brutal without being torture-porn, most of the jokes land, and there are a couple of genuinely good jump moments (Randy getting yanked into the van is one). I think it would have benefited from committing a little more to its "killer is making a movie" premise in order to be a bit more focused.

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Scream 3

Character Creation: Conquest of the Universe

No one ever belts out arias in space opera, you ever notice that? Closest we get is in Fifth Element. 

The Game: Conquest of the Universe
The Publisher: Wandering Star LLC
Degree of Familiarity: I've played True20 games here and there, but never this one
Books Required: Conquest Etc and True20 Adventure Roleplaying

Conquest of the Universe draws much of its inspiration from Star Wars, right down to the Galactic Empire complete with nasty Emperor who seized power beyond his usual remit, an order of good-guy knights and bad-guy knights, and a plucky resistance ("Star League"). There's other stuff going on, too - there are civilizations that predate the Empire, worlds that are remote enough to be off the Empire's radar even if they're technically part of it, and rumors of monsters and powerful beings out there doin' stuff. There's a lot going on in-setting, much of it would feel familiar to a fan of space opera or epic sci-fi, and all that's fine. 

Also, the text is clean and nicely readable, even if the material isn't exactly gripping (it's not bad, it's not boring, it's maybe just not my thing, I dunno, but let's read a little further). Oh, wait, I know what it is - when RPGs go too long without addressing the game part, I get itchy, because I want to know what role my character is going to have in all this. 

Character creation starts after the big long "guide the galaxy" chapter, with this kickass picture:

I like this picture because it's such a neat encapsulation of an RPG group. Like, there's the dude on the right who's like "LET'S HAVE A PLAN" and the chick in the middle who's like "WHEN CAN I SHOOT A THING" and the dude on the left who's like "I HAVE MAGIC DID YOU GUYS KNOW I HAVE MAGIC." All of these people are in my various groups. 

Is there a step-by-step for character creation? No, maybe it's in the True20 book, which annoyingly I don't have in PDF. Oh, wait, yeah I do. Cool, that'll make this easier. Still no step-by-step, though. Well, the first thing I'm told about in the True20 chargen chapter is Ability scores, but I really need some kind of concept first (since they aren't random). CotU presents 24 "major" alien races, which is annoying because I don't have a d24. Ooh, but you know what I do have? 2d12, and I'll just ignore "android," how about, because I've made android characters in space opera-y games before.

Let's see. A roll of 11 gives me...Leedi. "Amphibians, known for their incredible ability and love of the simple life." Holy shit, I'm Kermit the Frog. That's awesome. Let's check out the Leedi write-up.

OK, so my comparison to Kermit wasn't too far off the mark. They're generally capable and easy-going but known to have emotional outbursts at times ("THERE NEVER WAS A BANANA SKETCH AND THERE NEVER WILL BE A BANANA SKETCH!"). It's not uncommon for them to be musicians, so hell yeah I could have been playing my banjo in a swamp on Pod-Leed when Bernie the Agent showed up and convinced me to go to Hollywood. Fuck it, I'm an amphibian space-opera bumpkin kind of guy, just at the beginning of the hero's journey, with no particular ambition to save the Galaxy but a clearly defined sense of right and wrong and an egalitarian streak (it's one thing for people to choose a leader, but not for someone to declare themselves leader). 

OK, with all that in mind, let's do Abilities. I get six points to split up betwixt the standard D&D stats (with the modifiers above, of course), so what should my character, the little F-O-R-G, be good at? (How many Muppet Movie references you gonna make, Matt?) I think Strength can be average, so I'll leave that at 0. I'll likewise put no points into Dexterity, leaving it at +2. I don't really want to have a negative Constitution, so I'll put a point there and make it 0. I'll put one into Intelligence for +1, two into Wisdom for +1, and the last two into Charisma for +2.

So now we pick a Role: Adept, Expert, or Warrior. Well, obviously not Warrior (that'd be my character's porcine paramour) and I dunno about Adept, either. I guess Expert; yes, the last True20 character I made was an Expert, but that was 15 goddamn years ago (almost exactly, actually), and it's in-concept.

As an Expert, I get the Expertise power (I can spend Conviction for four temporary points in a Skill). I can pick a save to get a +2; I think for my Leedi Reflexes makes the most sense (or else I'd be gone with the Schwinn). I get 8 + Intelligence (so 9) Skill ranks, and then four starting Feats from General or Expert. OK, then.  

I want Bluff and Diplomacy, obviously; I'll put 2 ranks in each. I'll put one into Jump (but I get a free Skill Focus, which gives me a +3 there), two into Sense Motive, and two into Perform.

Feats! I want Assessment (I can size up an opponent). I'll take Taunt, and then to follow up with that I'll take Set-Up (so I can taunt someone and then transfer the bonus to someone else). Ooh, and definitely Inspire. I can inspire Courage in those around me (if I were playing this guy, I'd definitely take more Inspire as I leveled so I could inspire Competence as well). 

And that's basically all the numbersy stuff. I need a Virtue and Vice. I think my guy is Fair, but Stubborn. His name is Uml (/um/ followed by a syllabic l, produced at the back of the throat, almost swallowed). Like most Leedi, he's kind of a humanoid frog, with big eyes and grey and green skin (unusual for his kind, a lot of them are brown). He carries a plen, an instrument from his planet played by using the sticky pads on one's fingers to pluck loosened patches of skin on a board (kind of a mix of percussion and strings; you have to have sensitive ears to really appreciate it or be underwater). Uml is no great shakes in a fight, but he can play the dozens like no one's business and he's a good hype frog. He would be amazing in a "mistaken identity" kind of plotline, I think. 

Character Creation: Fates Worse Than Death

There's a bit in Blackadder Goes Forth where the titular hero is captured by the Germans and threatened with a fate worse than death, and then told not to escape or he will "suffer...even vorse!" To which he replies "a fate worse than a fate worse than death? That's pretty bad." Anyway, I've always thought that was funny and it kind of gets glossed over in the episode. 

The Game: Fates Worse Than Death
The Publisher: Vajra Enterprises
Degree of Familiarity: I've slogged through their chargen before
Books Required: Just the one

Fates Worse Than Death is an urban horror/cyberpunk kind of thing. Actually there's a whole page in the book where they explain the differences between Cyberpunk and this particular game:

And that's all fine. The game is overwritten and way too long, and there's more than a little problematic content, but it's the same kind of thing you get in In Dark Alleys and Hoodoo Blues, and these games were written in the early aughts. I'm still not particularly looking forward to doing this character, but it's the last one on my list from this company, at least. (Not to say that I'm necessarily whole-heartedly against anything this company does; I think First Contact is really cool and it's on my list to run at some point, though I may need to hack it into a system that doesn't annoy me.)

ANYWAYS, as King Kong says, let's get to it.

No character classes or other splats this time around, meaning that there's no Chupp test to pass. Guess I'll go find a random theme song!

That's "Clean" by Depeche Mode (man, been a while since I listened to this album). There's a couple of ways we could interpret this song. One is that the singer really is "clean," whether that means sober or morally so, that he has changed in some way and is in a better place than he was. But, of course, there's the "sometimes" that pops up at the end of some verses that indicates that this change might not be entirely fixed. There's also the possibility that our narrator is, as they say, protesting too much, that his insistence that he's clean is compensating for something, be it the fact that he's not clean or the guilt that he feels about having once been not-clean. Any of these options would make for an interesting character for this sort of setting, I think.

So let's assume my character used to be not just a drug person but a drug trafficker - not a pusher, he's not great with people and he's pretty unpleasant looking. Hell, let's say he was in an accident when he was younger and it fucked up his face pretty badly, so the initial drug use was to manage that (pain, anxiety, etc.). But as he's gone along he's seen his friends get shot or arrested or OD or whatever, and he is now trying to turn himself around, which involves not indulging quite so much...but that's easier said than done. Let's say his name is Wen Lo. 

OK, cool. Now I pick three Personal Ideals and three Worldviews. What does all that mean? Personal Ideals are things that the character has achieved or wants to achieve. 

Well, "Clean & Sober" sounds like a good one. There's one called "One of the Crowd," and I like that for Lo; he's tired of standing out. And finally, I'll say "Inspiring Figure" - Lo wants to be someone who tells his story and people are like "shit, you really went through it."

Worldviews are personal philosophies (interesting that we pick three). I don't want Lo to be a nihilist; nihilism is boring. I like "Common Sense," though. I also think "Moderate" is good (all things in moderation, including moderation). And then I think Lo tries to believe in a straight-edge kind of philosophy, but has trouble making it stick. Oh, wait, I like "Distraction" - whether Lo would admit it or not, he does spend a lot of energy trying to avoid pain and suffering. 

Next, Attributes. We've got 8 of them, and 80 points, and 10 is average, so I could split them up evenly, but I don't know that I want to. Let's start off with 10s across the board, but let's reduce Charm by 5 (again, not Lo's strong point) and raise Endurance (tolerance, baby). Let's reduce Awareness to 7 and raise Strength to 13, and let's lower Willpower to 6 and raise Speed and Intelligence to 12. So that gives me:

Agility 10
Awareness 7
Charm 5
Endurance 15
Intelligence 12
Speed 12
Strength 13
Willpower 6

Next up, we choose Socioeconomic Class. I can be Indie (as in, independently wealthy; nah), a Well, or a Street Person. Hmm. I'll go with Street Person, since that means I have no legal income. I shall be an Unborn; Lo was born on the streets to an unlicensed midwife, so he has no legal identity and is therefore ineligible for benefits (welfare is a big thing in this game). 

OK, now...character class. Oh, whoops, I guess there are classes in this game. But they're actually more like occupations than RPG "classes." Let's make Lo a Runner: a black market courier.

And now, Skills. I get 100 points, and costs are set by my class.

Athletic and Street Skills are the cheapest, obvs. Creative Skills, too. Let's see here.

Bicycling 2
Driving 2
Running 4 (I get 2 free)
Motorcycle 3
Assassin: Armed 2
Club 1
Shiv 3
Street Fighting 2
Anonymity 1
Pocket Picking 2
Prowling 3
City Knowledge 3
Drug Resistance 4
Graffiti 1
Needles 1
Street Drugs 6

That totals 203. Erm. A little over my total. Let's prune. I'll lose the first two Skills entirely, drop Club, drop Anonymity, and drop Drug Resistance to 3. Now where am I? Still too much. Let's drop Assassin, drop Pocket Picking, drop Graffiti (I hate how granular this is). Drop Street Drugs to 4, Drug Resistance to 2, Shiv to 2, Motorcycle to 1, Street Fighting to 1. So that's:

Running 4
Motorcycle 1
Shiv 2
Street Fighting 1
Prowling 3
City Knowledge 3
Drug Resistance 2
Needles 1
Street Drugs 4

That's 98 points, but not much I can do about that unless I wish to totally reconfigure things, which I don't.

Equipment! Eh. I don't get much as a Street Person, so moving on. 

Bonus Characteristics! Oh, snap, I can use these for Skills. One Bonus Point gives me 3 Skills. Let's take some Disadvantages! 

Well, Addiction (Multi-Drug) seems appropriate. Let's take Illiterate. Physically Unattractive (Major). That all gives me 22 points, which is respectable. I will immediately spend one of them on Skills so I can use the 3 that buys me with my remaining 2 and buy back that point of Graffiti. 

I'm tempted to just dump the rest into Skills, too, but let's look through Advantages, first. Also this game doesn't know that different between "affect" and "effect" and it's DRIVING ME NUTS. Moving on.

I'll spend 2 and buy Multilingual (Lo speaks English and Cantonese). And I'll spend one more and buy Stone Face (I'm hard to read). That's 18 Bonus Points left, and I'm gonna dump them all into Skills, which gives me 54 points back. OK BACK TO THE DAMN DRAWING BOARD.

Bicycling 2
Running 4
Motorcycle 1
Shiv 3
Street Fighting 2
Pocket Picking 2
Prowling 3
City Knowledge 3
Drug Resistance 4
Needles 1
Graffiti 1
Street Drugs 6
Trading 1

And that's it, kids! I picture Wen Lo as kind of a combination of Sung Kang and James Duval; skinny, black hair, massive scarring on his face - his lower lip was pretty much split in half and it healed, but not well. People on the street call Lo "Mess" sometimes, as in "yo, his face is a mess," which may be one more reason he's trying to clean up.

Chill: Possession is No Excuse

Yesterday we returned to the wilds of Alaska (well, Seward) for the conclusion of our inaugural Chill case! Here's the first half.

Amelia, despite her wishes to the contrary, rises early on July 5th and goes down to the docks - a lot of people are leaving Seward (as is typical for today, since the Fourth of July celebrations are over) but the police are frantically trying to keep an eye out for Corey West or anyone else looking suspicious. Amelia helps out as she can, and hears rumors spreading - people are still talking about a bear, but now the word is going around that it was an escaped convict from the nearby Spring Creek Correctional Facility. 

Nicholas, too, wakes up and would normally have deliveries to make, but given the exodus out of the city he's grounded for the day. He makes some coffee and touches base with Amelia instead.

Around 9AM, the mayor and police chief make a statement, releasing the names of the deceased victims and stating that Corey West is "missing." Amelia goes to talk to Corey's mother, whom she finds at her apartment. His mother, Connie, doesn't have much new to tell Amelia - Corey is a very smart, but very shy young man, and he's been hanging around with Tara Edwards (one of the now-dead teens) a lot lately. Connie thinks Corey is maybe a little smitten with her and that she's not interested, but that's not a mom's place to meddle with, and she was just happy he was making friends. She tells Amelia that Corey came home Saturday excited because he and Tara had met a few other folks their age during the celebrations, but doesn't know much past that.

Amelia tells Connie to call her if she needs anything, and goes to meet up with Nicolas. By now, Britt and Mercy have joined the waking world (Nicolas texts them both and gets back "ughmph" from both), and they all meet at the abandoned community center.

Nicolas does some looking around, and finds that someone kicked in the back door. He finds a pop can with some cigarette butts, and a few boxes of papers are opened. One of them, labeled "Seattle Symp", had the lion's share of the attention - bundles of papers are still outside the box and it looks like someone was going through it more thoroughly. Nicolas pokes through these and realizes that they're transcripts and printouts from a symposium that SAVE did in Seattle in 1998. The Symposium was meant to codify understanding and instruction in the Art; Corey clearly stole and read some of the pages describing the learning and use of the Voice of the Dead discipline.

None of the envoys in Seward know this discipline (or indeed the Incorporeal School at all), but they learn from the papers that it's used to channel ghosts and other incorporeal creatures of the Unknown. They also know that using it without someone schooled in the Protective Art is unwise; incorporeal creatures can get "stuck" in one's body if one isn't careful. Nicolas takes a few moments to secure the door and the envoys talk through their next moves.

They decide that obvious next step is to go talk to Chris Tolliver. Chris is the boyfriend of Neal Morgan, one of the murdered teens, but was not with the group of them during the attack. They go to visit Chris at a local motel (once Amelia calls around to find out where he is), and he comes downstairs to get breakfast with them, though he rather picks at his food instead of eating.

Chris tells them that he and Neal came here from Los Angeles as a graduation present from Neal's family (they have money). They met Stef, Corey, and Tara (Tara and Corey are local, Stef is from Seattle) Saturday, and hit it off. Chris tells the envoys that the original plan for the 4th was to stay in Seward and go dancing, but Neal decided he wanted to go camping with these folks, and Chris got annoyed and stayed in town. He also reports that Corey claimed he was going to "summon a ghost" with some "spell he found." Chris doesn't believe in the ghosts, but Neal did, which may have made this all more appealing.

Mercy, explaining that she was the one who wound up treating Stef at the scene, presses for a bit more detail, and Chris remembers something weird that Corey told Tara. He told her that he'd "called something" the night before and recommended to Tara that they wait until after the fireworks to do the ghost thing, because the thing he called didn't like the smell of fireworks. Chris hadn't put together that "called" meant "summoned" in this context until now. 

The envoys thank him and Nicolas asks if there's anything he needs ("...Neal."), and Britt tells him to call if he sees anything weird; grief expresses itself in strange ways. The envoys regroup and talk through what they know.

Nicolas hypothesizes that this probably isn't a ghost, given the aversion to gunpowder or sulfur that it expresses. Maybe a demon, whatever that is? Amelia thinks about spirits and notes that when Corey killed his friends, he then stripped off his shirt, shoes, and even his glasses - everything he was wearing or carrying that was synthetic. This might be some kind of spirit of the woods, then? Amelia decides to go and talk to Granny Beth, a friend of hers and sometime source of local lore for the HQ. Granny Beth is very old and has lived in Seward all her life, speaks multiple languages, and is well-versed in the legendry of the area (she's also Qutekcak). 

Amelia asks whether the information they've uncovered makes Beth think of anything in particular, and Granny Beth notes that there are stories about spirits of the land that got "stuck" in the city as it rose around them like a fish in a tidepool. If such a spirit could "ride" a person like a horse to the wilderness, it might do so for as long as it needed to in order to feel safe, then dump its erstwhile mount. 

Mercy checks around with the other first responders in the city and learns that the search party is following Corey's trail northwest from the campsite - he's traveling along the coast into the deeper woods. There's a lookout tower up there, and the nothing but wilderness for many miles. 

The envoys gear up - flare guns, synthetic nets (which fortunately Nicolas has handy), and some shotgun shells loaded with extra powder but no shot. They borrow a boat from a friend of Nicolas (and he grits his teeth - he's still afraid of the sea) and headed up the coastline. They stop at the lookout tower, anchor, and climb onto landed, following Nicolas as he finds Corey's trail.

Fortunately it's not hard - Nicolas finds footprints and splatters of blood on leaves. The envoys fan out and move south, and Britt gets separated (she walks around a big tree and finds herself cut off from the others by a thicket). She spots a body on the ground and goes up to check it out - it's Corey, and she finds no pulse.

She pulls out her radio to call the others, but her radio suddenly breaks in half. She stumbles backwards as Corey gets up and swings a hatchet at her; she dodges (with judicious use of the Quicken discipline) and tries to yell, but her voice has gone away. The others hear the ruckus in the brush, however, and come running. 

Mercy hurls a net onto Corey, and Nicolas tackles him. His body locks up - muscles taut and immobile - and Amelia touches Britt and uses Disrupt. Her voice returns and she says "Corey's dead - that's not him!" Amelia touches Corey and uses Disrupt again, and Corey starts thrashing like a cat in a bathtub.

The envoys see a murky, non-humanoid apparition appear above Corey's panicked form. Mercy pulls out bear mace - it's man-made, it smells, maybe it'll repel the spirit - but the canister cracks open. She holds her breath just in time, but her hand starts to burn. Nicolas, figuring that gunpowder might what the spirit fears, pulls out a shell, planning to make a circle with the powder, but the spirit cracks that open as well and Nicolas feels his spirit sink. He feels alone, adrift again, dying isolated, miles from anywhere...

Amelia tastes dirt and the sensation tries to force itself down her throat, but she spits it back out and warns the others that the spirit may be trying to possess someone. Britt grabs the hatchet off the ground (Corey dropped it immediately), and Mercy, figuring that gunpowder smoke is still what they know the spirit dislikes, grabs Nicolas' shotgun and fires off a shot.

The spirit appears again, but retreating and going streaky. She fires at the spirit, and doesn't hit anything, but the spirit dissipates, and everything goes quiet. Amelia Senses the Unknown, and the ringing in her ears that she often feels in the presence of the Unknown fades. The spirit is gone.

The envoys help Corey to his feet and calm him down. Mercy gives him medical attention; he's cut and bruised, but mostly unharmed. They help him back to the boat, but the police boats are already approaching (the search party wasn't far away and of course they heard the shots).

Corey is taken into custody and taken to the hospital, but then of course arrested. The forensics of the crime scene are pretty clear - he killed Neal and Tara and nearly killed Stef, and of course she's able to testify to that effect. Corey has no memory of the actions, and while he knows what he did (inasmuch as he summoned a spirit), that's not going to hold up in court. The envoys report that they found him in the woods and found the hatchet separately, but they are forced to admit that Corey is, in the best case scenario, likely to be institutionalized.

The envoys work on making their HQ a bit more secure and move the records from the abandoned community center to said HQ. They also start going through them so they know a bit more about what information they have. Some of it is useful, yes, but apparently some of it is outright dangerous.

Wildsea: To Trap a Termite

Yesterday we played Wildsea! Here's the last session.

The crew of the Heart of the Seeker has a dilemma - there's a termite-creature the size of a cat loose on their ship, and it's been mutated by crezzerin so they aren't entirely sure what it's going to do. Jakesta dresses Chamersson and Rozek down for this (Rozek grumbles that it was really Chambersson's idea to give the thing crezzerin) and they start thinking about solutions. 

They decided to build a trap to catch it before it grows again. Rozek goes to her taproom and whips up an epoxy to trap it fast. Kazera hangs off the side of the ship to find some delicious wood to bait the trap with (hopefully this thing still wants to eat wood). Jakesta goes up to the crow's nest and keeps watch - she isn't sure if that ship that was following them is still doing so - which gives her a chance to keep a bird's-eye on the ship's deck. She spots a couple of the undercrew cleaning, and one of them yelps and backs up...and pitches over the rail! 

He catches himself, and Kazera runs over and pulls him up. He tells them that he saw the bug skitter across the hull and under the voltaic runner. Chambersson follows the duct work and hears it skittering around, and opens a panel to catch it, but winds up inadvertently directing it toward the engine room!

Chambersson and Jakesta follow it there and search the room; Chambersson finds little nicks on the Leviathan Heart that powers the ship (apparently the bug was trying to burrow into it). Chambersson invokes a Whisper ("All tunnels end") and seals the room. It's trapped in the engine room, but they need to catch it quick before it makes another attempt to get into the Heart.

Kazera goes to her workshop and grabs a box, and Rozek (with some help from Charness) rigs it with the bait and the epoxy; Rozek slices her hand pretty good in the process, though. Kazera takes the trap to the engine room and Chambersson sets it, and everyone hides. 

They don't have long to wait - the horrible little beast skitters out of a dark corner and into the trap, and, stuck fast, starts flopping around desperately. Kazera runs up and smooshes it, and Jakesta points to Chambersson - "get a mop."

The crew takes a bit of a break. Rozek whips up an omelet using some of the bug eggs and a handful of bitter scald she found. The omelet is bitter and earthy, but filling, and she and Chambersson both partake (Kazera doesn't eat and Jakesta is wary of those eggs). They discover that the eggs have a similarly euphoric effect on living beings, enabling them to see and feel things normally heard and smelled. Chambersson, having eaten, now sleeps - he's had a long night.

Jakesta stays up and relaxes, watching the dawn break, and Kazera stays in her workshop and tinkers. In them morning, the crew comes together rested (and without mire), and talks over what to do about this Brittle. 

Rozek wonders if electricity will kill the eggs without hatching them, and with some difficulty the crew brings a few aboard and puts them in a jar. Chambersson discharges a bit of lightning at them and the sizzle and pop. The crew decides to let loose with the storm rail cannon on their deck and fry as many of them as possible, and that works pretty well. 

As they're firing, they spot a flash of light in the distance - another ship, sending a message in the Signalling language. The message basically means "do you need help?"'; the crew realizes that their lightning storm must have looked like a chaotic signal from this distance. They signal back that they're fine, and Jakesta, ever paranoid, signals that this area is dangerous and they shouldn't approach. The ship acknowledges this, and Jakesta, through her spyglass, can see the spray of leaves from a sawprow ship, but doesn't think it's coming toward them.

They stop when the cannon starts to overheat, and instead use the ship's magnet crane to lower Chambersson down and do some pruning. He discovers that the remaining eggs are in the very edge of the circle, and the branches above them aren't brittle, but as the sun moves in the sky it will heat (and therefore hatch) these eggs. 

The crew also discovers a boulder jutting up from the Sink ("discovers" here meaning "the crane hits it while Kazera is moving it around"). Chambersson investigates and finds that the boulder is riddled with red quartz - very hard and potentially useful for making tools. The crew continues their pruning, moving the crane around and having Kazera use her Rivert Swarm to trim the affected branches, and as night falls they have eradicated the Brittle. As Kazera destroys the last of it, she spots a fuzzy little face looking at her - a pack of lemurs emerges from the thrash and regards her curiously. She calls the crew's attention and they watch the little beasts leap and play, and Chambersson remembers something - buildings where people could go and see animals not native to their local environment. But how much control could people exert to force a habitat for a non-native creature? How could they make the world colder or hotter at will?

They take another night to rest, though the crew is getting restless (they've been here too long). Jakesta stays up cleaning her spyglass, and as she does, she sees an inscription in Highvin (a language usually found on Pre-V ruins and used by antiquarians and treasure hunters). She shows it to Chambersson, who reads a little Highvin, and he realizes that it's a dedication: "To [name], [date]", but he can't read the name and without a point of reference can't figure out the date.

In the morning, they decide to mine the boulder, and spend the day trading off shifts on the crane, hewing big hunks of red quartz and raising them up to the ship. Rozek finds something unsettling - a fossilized skull embedded in the rock. She collects it and Jakesta hears a Whisper ("The Past Abides in Stone"). The crew, having taken on cargo, sets sail. They promised Clanksburg they'd drop him off, and they want to get to a town with a big enough shipyard that they can trade their cargo profitably.

Jakesta takes the helm and Kazera takes watch, and as they sail she sees bees. The Thrash around them is full of blooming flowers, and an immense beehive sits cradled in the branches of an ironwood some distance off. Rozek has them stop so she can try and get some honey, but fails to wavewalk close enough before the bees notice her and start to swarm. She comes back to the Heart and Chambersson, making a chart, marks the location of the hive. 

They continue, and Kazera spots an immense spiral of flowers, alternating red and yellow. Jakesta sees it and realizes that it could not have happened naturally, but how could anyone "garden" the Wildsea? As she ponders this, the wind picks up and blows immense clouds of pollen at them, covering the ship in red and yellow dust. The undercrew pulls on their scarves and everyone coughs a bit, but then they all hear a big clunk from the side of the ship and it starts to list. 

An immense furry animal, boxy and muscular, has latched onto the hull and is slurping up the pollen greedily. Kazera rallies the undercrew and they take brooms and push the pollen off in a big lump, and the animal jumps off to follow the food. The ship righted, the crew sees a city in the distance. As they approach, they can smell an acidic, vinegar-y smell, and hear a high-pitched whimper like a dog in distress. Jakesta notices that all of the ships in the dock are marked in Highvin, and Chambersson spots a mothryn in fine, ostentatious clothes standing on the dock as they pull in. Clanksburg starts getting his stuff together, and the crew starts to prepare for a shore leave...

Character Creation: Sovereign Stone

Not going to be including a lot of screenshots of the art here, I think. Maybe a cheesecake recipe. 

The Game: Sovereign Stone
The Publisher: Applied Vectors
Degree of Familiarity: Oh, none with this game, but it's SWADE and a detailed fantasy setting
Books Required: Sovereign Stone and SWADE

Apparently, this game is based on the art of Larry Elmore and some of the works of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, but I'm not familiar with the source material, so reading it just makes me think "yup, it's another D&D setting." Lots of history, lots of magic, and it's not uninteresting but there's not much about it that makes me go "ooh!" There are some ideas I like - magic portals linking various points in the world that got unpredictable because one of them exploded during a war, for instance, and I enjoy the portrayal or orks as seafaring shamanic people. I think if I had players that were very keen to play it, I'd run it, but on the face of it, it's just another highly detailed high fantasy setting that my players wouldn't read. 

But the good news is, it's Savage Worlds, so chargen is quick! 

So, like I said, I like the portrayal of orks. One of the things about them here is that they're very into omens; ships tend to have at least one shaman who reads the bones, so to speak, to help leaders make decisions. I want to make a character who's a kind of shaman in training, with some natural talent but no magic yet. (The other thing that's appealing about this is that when Michelle I take trips together, we often see strange and beautiful things that we take as Signs and Portents.)

That's my race, then. That gives me some stuff right off: My Size is +1, so my Toughness will be one higher than it normally would be. Orks are fighty, so I start with a d4 in Fighting and Shooting. I also start with a d6 in Athletics, rather than a d4, and I get a free d4 in Boating. I'm Well-Traveled, so I start with a d6 in Common Knowledge. But it's not all good news. I get a Delusion (have to consult omens, which strikes me more as a quirk, but whatever), orks have a reputation for being Dishonest (they aren't, they just play by different social rules and they don't explain them), and they have a racial enemy (a particular nation of humans).

Attributes! I think I'll spread them out evenly for now, d6 in everything. I want my ork to be pretty broadly capable.

Skills! This being SWADE, I get my collection of free shit, and then 12 more points. I'll bump Boating to d6, Fighting to d6, and I'll buy Occult d6 (it occurs to me I need to put my Spirit to d8 to afford an Edge I want, so I'll have to remember to do that). I'll bump Notice to d6, I'll take Intimidation at d6, Survival at d6, Thievery at d4, and Taunt at d6. 

Hindrances! I'll take Clumsy; my guy is OK on a Boat, but otherwise he trips over his own feet. I'll take Hesitant (slower to react in a fight), and I'll take Obligation (I'm an apprentice to an ork shaman; this is the kind of thing that might not work in a campaign, but it's just me). 

And then I'll use the "points" thus generated to buy my Spirit up to d8, and to take the Recognize Omen Edge.

Pace is 6, Parry is 5, Toughness is 6 with the bonus, easy-peasy, I ain't shopping.

So! De'Puk is your standard ork - seven feet tall, big teeth, with some mottled black birthmarks on his back and legs that have been read as a omen, since they resemble the markings of an orca (supposedly the aquatic forebears of the orks, in-setting). As he grew up, De'Puk learned to read the omens of the world around him, and he's slowly learning the basics of magic, though his shaman teacher is more of the "first learn seamanship, then learn sea magic" school of thought. I think in a group, it'd be interesting to have De'Puk's ship get blown off course and intersect with the action of the campaign. It's actually pretty easy to involve him in a plot; just throw him an omen. 

Movie #794: The Shallows

The Shallows is a natural horror/thriller starring Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen, Angelo Josue Lozano Corzo, Joseph Salas, Diego Espejel, and Sedona Legge. Also a seagull and a big CGI shark.

Nancy (Lively) is a former med school student vacationing through Mexico following the death of mother (Janelle Bailey) from cancer. She finds the mysterious beach that her mom visited as a young woman and goes surfing with a couple of dudes she meets (Salas and Corzo), but they leave and she gets chomped by a shark and trapped on a island exposed by low tide. From there it's her struggle to find a way back to shore, with a seagull with a dislocated wing as her only companion.

So, it's a natural horror movie, and that means it has to thread a couple of needles. The "natural" bit of the horror (in this case a great white shark), has to be scary and threatening, and we have to see it do some scary shit (like kill people), but as dangerous animals go sharks are funny because they're only threatening in the water and the beach is like right there. As such, our heroine has to be somewhere that she's not in immediate danger (unlike Open Water), there have to be other people for it to snack on, and we have to learn enough about the character to care. The Shallows manages to do all of that, which is pretty impressive. Nancy is strong and accomplished but still hurting and flawed, and Lively shows us her terror at the situation but makes clear that she has some applicable expertise (to wit: she's a med school student and an accomplished surfer). 

The other needle the movie has to thread is the effects. Obviously they didn't shoot it on the open ocean, but it all pretty much looks real. Even the shark, which is of course CGI, fits into the world pretty seamlessly and there are some really disturbing shots (my favorite might be the one where Nancy is surfing and the shark appears in the wave behind her). 

And the other difficult needle to thread is that this movie is PG-13, which is always a questionable choice where horror movies are concerned. I think it plays a little close to the edge of R with the gore it does show, but we also get to see one of the shark attacks (on the drunk dude on the beach, played by Espejel, who instead of getting help tries to rob Nancy and steal her board SERVES HIS ASS RIGHT) from Nancy's perspective, and that's an effective bit of film-making.

If I have a complaint, it's that we get a little action-movie at the end, luring the shark to impale itself on rebar, but a) it's a pretty dope shot and b) by that point we've so firmly left actual animal behavior behind that it doesn't much matter. Actually, the only real complaint I have is that the name of the beach is built up as a secret or a moment that never comes.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: Scream 2

Epyllion: The Sword of Kebros

One of the issues, minor though it be, with a lot of PbtA games is that since you mark experience when you fail a roll, there is no way to keep people's experience gains uniform across a group. I only say this because in this game, two of the drakes have now progressed to Winged Drake, while two are still babbies. Anyway, here's last time. 

Our heroes descend into the dark depths beneath Dragonia. Zeblek is still in dris Shadowself, but OB convinces them to come up and walk with them. They eventually arrive in a cavern with a million rubies in the walls, and when Zeblek brings the lantern close it shines countless little blood-red points of light everywhere. OB surveys to try and learn more about this mysterious cavern, but as dre runs dris paw down the wall, something cuts into it! OB complains that today has just been unpleasant, between getting sucked into the ground and the snakes and beetles and now this. Toverin pulls them into a hug, and Stars joins and yanks Zeblek in. 

The drakes continue their search, and soon find themselves in front of an immense stone door, lined with an archway of pure ruby. There's a huge keyhole in the middle, and the glowy-eyed battlesnake that was guiding them floats up to the door, gives a raspy hiss...and then collapses dead. The drakes are horrified, and start thinking about what to do next. 

Stars consults dris tomes for information about the shadow-dragon, and reads some of the stories of House Kebros (also known as the House of Ruby). Much of the House betrayed Dragonia during the War of Shadow, allowing Darkness to corrupt them. It's possible that the shadow-dragon they found was one of those dragons...but that would make that dragon truly ancient, maybe thousands of years old! OB peers into the keyhole, and feels Darkness reach out and into her eye, down through her mind into her soul...she pulls back with a yelp. Whatever is in there, they can't let it out.

Sprinkles mentions that if it comes down to a choice between unleashing this Darkness on Dragonia and the shadow-dragon eating her, well, she's just one shadow owllama. Toverin, of course, is unwilling to entertain that notion, and the drakes get back to work thinking about what to do. OB uses moon magic to try and channel information about House Kebros, and the rubies in the cavern come alive!

All of the rubies (but not the ones in the archway around the door) glimmer, sending a billion points of red light out, and these lights coalesce into a dragon! It turns and speaks to OB, and dre explains the situation. Stars, meanwhile, consults dris tomes again, and recognizes this dragon as Keetsah the Chosen, one of the founders of House Kebros. Keetsah explains that dre once destroyed a mighty, powerful hoard of riches to prevent other dragons from fighting over it, and that sacrifice is sometimes necessary for Dragonia to thrive. The drakes say that they'd rather send the shadow-dragon home, if that's what it wants (though Zeblek quite reasonably points out that it could be lying), and Keetsah responds that kindness is a virtue...but it's not the only virtue.

Stars convinces Keetsah to help a little more, and dre mentions that the sword depicted in the Kebros house crest isn't just metaphorical - it belonged to a great dragon named Shoalwing, another founder of Kebros. The ruby-light-dragon fades away, and the drakes consider this cryptic bit of wisdom...and then OB wonders what dre cut dremself on? 

The drakes look back at the wall and find a sword hilt, with just a tiny bit of blade showing. Zeblek grabs the hilt and pulls, and all of the other drakes join in, unasked, and Zeblek realizes that dris clutch will stand with him no matter what (and comes back from his Shadowself!). Stars calls on the liberty moon to help free the sword, but it goes a little too hard and the sword flies backwards...and lodges in the door.

Zeblek pulls it out, and a tiny bit of black ooze drips from the door to the ground. OB rummages into dris saddlebag of potential and pulls out a jar of buzzlebun honey to seal the hole, but the black ooze spreads enough for a single clawed finger to emerge...and then another. Zeblek strikes with the sword, driving it down into the hand, but another hand reaches up from the ooze and grabs dris wrist. Toverin rushes behind Zeblek to try and pull them back, but Zeblek is faced with a choice...let the sword go, or be pulled in.

Zeblek turns dris body and shoves the sword backward, but the momentum carries them into blackness! The other drakes blink in horror, and then OB calls on the void moon to open a portal to Zeblek.

And all four of them suddenly find themselves in the air, hundreds of feet above Dragonia, falling. (Stars: "I HATE FALLING!") Toverin easily snatches Stars from the air and spreads dris wings to glide, while Zeblek and OB try to grab the sword. But they don't quite gain purchase, and the sword hits the ground and shatters into a million pieces!

The drakes land, unharmed, and converse about their options. They need to do something about the shadow-dragon (Shoalwing?), but they also want to try and fix the sword, if they can. Maybe they need to find someone belonging to House Kebros to help?

A passing dragon, a longtooth, says "I belong to House Kebros." They explain some of the situation, and the dragon, Lonnoth, picks up the hilt of the shattered sword. It grows to fit dris larger paw, and the drakes begin gathering up the other pieces...