Wildsea: The Hills Have Roaches

Yesterday was Wildsea! We're down a character, since Jakesta's player can stepped out of the game, but we gained a spidery new friend (you'll see). Here's last time.

Our wildsailors have pulled up to the spit of Stonebark, the home of their passenger, Rokko. The Heart of the Seeker breaks through the fog, and they come up to a dock, but the dock has been smashed beyond repair. Rokko confirms that it wasn't like that when he left (over two years ago, granted). Chamberssen gets on the signalling lamps and sends a message ashore, but they don't get a response.

The characters - Chamberssen, Rozek, and Kazera, along with Rokko - wavewalk ashore and spot a man in a cloak further up the spit. Rokko recalls that there's a second dock around the other side of the spit, and the sailors call back to Charness on the boat to sail the ship around and meet them (they'd rather walk across the spit than try and wavewalk back; this decision will come back to haunt them). 

Anyway, they call and wave to the "man", and see the cloak kind of...deflate a little as the figure flows toward them. As they approach, they can see that it's a tzelicrae, a hive mind created for thousands of spiders. 

The tzelicrae introduces themselves as Tztik, and them seem very glad to meet new people. Rozek asks what happened here, and Tztik says that the people here went made, became hateful, and killed each other. This, of course, horrifies Rokko, and the group of them starts walking toward town to try and see what happened. 

The pass by what Rokko identifies as an inn, but one side of it has been smashed in. It doesn't look like it was done by the weather, but rather deliberately with hammers and axes. Likewise, the island has been mostly reclaimed by trees (plants grow quickly on the wildsea, and so plants retaking civilization is a constant concern if you're not doing upkeep, and clearly no one has been). 

As they get into town, Rokko spots his house. He tells the others that he lived her with his brother; both of them were craftsmen and carpenters, but his brother was more into building houses and he was more interested in ships, so he left Stonebark to find work elsewhere. Turned out that might have been wise. The characters see occasional flashes of movement in the trees, as though there are people watching them.

Rozek starts looking at the local plant life to find something that might be causing the madness here, and Chamberssen joins her. The plants look normal enough, but when she pulls her hand back there's a huge cockroach on her wrist. Chamberssen deftly moves it away, but it lands on his hand and bites him. He reflexively zaps it, but Rozek claps it in a jar for study and the group continues toward Rokko's house.

As they go, Chamberssen starts to realize that Rokko intends to slaughter and eat them all. That's why he's leading the to the house. He slows down and puts himself between Rokko and the others; Rokko doesn't notice and walks up to his house (now mostly collapsed). Rokko calls back to Kazera for a hand lifting a beam to get in, but Chamberssen is onto him.

"Hey, Rokko, how long ago did you say you left?" Chamberssen asks, suspicious. "I will kill you and eat your eyes," Rokko answers.

Well, no, that's just what Chamberssen hears. The others hear "uh, about two years, I think."

Chamberssen crackles with electricity, and hears Rokko say "That will just make you taste spicy!" The others start to realize what's happening, and Rozek uses a whisper (The Sigh of Steam) to calm Chamberssen and give him his mind a little. Chamberssen shakes off the effects of the bite for a second, and sleep claws at his mind, an old and dangerous friend. He collapses and passes out.

The wildsailors figure out pretty quickly what's happening now - these roaches carry a venom that induces paranoia and hallucinations. Tztik, for their part, knew the roaches were on the island, but as far as they knew they're just a local delicacy. Rozek chews up some willow bark she's been saving and spits it into Chamberssen's hand to draw out the venom, but otherwise they let him sleep. Tztik breaks themselves down into spiders-form (side note: Tztik is my son's character and he actually did the math, and figured out that based on the mass of a black widow spider Tztik is composed of approximately 62,000 spiders, which is a lot less than I'd have guessed) and flows into Rokko's house, killing and eating all the roaches they find. They also find a small key made of bone, and show it to Rokko. As far as he knows, it's nothing his brother ever used.

Kazera and Rokko lift the heavier debris so they can look around inside. Everything in here has been smashed, the roof's caved in, but no sign of Rokko's brother. They pick their way back out, and Rokko remembers that when he was leaving, there was a central "meeting house" being built. If there any records, they'd be there.

The wildsailors find said building - again, smashed up, but still standing. Kazera goes in (she's immune to cockroach bites, after all) and finds three books, exposed to the elements, but still potentially useful. She brings them back out and the characters discover that only one has writing; it's meant as a log of events in Stonebark (the other two, presumably, were going to house future volumes of said log). 

Rokko reads out what's there. The first few pages are just goings-on in the town; what ships happen by, what the town needs or could trade with, and so on. But then there's a record of a man name Keru who was out foraging but came back agitated and paranoid and that night stabbed his sister to death, claiming she was going to kill and eat him. The village decided Keru should be cast to the wildsea, and so he was. But then it happened to more people. The paranoia spread, and the last pages of the record with anything on them are just smears of blood. It looks like the village never even figured out what was causing this.

At this point, the characters decide to get the hell out of here. Tztik can't possibly eat all the roaches on the island, and Rozek thinks maybe she can make an antidote so they can maybe save the people who remain, but not here. Chamberssen wakes with a start (he's still pretty sure someone wants to eat him, but he's able to recognize that as the venom talking and keep it under control, thanks in part to Rozek's poultice). At this point, they realize that the Heart of the Seeker is all the way across the spit.

They start heading through the forest, finding what trails they can. Kazera and Tztik take the lead, Kazera pushing back the forest with her rivet swarm and Tztik eating whatever roaches cross their path. Kazera also finds a wooden box, apparently for messages - there are some letters in it, now damaged beyond repair by time and exposure, but also a small box containing a chunk of amber. The group continues on, but gets a little turned around and starts looking for the path again. They also start to hear voices and movement...the villagers are closing in.

Chamberssen casts about the forest floor with his long, hooked pipe, and it gets caught on something. He yanks it back and trips a rope trap, which dumps a bucket of...sap? Some thin, smelly liquid, anyway. It splashes on him and Kazera, and he realizes that whatever it is, it's preventing his natural bio-electricity from working. Kazera, too, feels it; it's acidic enough to sting.

Tztik spreads out a little to find the crazy people in the woods, and spots one about to throw a wooden club. The man hurls it at Rozek, but Tztik catches it deftly by growing another limb. The group starts to move again, but the villagers hurl spears. One pierces Chamberssen's side, and Rozek dodges one but steps in a hole and twists her ankle. 

Kazera lashes out with her rivet swarm, and something in the woods screams in pain, but the path is visible again! The group starts heading out, Rozek propping herself up on the spear that hit Chamberssen, and Tztik spreads out and wraps one of the villagers up in silk, dragging him along so Rozek can have a test subject. They make it to the treeline and see Charness waiting on the Heart, and he and the undercrew help them all back on. 

They sail out a ways (out of spear distance), but they are in no condition to leave. Rozek has a work to do, and Tztik wants to familiarize themselves with the ship. 

Thirsty Sword Lesbians: Finally, Some Swordplay

I'm just sayin', we're now four sessions in and this is really the first time swords have come out. Here's last time.

Our daring space heroes have all appeared in the Hidden Garden on Kieron, and spend a moment looking around. It's...nice. Temperate, pastoral, woods in the distance, but also houses? Like, not mass-produced dwellings, but houses of wood and stone and mud, some fairly recent, some older. The four of them wander over to one where a woman is watering a garden, and ask her kind of what's going on.

The woman, Ila, tells them that once you get in here, it's hard to leave, but the folks here are pretty happy with it. She's lived here with her wife Rose for a while, now. Izzy tries to flirt a bit, but Ila isn't immediately smitten (or Smitten) with her. They ask her whether she's seen a couple of princesses, and Ila knows just who they're talking about - they got in yesterday or the day before, and they're just over that rise, last she saw them.

They follow her directions and walk over the rise, and see that it slopes to a gentle hill. Down that hill a ways, they finally find them - Sarina, the Infanta of Andromeda, and Malfi, daughter of the Overlord of Nero. Sarina is dressed in flowing robes and scarves, and has dark skin and long, flowing black hair. Malfi is wearing a smartly tailored suit, sports shorter hair and wears a gun on her hip. They're in the midst of a discussion, but when they see the characters appear, they quickly size them up, nod to each other, and draw weapons.

Sarina draws a pair of short swords and braces herself, while Malfi draws her pistol and fires at the characters! Hedera instinctively calls up a wall of plants to defy disaster, but overdoes it and gets knocked backward. Cleo, still in cat-form, flies into a snarling, spitting rage and charges down the hill at her. She leaps into the air and chomps on Malfi's wrist, spinning her around and making her drop her pistol, but she draws a dagger from a sheath and slices off some of Cleo's floof!

Izzy falls in lust at first sight, completely Smitten with Malfi, launches into acrobatics and flips down the hill (fools rush in, you see). She lands and draws her rose crystal sword and waggles it in challenge. Esme, likewise, runs down the hill and tackles Sarina, pinning her to the ground, but Sarina puts her swords to Esme's throat and growls "what does the Circus want with us?" 

Cleo snarls menacingly, calling upon her big [cat] energy, and snaps at Malfi's other wrist, causing her to drop her dagger. But she also rips Malfi's sleeve off her shirt, exposing an intricate sleeve tattoo. Malfi's expression gets angrier and she hurls a handful of metal objects at Cleo. They bite into her face like a thousand bees, and she back up, bleeding a bit. 

Hedera has had enough of this nonsense. She walks slowly down the hill and conjures up witch's water (like the witch's fire move, only wetter), spraying both Malfi and Cleo. She knocks Malfi over with the force of the water, and Malfi pulls herself up to one knee and tells them to let Sarina go. Esme tries to explain that they're not here to hurt anyone, and Hedera says that one of their dads sent them (Hedera doesn't remember which one). The newlyweds agree to a truce, and everyone stands up and brushes themselves off. 

The characters explain that Overlord Nero sent them to make sure they were all right. They both seem to be fine, if a little dinged up. Malfi laments her torn shirt, and Hedera offers to make her a new sleeve from woven grass (Malfi isn't really interested, but Sarina encourages this). Hedera tries to call on her wild friends to grow the grass out and weave it into a shirtsleeve...but she can't. The grass here shifts, moving in and out of Hedera's attention each moment. 

Malfi says that she's going to go find their stuff and get a new shirt. Esme offers to go with her, and the two of them walk off. Cleo, still smarting from the battle, sits down near Hedera, and Hedera sends Helix, her little pet blobtopus, to comfort Cleo and dry her off a bit (and offer some emotional support).

Unfortunately, Cleo is a cat, and has a cat's instincts. The small creature on her head is edible, and she paws at it. Helix is too fast and zips over to Hedera, and Cleo pounces at her and tries to eat the little thing. Izzy, thinking fast, draws her sword and uses it to catch the sun, making a little light for Cleo to chase, and manages to talk her down.

With Cleo calmer, Sarina looks at Izzy's sword and asks about where she got it. Izzy hasn't really used it all that often, so Sarina offers to spar (Izzy asks if it's OK if this fight is more meaningful to her than to Sarina, and Sarina doesn't much care either way).

They two of them fence, and all is well until Izzy misses a thrust and stabs Hedera in the shoulder! Izzy is horrified, and Sarina admonishes her to always check her backdrop when fighting. But Hedera is upset, and tells Izzy that she doesn't much like her at the moment, and then walks off to find Esme. Izzy starts to cry and berate herself for being selfish, and Cleo tries to offer emotional support, but winds up effectively calling Izzy an idiot who doesn't think before she acts. Izzy, now really devastated, starts to cry harder, and Sarina puts her arm around Izzy's shoulder (glaring at Cleo) and leads her away. Cleo is left alone, and confused.

Meanwhile, Esme walks with Malfi and the two of them chat. Esme asks Malfi a few questions and starts to figure her out. Specifically, she gently presses on whether Malfi wants to live here, and learns that Malfi would be much happier in a bigger city (like her home on Nero), but she's willing to give that up to live here with Sarina. 

Sarina leads Izzy, still sobbing, further into the garden and they find a great big stone oven. Despite Izzy's initial fears that she's smelling bread because she's having a stroke, it turns out that an older lady named Nicolette is baking bread. She sits Izzy down and brings her bread and butter, and the three of them sit while Izzy eats basically the whole loaf and talks about how she's only ever looked out for herself and she doesn't think ahead and she's never had real friends, just lovers. 

Cleo, meanwhile, wanders away, feeling a bit upset that she hurt Izzy with her bluntness (which helps her transform back into her human form). She comes upon a glass structure, like a greenhouse, but it has no door and the glass is frosted so it's hard to see inside. Something inside is glowing, though, and Cleo, intrigued, changes back to cat form and tunnels under the wall. Inside the building, she finds a strange object - a rectangular solid composed of several thin sheets of metal. She bats at it a bit, but is too short to try and pry a sheet off.

Hedera, on her way to find Esme, sits down and awakens the wild. She wants this place to defend the princesses from anyone who wishes them harm, and she manages to do it, but in talking with the plants here she can't ever quite get a fix. It's like their voices are cutting in and out, and Hedera hates it - nothing is real, everything is shifting out of phase. She comes upon Esme and Malfi and tries to explain what happened to her shoulder, but her explanation misses out a few details and kinda makes it sound like Sarina and Izzy weren't exactly "fighting" in the conventional sense. They start heading back to find them, but when they get back to the site of the fight, no one's there.

Esme tracks them, but winds up at the glass building with Cleo. Hedera crawls into the hole Cleo made and, seeing the object, grabs it, but it becomes intangible and slips through her hand. Hedera reiterates her dislike for this place, and they leave the building and go searching for Izzy. 

At the oven, Nicolette comforts Izzy and challenges her newly self-deprecating attitude. It doesn't matter, she says, if Izzy has never done anything useful (and she suspects that's not the case) - tomorrow she could. That's up to her. 

The others arrive, and Malfi is initially prickly but when she learns that Sarina and Izzy were sparring, she calms down. Izzy, however, is still distraught, and Esme finally grabs her and kisses her, despite her protests that she's not good enough for anyone, let alone Esme (Esme, for her part, can only smile sadly - Izzy still doesn't know what she did for the Circus). Esme takes the opportunity to talk with Sarina, and after a bit of figuring out, learns that Sarina, like Malfi, isn't really keen to live here but is willing to do it for her wife. Esme suggests that there are other places with a bit more civilization that they could disappear to, and that the characters are happy to help.

But that brings up another problem - the Garden doesn't let you leave. Nicolette tells them that she's heard that some people can leave the Garden at will (Hedera thinks she could do it), but it's pretty rare. Beyond, there are three ways to leave - the Sad Way, the Dangerous Way, and the Worst Way. Hedera, still upset from her experiences and especially by the shifting nature of this place, wills herself to leave by way of illustration, and vanishes.

The others kind of blink, and Nicolette muses that she isn't sure where Hedera would end up - she doesn't know how the space in the Garden corresponds to the planet Kieron. She does know, however, that there's an old fellow who's been here longer than she has (and she and her partner have been here 30 years!). He's pretty knowledgeable about this place, and is in fact where she heard about the "three ways" to leave.

The group of them head down the path to see him, hopeful that one of those methods to get out of the Garden will work.

Meanwhile, back on Kieron, Hedera is overjoyed to be able to hear the grass again, but it's saying "DANGER! DANGER!"

Hedera looks around, and realizes she's surrounded by Lunar Loyalists. Standing in front of her is Tranquility, and her silver gauntlet has extended out into a long, pointed blade, which she pokes under Hedera's chin. "You stole my crew," she says icily. 

Character Creation: Extreme Meatpunks Forever

You know, I started reading this game before Trump tried to beat Hitler's "dismantle democracy" record, but man, I'd very much like a meat mech about now. 

The Game: Extreme Meatpunks Forever
The Publisher: Sinister Beard Games
Degree of Familiarity: None, but it's PbtA
Books Required: Just the one

Extreme Meatpunks Forever is based on some video games of the same name and...oof, how to describe it. I'd put it in the same category as Red Markets and Between Clouds and EcoPunk 2044 in that it commits to its premise really hard. Said premise is basically that the continent of Meatworld (also the name of the planet, also the nation, for which the author actually apologizes in the book) is, in various places, mined for meat-mechs. One wears a meat-mech and can fuck shit up whilst doing so, but the meat-mech and you form a symbiosis. The mech can go feral while you're wearing it if you die or are critically injured, and then it just constantly acts on your last thoughts. 

But meat-mechs and the history of Meatworld generally are a lot of extended metaphor for American (USian, that is) history and how it's inextricable from the violence and bloodshed that enabled it. 

(Side note: Realizing that so much of American "exceptionalism" has less to do with us being awesome and more to do with always having an easily exploitable slave class was a big paradigm shift for me.)

Anyway, all of that wrapped in meataphor, if you will (and lordy, the meat puns come thick n' juicy around here) and with a hefty dash of "be gay, do crimes" and punching fascists of various stripes, which of course the world could use more of. 

So let's make a character. As is so often the case in PbtA games, we start with a playbook. I'm torn between Bright Child and Weird-o-the-Wisp, but I think I'll go with the latter because the former reads too much like a religious zealot (that's an oversimplification, but I'm just doing chargen here). 

(One criticism I have of this very interesting game is that the playbooks are a little inaccessible. Not unplayable or uninteresting by any means, but they don't really pass the Chupp test because I'm not reading them and thinking "ooh, I know exactly how I'd play that.")

Anyway, the Weird etc uses magic and is all witchy n' stuff. The playbook has a lot of strange and open-ended magical powers, which I enjoy. I'm gonna say my Weirdo's name is Meninge (as in meninges, the layers protecting the brain). Male, he/him pronouns, just keeping that simple today. Meninge dresses in a black outer layer, probably a long coat, boost, black shirt, black mask, but the clothes underneath are white or gray (his underwear is red, thanks for asking). He's got a wide-brimmed hat and he's very flowy and swirly in his movements.

Stats! I get -1, 0, +1, +2 to put in to them. What am I likely to be rolling on for Meninge? Well, Chill is what I role for my wizard move, and I can leaning toward putting the +2 there anyway. I'll put the -1 in Attention - Meninge is easily distracted by things Beyond Our Ken and also French Fries. I'll put the +1 in Awkward (Meninge is fun to talk to) and that leaves the 0 in Guts.

As mentioned, I get wizard so I can do magical shit, and then I get two more moves from my playbook. Let's take weird fucky dreams and...hmm. I like toiling, troubling, the usual, but the mechanical effect is super fuckin' wibbly (and frankly as a GM I wouldn't like it, since it's basically "bad stuff has less of a chance of happening to you" - like what am I supposed to do with that).  Let's instead lean into the "visions from beyond" and take intuition. 

The only other thing I'd do with the character right up from is Love (this game's version of Strings), but I ain't got no players, so...oh, hang on, need to make my mech!

So I picture Mengine's mech as largely sinew and cartilage, much skinnier than other mechs. When he's in the mech, they're called CSF. Starting with stats, I get +2, +1, +1, -1. I think either Corpus or Viscera gets the negative...oh, it's gotta be Viscera. Nerve can get the +2, that means Sinew and Corpus get +1. 

I get to pick items from some lists to describe the mech in each stat. Each stat gets [score] + 1 of them. Let's start with Corpus! I think tight, smooth, and white. For Sinew, we're describing the link between the mech and Meninge, so let's say it's focused, stretched, and brain-zappy. 

Over with Nerve, which describes the sensory apparatus and limbs of the mech, let's take coppery, predatory, rubbery, and fluid. And, finally, for Viscera (I only get 1 here), let's take tubes. 

Now I get options, which are basically little upgrades or extras. Same rules as descriptions, so I get a bunch of these. I get three under Corpus, so let's take psychic steak (if I get hurt, I get insight into what did it), byrd bones (I am super fast in battle), and excellent seasoning (I can describe how I look super tough to ignore the first hit in a fight).

For Sinew (once again, 3), I'll take translucent glass spinespike (if I fail the move to synch up with my mech, I can choose to succeed but everyone around me can see some of my memories), organization quickeners (affects how I use the get organized move while in the mech, trust me it's appropriate), and neuron fibers (I roll with advantage to synch up with my mech). 

Nerve! Ugh, I've got so many here. Let's take thousandfingers (my mech has multiple tendril-like fingers so I can do multiple things at once), brainstems (once a session I can bump a result on Nerve up by one), glowteeth (when I speak as the mech I can hypnotize others), and delicate turnspikes (I have bone spikes in my arms I can use to stab stab stab). 

And, finally, one option for Viscera. If I take scabbed-over guts and raise my Viscera by one, do I get another one? Let's assume I would. Do I wish to do that? I don't think I do. I will take invisible scars. CSF is, as mentioned, outwardly made of cartilage and therefore it's hard to see when it's injured.

And then I get a weapon! I could make my own up, but I like screaming mouth vents, actually.

That's actually it, because I don't start with any pulses. So Meninge is ready to bash some fash!

D&D: Victory at the Enclave

Tally-ho! Here's last time.

Our heroes are at the Enclave of Thorns, wherein a dangerous new philosophy - Ghrian Trí Duillegoa - has taken hold. It's dangerous, of course, because it espouses leaving the borders of Abhaile, which is a no-no. Besides, Orcan, the founder of said philosophy, did leave the border, and came back with a voice in his head - always concerning.

And now Orcan has stolen the Abyssal Scroll, the one that described creating gnolls from new animals, and is attempting to flee!

Dara has raised the alarm, and Zook is with her. Clara is nearby in the woods, foraging, and Aisling and Fearg were just chatting with Sionnach (the warden of the Enclave) and Riona (the Archdruid). Everyone rushes to intercept Orcan - Sionnach and Dara both cast an entangle spell to trip him up, but he seems able to walk right through it with no impediment.

Zook, however, throws a blindness spell on him, and his eyes go milky white. Clara fires her bow at him and sticks the arrow in his shoulder. He turns, and screams one word: "Izzuthan!"

A pillar of fire erupts from the ground, revealing a beautiful young man with immense bat-like wings astride a black horse with a fiery mane. Aisling bites her lip (she's a sucker for a pretty face, and this creature, while clearly demonic, is very pretty), but Clara doesn't hesitate. She rushes in and punches the demon (it's actually a cambion). Sionnach calls a lightning bolt down and strikes the cambion and the horse, and Dara enchants her staff and Riona does likewise, and they close on the nightmare, but it body-checks Riona and knocks her down (and somewhere across the multiverse, another evil horse whinnies in respect). Zook, figuring it worked once, casts another blindness spell on the cambion, and it goes blind! 

Aisling throws a cloud of daggers around Orcan, and yells at him to "Drop the scroll!" Over the quiet metallic sounds of the daggers and the sound of chaos as druids react to all this, she hears him respond "I CAN'T!" Aisling finds this a strange thing to say - does he mean he physically can't, or he won't...? 

Orcan casts a spell, but with no noticeable effect. Zook tries to target him with a scorching ray, but when he does he sees a shaft of sunlight around Orcan that grows so bright he can't focus. Confused, Zook throws a magic missile at the demon instead.

Aisling drops the cloud of daggers, and Fearg rages and charges in with his war pick. He strikes at Orcan, and Orcan responds with a thunderwave - it blasts Fearg back and rings Aisling's bell.

Meanwhile, Clara is engaging the cambion hand to hand, but every time she strikes it there's a small shower of sparks, as though he is protected from such mundane attacks. Dara whacks him with her shillelagh, though, and that seems to work just fine. Zook considers hurling fire at them, but (rightly) figures fire isn't going to do much to a demon, so switches back to magic missiles. Whatever spell was protecting Orcan is gone now, so he targets him. Three darts slam into his back, and Orcan falls dead.

Zook is taken aback - he didn't really mean to kill him. Aisling rushes in and grabs the Scroll, and holds it up, and the cambion turns and speaks to her in Abyssal. Dara isn't exactly fluent, but she understands it. It's asking for orders. She relays this to Aisling, and Aisling yells "GO HOME!"

The cambion nods, mounts the nightmare, and both of them vanish.

Everyone takes a breath. Aisling explains what happened to Riona and Sionnach, and they figure this is pretty good evidence that whatever Orcan brought back from beyond the borders, it wasn't benevolent. They order the scroll to be burned (Aisling is happy to get rid of it, it's already turning her fingers red and itchy).

A bit later, Riona approaches Dara when she's alone, and says that Sionnach has advised that the druids who followed Orcan be banished. Dara thinks that's a little extreme, and Riona agrees. 

That night, the druids build a fire and destroy the scroll (the heroes swear they can hear a faint scream...). She explains that Orcan left the border and brought something dangerous back, and while they're not sure what he intended to do with the scroll, it was clearly evil and demonic in nature. She says that the druids who followed his religious teachings will be allowed to stay, but they need to make a re-dedication to the druidic faith and the Enclave of Thorns.

Most of them nod and meekly agree, but Nuada (whom you'll recall is one side of the love triangle with Orla and Dara), stands up and and disagrees. He says that this is wrong - Orcan's philosophies never involved demonic or anything like demonolatry, and something terrible happened today. And with that, he turns and leaves. 

(As Nuada passes by the heroes, Zook says quietly that he agrees with one thing: Something terrible happened today.)

The meeting breaks up, and everyone goes their separate ways to rest and talk. Belle and Keenan touch base with the characters (they arrived too late to be part of the fight). They ask what the characters are going to do next, and Clara suggests they try and figure out where the Abyssal Scroll came from - gnolls aren't generally intelligent or magically adept enough to make such a thing. Belle and her people are going to head northeast, maybe head out towards Cian. They decide they'll all travel together for a while (if there are more gnolls, they want to fight them together!). 

Later that night, Dara sits next to Orla to comfort her. Orla says that whatever happened today, she agrees with Nuada - this was all highly out of character for Orcan. She's known him for years, and while he's always been a bit of a maverick, that's a far cry from being a demon worshiper. "There's something broken about this," she says.

Dara nods, but doesn't have much to offer in response. She knows what she saw. She tells Orla to be safe and stay here in the Enclave, and she has to follow her own path. Orla kisses her, and hopes that one day her path will lead her back here.

Chill: Gruesome Discoveries

You hope for the best, sometimes that's not what you find. Here's last time.

The envoys have arrived at Mountain Ridge ski resort. Nicholas Failor and Mercy Williams are working on Nicholas' plane, hoping to get it ready to fly before dark, while Amelia Rostov and Britt Lepus are riding a Lite Trax up to the hotel proper. 

Please excuse the crudity of this map, I didn't have time to draw it to scale and also my artist skills suck.

 

Amelia and Britt go into the lobby and Amelia explains their situation - they flew in to look for a friend of theirs who'd gone missing and might be here, but their plane had mechanical trouble and they might need to stay. Any rooms?

The very nice receptionist says there's a suite available, but when she quotes the price Amelia kind of blanches. She asks if there are any other options, and the lady says she'll talk to the manager. 

Meanwhile, Nicholas figures he can either work on this thing into the night and get it fixed, or he can do as much as he can tonight and fix it in the morning. Either way they aren't leaving tonight. Nicholas, being the man that he is, is all ready to stay and work on it until it's done, but the employee at the dockhouse comes out and tells him there's weather coming in. There's already a craft advisory, and the worst of it is going to be a blizzard, probably coming in an hour or two. It might swing west and miss the bay that they're in, but then again it might not.

Nicholas takes the hint, does as much as he can, and the dockhand helps him cover the plane before running him and Mercy up to the hotel. In the interim, Amelia has learned that the hotel can offer them a room with two queens, and roll in a cot - it's still pricey, but much less than the suite. 

The envoys regroup in the room and decide to split up. Nicholas knows someone in the kitchen (he runs deliveries here from time to time), so he goes to talk to him (Mercy tags along, I think). Britt and Amelia go to the hotel bar to try and get a vibe for this place and the conference attendees. 

Some of the attendees are coming back from skiing, and Britt and Amelia spot a lot of new, but high-end, ski gear (but also some high-end, but older, ski gear, which indicates that some of these folks are actually avid skiers). Britt sits at the bar and puts out "lonely" vibes, while Amelia posts up at a booth and gets chatty with passers-by. Nicholas, meanwhile, goes into the kitchen and talks with Morrie, the executive chef. Morrie looks at the picture of Roger and doesn't recognize him, but shows the pic around and actually gets a hit. One of the kitchen staff remembers seeing Roger getting on the Lite Trax to the ski slope this morning before he came on shift.

Nicholas relays this to the others, and, now knowing that Roger is here somewhere, they start asking around. Britt gets the attention of a dude in a nice suit and he chats her up; she claims to be local (from Seward), here with some friends, and asks if he's seen Roger. Amelia, likewise, chats to various congoers. Between the two of them, they learn that Roger was spotted dipping into a staff entrance yesterday (the witness assumed he worked here). One of them remembers his headphones. Another recalls that he was on the ski slopes today, but didn't ski.

Since a couple of folks recall him on the ski slope, Nicholas and Mercy convince one of the staff to take them up there (since no one they've talk to remembers him going back). On their way up the ski lift, though, Amelia talks to someone who remembers him getting a talking-to from a ski instructor. She didn't hear what was said, just that Roger seemed to be getting scolded, and then he got back on the ski lift. This would have been around noon.

Nicholas rolls his eyes, but figures since they're already up here they can take a look around, maybe use Postcognition to see what the "scolding" was about. The ski lift arrives (and the staff guy notes that the weather is worsening). Mercy and the employee look around the platform and call for Roger, while Nicholas notices a staircase going down to a second level. He descends the staircase, looking for a staff office that might have incident reports, staff schedules, something useful. He finds...more than that.

The bottom of the staircase and the railing are splashed with brown liquid. Nicholas calls for Mercy and she comes and takes a look. She's not a blood spatter expert, but she recognizes what this is - and it looks like arterial spray. She looks over the railing, and far below, she spots a body, rapidly being covered in snow, clearly dead. 

She reports this to the staff guy, and he calls it in to get police and rescue out here (though he also recognizes that there's nothing they can do except recover the body). Nicholas, meanwhile, uses his Postcognition discipline, and immediately wishes he hadn't. He sees Roger standing at the bottom of these stairs. He leans toward the staircase and yells "Kelvin!" A man in ski gear at the top of the stairs hears, says "yeah?" and then descends...whereupon Roger leans out of the shadows and stabs him in the throat. He pushes "Kelvin" over the edge, wipes the blade of his knife and sheathes it, and then takes a snapshot of the blood spatter with his phone. 

Nicholas, staggered a little by this, asks the staff guy to open the maintenance door so he can get out of the cold for a minute. Inside, he finds a shift schedule, and learns that an instructor named "O. Walker" was working here at noon, meaning that's probably who scolded Roger. He goes back up the stairs and puts this grisly story into the group chat. Amelia is horrified, especially since no matter how this goes down, she'll have some terrible news for Granny Beth. The staff guy finishes his call, but has learned that the weather is moving in and they need to head down the mountain now. Also, the police won't be able to get here until the weather breaks; the wind is too much for a helicopter or plane to get into the bay or over the mountains. 

Amelia and Britt figure they need to figure out who this "Kelvin" (maybe "Calvin?") fellow is, so Amelia goes to the registration desk for the conference and talks to a very bored-looking woman. Amelia tells her that her boss isn't sure if he picked up his badge or not; could she check her list for "Kelvin?" The woman skims the list and finds "Kelvin Walsh" checked in on Friday; Amelia asks to take a picture because "he might not believe me, you know how bosses are" (the woman, stuck on registration duty on day two of a conference, commiserates). 

Mercy gets on her phone and starts looking for info about Kelvin Walsh. She finds his social media - he's a claims adjuster out of Los Angeles, bit of a clothes horse, bit of a bro, would-be pickup artist...but the interesting bit is that he's got a picture up from the Crab Pot. It's tagged "In a shitty local bar before the conference with my buddy Aaron Lang!" Aaron Lang, you'll recall, was the guy who pressed charges on Roger. 

Britt takes that photo and starts circulating in the bar again, pretending that these guys walked out on a bill. She finds a woman who was chatting with Aaron last night, near the western door of the main building. He went out that door to smoke, and never came back - she assumed he blew her off. Amelia and Britt go outside near that door to look around. There are three buildings, the main building, Seward Building, and Scott Building. They note that the sidewalks leading between buildings are shoveled and salted regularly, but the wind has blown drifts up against the side of the building. Amelia notes that one of the drifts is rough on the top, almost like someone threw snow on it, and she pushes her cane into it...and finds something solid. She brushes the snow away, and finds the body of Aaron Lang, his throat slashed. 

Amelia recoils and turns away, and Britt has Mercy and Nicholas (just arriving back to the hotel) meet them. Mercy checks the body and finds that his throat was cut by something very sharp by an assailant basically on top of him. He's got defensive cuts on his hands; it looks like someone tackled him and cut his throat, then covered him in snow. Nicholas considers using Postcognition again, but really they have a fairly good idea of what happened, and maybe even why. But it's not really in character for Roger to have followed these guys all the way out here to kill them. Did he just snap? Has this been building a long time? Or did Roger fall under Unknown influence? The envoys consider that at no point have they sensed an Unknown presence. They still need to find Roger, of course, but they each consider whether it would better or worse for him to be possessed.

Amelia flops in the snow (so she can claim that she slipped and found the body that way), and she and Britt go to the front desk to report it. Mercy and Nicholas go back to talk to Morrie, and find Morrie addressing his staff: "Look, until I'm told otherwise, dinner is still happening, so get back to your stations!" ("Yes, chef!") 

Nicholas asks who "O. Walker" is, and Morrie confirms that he's a ski instructor, Olson Walker. He can probably be found in the Scott building where staff is housed. Nicholas and Mercy head over there, and find the whole place in a bit of an uproar...

...at the front desk, Amelia reports what they found. The receptionist lets slip that another body was found in the penthouse, but asks Amelia to sit down so she can talk to security. A moment later a security officer arrives and takes a statement, but confirms they found the body and thanks her for letting them know. He also tells them both to please stay in the lobby, they're going to be conducting a room-to-room search.

Back at the staff building, Nicholas and Mercy find Olson (big ol' bearded fellow; if your first name is Olson you're required by law to have a beard, I think). Olson confirms that he talked with Roger earlier today. A woman approached him and said that Roger was staring at her boss (Olson didn't catch the assistant's name, but her boss' name was Ginny) in a kind of creepy way. He took Roger aside and gently explained to him that he was making someone uncomfortable; Olson is of the opinion that Roger didn't even know he was doing it, and he isn't sure that Ginny ever noticed. Roger got embarrassed and went back down the mountain. 

At this point, the PA in the building kicks on and tells all staff members to assemble in the Seward Building ballroom. Nicholas and Mercy head out and go back to the lobby, where they meet up with the others. A moment later, the PA kicks on again and all guests are asked to assemble in the lobby - the hotel is in lockdown. 

The envoys circulate and listen to the chatter. They learn that a total of four bodies have been found - Kelvin Walsh in the mountains, Aaron Lang in the snowdrift, Taylor (the executive assistant) in the penthouse, and Ginny (the exec) in another snowdrift below the penthouse balcony. Still no sign of Roger, and Nicholas notes that if he's out in the snow, he's probably not going to last the night...and maybe that's better? "Sure, but you don't have to tell Granny Beth," says Amelia. 

They figure he might be hiding the motor pool, and of course Britt can get in, but she gets spotted walking out the door and gently told to come back. Too much scrutiny, they'll have to check that place later. Mercy goes to a staff member and says she's an EMT, maybe she could help? They send her up to the fourth floor where they're checking rooms, just in case anyone needs medical assistance. 

She talks with the folks up there and learns that the exec woman (Ginny) was thrown over the balcony into the snow drift, and her assistant's body was found in the bathroom. They don't give details as to the manner of death for either woman, but Mercy guesses a knife was involved. She asks whether anyone's checked the motor pool and the dockhouse, and the folks she's with say that they haven't yet - they're accounting for the guests at the moment (she also realizes that no one here is trained for this kind of thing). And then they open room 452 and find another victim.

The man's name, according to his badge, is Tim Barry. His body is in the bathroom, and Mercy notes multiple stab wounds in the chest and neck, as well as defensive wounds on the hands. She also realizes that he was killed in the main room and his body lay on the floor for a while (enough to make a good-sized pool of blood), and then dragged into the bathroom. The shower also shows signs of use; she guesses he's been dead a few hours.

The other envoys wait in the lobby while the staff checks the rooms, and based on Mercy's reports, decide they really do need to look in the motor pool. They slip past the notice of the staff ("just gonna get some air"), and walk over to the motor pool, whereupon Britt uses Skeleton Key to open the door. 

Amelia walks in first, and Senses the Unknown...and we'll find out what she senses next time.

Character Creation: Necrobiotic

Sounds like macrobiotic, but like, more dead.

The Game: Necrobiotic
The Publisher: Penny for a Tale
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one, and perhaps a deck of cards? 

This game kinda breaks my heart, and not in a way I see often. It's got a really cool, evocative setting - it's more or less post-apocalypse. The world's population dropped in the 2010s, various calamities ensue, eventually having a workforce (or rather, not having one) becomes the most serious issue because there are very few able-bodied people left to, well, work. So the science to reanimate dead bodies becomes available, and now there are constructs running about. The horror of the setting (indeed, why I think it's a horror game rather than a PA game in my completely informal classification system) comes from the idea that you might lose someone you love and then see them - their animated corpse, rather - keeping someone's house the next day. All kinds of questions about the soul, where life ends and slavery begins, and of course the idea that there are a few cities left but much of the world has been left to rot. And, of course, some potential to hit some of the same themes as Promethean, which as the only consistent line developer that game ever had makes me happy. 

Also, the system looks fun. As always, the way to judge a system is to play it, but this one is card based and involves playing cards to buy off consequences from the GM as well as to achieve what you want. The given examples are mostly combat, but it still looks interesting and it's not fucking d20 at least.

But...I have no idea what you'd do in this game. I didn't even know if you were playing constructs until I got most of the way through the book. There's a sample adventure, but it's literally two pages and asks that the PCs either be loyal to a particular faction or guns for hire. There's so, so much cool and moody fiction and not once does the book ever say "OK, this is an RPG, everyone plays a character, there's a GM called the Mechanist, your characters are people who blah." 

There's occasional discussion in RPG spaces (wherein I lurk, like the infamous butcher in the Amigo the Devil song of the same name BWAHAHAHAHA) about whether the obligatory "what is an RPG?" section of games are really necessary. After all, anyone who buys an RPG these days is probably at least passingly familiar with D&D, and even if a casual non-gamer was going to pick one up it probably wouldn't be a game with no particular online presence or support that Kickstarted almost four years ago. But with that said, I'm...pretty familiar with RPGs. I own close to 1500 of them, I've run...shit, dozens, probably? and I read new ones all the time. So if I'm reading your game and thinking "cool, but like, how does it work? What themes are we going for?" and finding the transition from "intro fiction/history" to "character creation" with no handshake intro abrupt, then maybe a page or two wouldn't have gone amiss? Or just give us the CATS for the game (something I've seen other games do, and it's helpful)?

Anyway, griping aside, there's a lot I like about Necrobiotic, I just wish it was a little more user-friendly. Let's make a character!

Because I need some guidance, here, let's assume that my character is going to be participating in the presented adventure (What Rises Must Fall, which got me thinking that there's some God-Machine adjacent stuff in this game, though the title might be coincidental since the phrase in CofD is "what rises may fall"). As such, I need to be either reliably for hire or loyal to the Citadel...which means what, exactly? It's the city-state, kinda-sorta, of whatever area we're talking about. I assume for my purposes we're talking about Florence.

(By the way, almost all of the setting material is presented in-character as interviews or fiction or whatever, and I know from experience how immensely fucking annoying it is, as a writer, to have to convey information that players can use at the table while also writing fiction that's fun to run. Better to just present prose and then you don't run into unreliable narrators, but here we are.)

Well, let's say my character is an Architect, someone who turns corpses into constructs. He's always looking for interesting new ways to preserve and reactivate flesh, and capitalize on the ways in which corpses are (from a labor standpoint) superior to living things. Sounds like a pretty good company man, as it were. 

OK, so of course there's no step-by-step in chargen, but it says I get 20 points to split between characteristics (Flesh, Steel, Steam, Gear), min 3, max 8. I think my character concept lends itself to a more intellectual sort of fellow (shocker), so I think putting points into Steam and Gear (mental acuity and special skills related to Architect, respectively) makes sense. If I put 7 into Gear and 6 into Steam, that leaves me 7 points to split between Flesh (social) and Steel (physical). 3 Flesh, 4 Steel, then? Sounds OK.

Skills! Skills are either trained or not trained, much like in Chill, but training just gives you the ability to play two cards rather than one. They're also a good way to specialize within an attribute; I think there's only one Gear skill I want to train, f'rex. I get 6 trained skills, or 5 plus an upgrade. Hmm.

Well, I know I want to train Necro-neurological Programming (that's the one in Gear that I want). Actually, I'll train Advanced Medicine, too. I want to train Reasoning (under Steam), and I'll train Firmness (huh-huh) up on Flesh. Two or three more. I think Dexterity makes sense, as does Perception. 

So, do I want an upgrade or a sixth trained skill? I think I'll train Resistance, and say that my Architect burns the midnight oil a lot (and thus has developed not only a resistance to fatigue but a tolerance to various drugs). 

Right, what's next? Face card! These are special abilities, and there's a whole discussion on making new ones, but actually I like Neurosurgeon so I'ma take that.

And then...Joker archetype, but for me that's Architect. Why in the world would you put this at the end of chargen, since it determines what Skills you get (Gear Skills are different for each Archetype)? Well, just more evidence that no one did a usability check on this book. 

So: Renato Fiorentino is a younger Architect, but kind of known as a whiz kid amongst his peers. He regards flesh and bone as raw materials, but to the extent he believes in a "soul" or "anima," it's in the nervous system - he's read old stories of how computers worked, and believes that the brain can be programmed and reprogrammed. Perhaps even after the construct has been activated, it might be possible to reprogram it with minimal surgical intervention? The possibilities are endless.

Renato is short and skinny, black hair, brown eyes, and while his clothes are typically neat and pressed, he doesn't sleep much and forgets to shave. He tends to append "don't you think?" to sentences.  

Marvel: Into the Salt Mines

Last night we finished up the Marvel Superheroes portion of our supers extravaganza (it's gonna be a while before get to the next one just for scheduling reasons, but that's fine). Here's last time.

Our heroes get up in the morning and meet up at the entrance to the mines. They enter and descend past the bits that are still in use, and into the strange, dark areas that are supposedly discontinued. And then Night Fyre steps on a pressure plate, and the whole end of the tunnel swivels like a lazy Susan, carrying her and Magnus into another spoke and leaving Whispers and Mirage with a dead end.

Mirage starts feeling around with her hyper-touch powers, looking for a way to activate the spoke (and she feels gears turning beneath the ground). But then she and Whispers hear clop clop behind them, and see the terrifying red eyes of the Black Horse! The Horse charges and kicks at Mirage! Whispers runs up and body-checks the Horse, knocking it away and staggering it. It squares up and prepares to charge again.

Meanwhile, in the other spoke, Night Fyre and Magnus suddenly find themselves in the psionic cage of the Caped Man! He steps forward and demands Magnus' surrender, but Magnus, of course, isn't having it and pulls a sharpened playing card out of his hat. He plants it in the Caped Man's leg, and the Man falls back, yelping in pain (but keeps the cage active). They hear a whooshing sound from down the corridor a ways...

Back at the Horse fight, Mirage pulls a rope out of her kit and lassos the Black Horse. She yells to Whispers to get the Horse under control, and Whispers activates one of her lesser known powers - animal mimicry! She speaks to the Horse, and tells it to calm down, and the Horse, very perplexed, does so.

The two of them have a conversation, and the Horse reveals that it was sent to distract them while the Caped Man and the White Rabbit capture Magnus. The Horse, however, isn't really interested in hurting anyone, and Whispers kinda seals the deal when she gives it the apple slices from her go-bag. The Black Horse agrees that it would happier somewhere else, somewhere with grass and sunlight. 

Back in the other spoke, the whoosing is revealed to be the White Rabbit! He zips up to Night Fyre and rabbit-punches her in the kidneys, nearly dropped her (only her iron will keeps her standing), but then Magnus pulls a little grenade filled with black goop from his hat and drops it. It explodes into tar and sticks up him, Night Fyre, and the White Rabbit, and the Rabbit panics and tries to jump free.

Night Fyre teleports out of the goo and the psionic cage and appears next to the Caped Man, who has pulled himself to his feet and prepares to psi-blast Magnus. She unleashes a concentrated blast of heat and he falls, quivering, suffering from heat stroke.

Magnus talks to the White Rabbit, who agrees that this sucks and he wants no part of it. He tells Magnus that Soliloquy is working on a multiversal device and wants Magnus as the battery. He agrees to get lost if Magnus lets him go, and Magnus pulls a vial of a solvent that dissolves the tar from his hat. The White Rabbit, now freed, zooms off into the dark. 

Night Fyre helps the Caped Man to his feet and Magnus finds a bottle of water somewhere in the hat. The Caped Man shows them how to activate the corridor turntable, and they wind up back in the original spoke with Whispers, Mirage, and the Black Horse.

The group of them talk and Mirage asks whether the Caped Man has a name besides "the Caped Man." He says he doesn't; he was nothing, and then he was the Caped Man, and there was nothing in between. But maybe he could take off the cape and be someone else, he doesn't know. He does know that he has no desire to be hurt on Soliloquy's behalf anymore. 

Whispers gives the Caped Man an address and tells him and the Horse to meet her there tonight, and she'll help them get set up somewhere. The Caped Man tells them how to get to the center of this labyrinth, and warns them that the Woman in Green still awaits, and she's not going to be talked out of loyalty to Soliloquy. He says that she's capable of putting up a force field that repels anyone hostile to her or Soliloquy, and she uses weighted scarves to fight. He then gets on Black Horse and they two of them gallop away.

The heroes move forward through the labyrinth, and eventually come to the center - and therein find a huge machine and a fairly ordinary-looking man standing on it, eyes shut, hovering a bit off the ground, muttering to himself. As he does, parts of the machine slowly form from nothing and slot themselves in. Behind the man is a rectangular frame with a custom-made hollowed-out indentation, clearly made for Magnus. It even has a space for his hat.

A woman in a green dress stands out in front of all of this, and points to the heroes. She demands that Magnus surrender, which of course the heroes refuse (Mirage points out that Magnus never consented to be a battery, but the Woman in Green doesn't seem to understand that). Her eyes crackle amber, and a wave of force hits the heroes.

Whispers, Magnus, and Mirage all summon their will and keep their hostility under control, and the force melts away. Night Fyre just struggles against the force and manages to keep her footing. She blasts heat at the Woman, but it dissipates in the wake of the force field. Whispers puts herself between the Woman and the others, and the Woman swings scarves in a menacing circle, but Magnus hurls a playing card and slices them in half! (The Woman immediately produces more.)

Mirage sends a duplicate up on the dais and then channels her strength through it, grabbing Soliloquy. His concentration breaks and the machine pieces in process vanish, and he howls "Woman! Kill the others, get me the magician!"

Whispers grabs the scarves the Woman is holding, but she drops them and produces more! She lashes out and strikes Whispers and Night Fyre with them. Night Fyre is staggered, but Whispers barely notices - just how strong is she!?

Magnus reaches into his hand and pulls out a set of inhibitor cuffs, and Mirage leaps (with Soliloquy in tow) down from the dais. She lands next to Magnus, and Magnus, who had been planning on putting the cuffs on the Woman, shrugs and slaps them on Soliloquy.

And then Magnus' eyes go all starry. The force that has been preventing him from teleporting to his Top Hat dimension snaps back like a rubber band, and the last thing Whispers, Mirage, and Night Fyre see is Magnus vanish into nothing...

...and Magnus reappears high above another city, and looks around, sighs ("not again"), and starts to fall. 

Character Creation: B.O.A.

I bought the California Wildfire Relief Bundle off DTRPG, which means that I now have a bunch of new games on PDF in my project. That's fine, I didn't really want to make any headway.

The Game: B.O.A.
The Publisher: Brandon Crilly
Degree of Familiarity: None with the game, a decent amount with snakes
Books Required: Just the one

There's an alternate version of me that's a full-on snake guy. I really loved snakes when I was a lad (I mean, I still do, really). I used to catch garter snakes by the creek (pronounced /krIk/, thanks) when I was in middle school. As such, what sold me on this game was these sidebars:

In B.O.A., you play snakes who are members of the titular organization, the Bureau Of Agents. One can contact the Bureau in various ways, and if they accept your mission, they'll never quit. "A half-eaten mouse does no one any good." (Snek wisdom.)

There's no character sheet, sadly, but chargen isn't exactly difficult, either. Let's mek a snek!

First, we pick a breed from one of the six listed. Well, heck, let's be Monarch so I can be a kingsnake. 

henlo

That gives me the Dazzle special move, I can mesmerize with my glimmering scales. (I'm so pretty.)

Now I get to pick a general move that I'm good at. Let's say my snake is especially good at Scope (lengthening his neck to look around). 

I get a gadget! I think I want a Ghost Shed, a false skin I can wear until I shed it and produce a duplicate of myself. It can't move, it just sits there lookin' pretty until someone touches it, at which point it deflates. 

And, finally, I pick a Morph, which describes my coloration. Obviously my guy is Candy Cane. 

My snake's code name is Prettyboy. He is long and thin, and good at looking around and charting out an approach. He's also good at just curling up and looking beautiful so that people (and not-people) get bedazzled by his lovely colors, which gives his team time to do some serious snekin'. 

Prettyboy

Morph: Candy Cane
Special Move: Dazzle
Specialization: Scope
Gadget: Ghost Shed 

Character Creation: We Are All Mad Here

I've seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. 

The Game: We Are All Mad Here
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with this particular supplement, but I've run Cypher
Books Required: We Are All Mad Here and Cypher System

It's pretty niche, actually - Cypher already has an urban fantasy supplement (that'd be It's Only Magic), but this one is about fairy tales. As is typical of these Cypher sourcebooks, it presents a solid foundational understanding of what it's trying to do, with an emphasis on safety and consent (and given the dark underpinnings of a lot of fairy tales, that's probably good), and a few ways to use all this in a game. Like Stay Alive! and the aforementioned It's Only Magic, WAAMH has a larger setting with some new foci and some particular rules, so I'm gonna make a character for that.

That setting would be The Heartwood, which posits a fairy-tale world that modern-day characters get drawn into, but what enables that is that their lives are touched by mental illness or neurodiversity. Note that it's not that being mentally ill or neurodiverse enables going to the Heartwood, just having a connection to such things opens the door, as it were. 

(This has the potential to be done really badly, and I find myself thinking of games like Madhouse or Asylum that try and make mental illness a cornerstone of the game, but wind up treating such things as character classes or things that give you superpowers. The Heartwood doesn't do that, however. The meat of the story would be in the Heartwood, with the mental illness stuff as a framing or grounding device. I dunno, I think it's pretty cool. I also think that right now I'd like a little more escapism in my gaming, and I'm pretty sure my players would too. Moving on.)

So: Chargen in Cypher works as usual, I'm an [adjective] [noun] who [verbs]. One of the foci (that'd be the verb bit) in WAAMH is "Befriends the Black Dog," which gives you someone with an animal companion that is representative of grief or depression or whatever. Too close to home? I don't know, maybe, but I've always loved the "black dog" metaphor for depression, so I think I might use that focus here.

Blake Underwood was 25 when he lost his fiance in a car accident. He was completely unhurt, but Tony was killed instantly. They had plans, they had a wedding taking shape, they had been talking about adopting a child, and it was...gone. And Blake stopped talking. 

When he opens his mouth and tries to talk, he just...stops. He's pretty sure he has a voice, but he doesn't, or can't, use it. He goes to a grief group and he really does try to share, but he can't bring himself to speak. He fortunately has a job that he can do purely on a computer, so he communicates via email and text. But he doesn't speak. 

And then one night, he stood up from his bed and took a step out of his bedroom door and found himself in the Heartwood, and he could speak. He was accompanied by a huge, black dog, menacing, strong, and totally silent. The dog doesn't howl or bark, and it barely makes a sound when it walks or pants. Blake is pretty sure that if the Black Dog ever does make a noise, then when he goes home to the "real world", he'll be able to talk again. But truth be told, he's in no hurry for that.

OK, well, that's "fun." (I actually think Blake would be a lot of fun to play in the right group.) So we know his focus already, but what about descriptor and type? Actually, what does Blake look like in the Heartwood? I think that he still looks human and looks more or less like himself, but he fits into the "Woodsman" fairy tale kind of archetype. As interesting as it would be to make a speaker, I think I'd rather go with explorer (but again, we'll call it woodsman). 

How about descriptor? Ooh, Fragmented is interesting, especially since so much of Blake himself is bound up in the dog. Appealing is, well, appealing, too. I think I'm gonna go with Kind, though, because I think that's how Blake would come across in a fairy tale.

OK, that means I can start actually pull this together mechanically. I get Might 10, Speed 9, Intellect 5 for being an explorer, and then 6 more I can throw around. I'll put two into Speed and four into Intellect, I think. I get Effort 1, of course, and I get Might Edge 1. I get appropriate clothing (so, fur and leather), a weapon (short bow, please), and then various expensiveness of items, but I'm gonna skip that for now.

I get four explorer abilities. I want Extra Edge so I have Speed Edge, thanks. I'll take Physical Skills (climbing and balancing). I'll take Surging Confidence (when I use an action to make a recovery roll, I get another action). And then I'll take Knowledge Skills and say I know the geography of the Heartwood, and nature lore. 

Right, for being Kind I get +2 to my Intellect pool. I'm trained in all tasks relating to pleasant social interaction and determining others' dispositions, but I have an inability in detecting lies. And then I get a power called Karma; I can spend 1XP to have an NPC treat me with kindness, if briefly.

And over in focus-land, I get a Beast Companion, which is obviously my big, silent black dog. There's not a name for it; Blake just calls it "my dog." 

And that's pretty much it! Blake, in the Heartwood, looks a little older than he is in real life. He had a low but firm voice, and even smiles sometimes. The dog is always at his heels, and puts its head on his lap when he sits. 

Board Game: Detective

Put on some coffee, it's gonna be a long night. *lights cigarette*

The Game: Detective
The Publisher: Portal Games
Time: 3-ish hours
Players: Me, Emery, Tim, Kate, Michelle

Game Play: We didn't wind up playing Thirsty Sword Lesbians last night, so we wound up playing, like, the opposite of that, kinda. Detective is a cooperative campaign game in which you take on the roles of folks working for Antares, a specialist investigative agency under the FBI. (It was remarked, a couple of times during the setup, that we were tired of things being topical in the sense of "hey, this might not exist soon.")

Anyway, everyone has a character card, all the characters are specialists in some investigative field - journalist, analyst, PI, ex-cop, and so on. They all have special abilities, but the abilities are pretty flavorless (that is, they're useful in the context of the game but there's no easy way to explain them in the fiction). There are five cases included in the base game and there's another season available; this game isn't so much a legacy game (no stickers or rules changes, to my knowledge), but a campaign game in that the fiction changes as you play it.

CHRIS STONE - PI!

The game presents a case. Your boss gives you a briefing, and then you have a specific number of days in which to solve it. Each day is divided into eight hours, and various tasks cost hours of your day - traveling to a location costs an hour (Richmond PD, the Lab, Headquarters, Fieldwork [which is basically "everywhere else"]) and then the actual work can cost anything up to four hours. If you go past 4PM you can keep working, but every hour gives you stress, which affects your score at the end and can end the investigation prematurely if it gets above a set limit.

(As a side note, I've read John Douglas' book Mindhunter, in which he talks about the early days of Hoover's FBI and how Hoover wanted everyone to work overtime and be constantly working more than they did last week, meaning the only way to fill out your end-of-week reports was to lie like crazy, so it's amusing to me that this game presents a hard stop of an 8-hour work day but prevents you from pulling all-nighters. It's clearly written by Europeans.)

So, anyway, you can perform various actions to pursue the case. You can type names into the Antares Database (a real live website for the game), sometimes you get a symbol to search something on the plain ol' internet, but the real fun is the cards. Every case has a deck of cards, and the cards often present a novella's worth of text that explains what your characters do, the coffee they drink, the chairs they sit in, and, oh yeah, what relevant info they find. 

 Michelle and Kate diligently taking notes

From there, you decide what leads to follow and try to synthesize all the data and solve the case. At the end of your time limit (or if you hit your stress cap), you go to the end-of-case bit of the website and take the post-quiz to see if you solved it.

Emery is a master of disguise! 

Opinions: I'm being somewhat snarky, but I actually really enjoyed the game. Let's start with my criticisms: The prose on the cards is a little overwritten and since the game is such a cognitive load, I did find myself thinking "please get to the fucking point" more than once. Also, all of the investigators move as a unit, which makes sense mechanically, but in the fiction it's weird that we can't split our efforts and maximize our time a little (and led to jokes about how the five of us all inhabited one body or were some kind of amorphous blob thing).

But once you understand the mechanics, they're not hard to use. The abilities that the characters have all revolve around maximizing time; digging deeper into leads requires Skill tokens, but you only get so many of the different types. Michelle's character could swap out Authority tokens (which you get for being on the right track, among other things) for a "wild" Skill, for example. The mechanics nicely get out of the way and let the players dig into the meat of solving the case, which is the point. And it was gratifying to watch the story come together. 

In the end, we solved the case, but didn't get the maximum score not because we missed something, but because we forgot a detail that had been presented right up front in the briefing. The case was also rife with information that probably won't be relevant until later in the campaign, so I hope we get to play it at some point!

Keep? Definitely.
 

Character Creation: Dust, Fog and Glowing Embers

Not "Dust, Fog, and Glowing Members," that'd be a very different game.

The Game: Dust, Fog and Glowing Embers
The Publisher: Scablands Press
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

You know, I say this a lot, but an example of play is normally helpful, particularly if your game uses some weird or nonstandard means of narrative control or mechanics. Dust, Fog & Glowing Embers (no Oxford comma, I note) has an interesting resolution mechanic. Roll 2d6, one die representing the player's ability and so you add an attribute, and subtract high from low. Whichever side wins gets to assign "details," where "hard details" are things that actually matter, "soft details" are more about set dressing and flavor, and "scene details" alter things in the environment. I think. It's not explained especially well, though, and that's with examples of rolls and an example of play. I think I get it? It's an interesting idea, but in play I do worry it'd be a little softer than I'd like. Actually it reminds me a little of 7th Sea 2nd Ed, and I have some of the same concerns.

But the other thing is, the character creation process does that annoying thing where it's not contained in one place, there's no step-by-step, and then when there is one later in the book:

That last thing? "Choose your spagyric powers?" Those powers are described, but there's nowhere I can find that tells you how many you get or how they're chosen. And there's no example of chargen; although the example of play goes through chargen it only really does the conceptual stuff. 

All of this to say: This game has been on my shelf for something like six years, and I keep looking at it in my chargen project list and thinking "didn't I do that already?" So I'm gonna finally do it, but sadly I don't think it's getting run.

Well, anyway, the game itself is a kind of alchemical fantasy sort of thing? You play people who are indebted to a Patron, said Patron has you do things to further their needs, and also you do shit on your own. You have powers that get activated using salts, alcohol, and sulphur. The artwork is kinda reminiscent of Vince Locke. I dunno, that's about all I can say confidently because I read the game last night and it apparently just slid out of my brain. 

The first step of chargen would be for the group to come up with a Patron. No place to write that on the sheet, though, so it can't be that important. (It is, in fact, one of the more important parts of the game.) I'll just assume we're just one of the example Patrons:

I really just like that she enjoys fine wines, being a fan of such myself. Anyway, now I pick character type from Raven, Swan, or Phoenix. Or rather, that's what it says up there in the summary, but in fact, the first thing I should do is pick an Origin, because that sets my natural aptitudes (oy). 

Sure. Let's say my guy is from the Great Cities. That sets my natural aptitudes as Pilfer, Politics, Duel, Art, and Trade. I don't think I get them all, though. Picking an archetype...yes, it gives me aptitudes. OK, so let's be...hang on.

OK, what the hell. Archetypes (that's the bird thing) sets your attribute spread, either +1/+1/0, -1/+1/+1, or +2/-1/-1. You might notice those don't equal out; they total 2, 1, and 0 respectively. But then you'd think the one that gets the higher attribute total gets fewer aptitudes, right? Sacrifice raw talent for versatility or something? NOPE. The Raven (the one that gets the +1/+1/0 spread of attributes) gets five aptitudes. The Swan gets three, and the Phoenix, with the lowest attribute totals (but a +2 in one Attribute, whoo) gets two. 

Mathematically, having a +2 in an attribute is a pretty big swing, since you're rolling a d6 vs. another d6 and any margin of victory is good, but wow, that seems not at all thought out. Also, each of these archetype gets three adjectives to describe what they're about and that's it. I don't know why they're named after birds, I don't know what niche they're meant to protect. Ugh.

Well, fuck it, clearly I'll be a Raven since that's objectively the best choice. That makes me sphisticated [sic], wise, or knowledgeable. Just one of those? I guess I'll be sphisticated, but I'll spell it right. That gives me three aptitudes from my origin and two from elsewhere. I'll take Trade, Politics, and Pilfer, and then I'll take Reckon and Chart. I see my guy as someone who had a successful business involving wine, but not a vintner. Maybe I'm a sommelier. 

Anyway, I'll assign my Attributes. I'll put the +1s into Precise and Clever, and leave Tough at 0. 

Right, now I answer character questions. 

How has Agnes isolated me from the world? Well, let's say that Finu Sart, for 'tis his name, was a sommelier to the upper class. He hired himself out to advise on wine and liquor pairings, and if you really wanted to shell out, mixology - he'd come to your party and mix drinks. And then Agnes Brinne got her hooks into him and got him to agree to work for her exclusively...except she doesn't have parties much and when she does, she wants him to mix the same drinks for everyone. He advises her on wine pairings, but her palate is garbage and she wouldn't know the difference between [good wine in this world] and [trash wine in this world]. 

Right, two more questions from that list. What object can you talk about endlessly, and why? Wine, obviously. Finu has a rarefied palate and he's a supertaster. He's got no patience for the growing of the grapes, but he knows how it works on a technical level. 

When was the last time people saw the limits of your knowledge, and what happened? After the first "party" at Agnes Brinne's place after his employment with her began, Finu went to a wine tasting and got into a tasting/identification competition with a fellow from another city. Basically, much like what goes on between Peter Lorre and Vincent Price in Tales of Terror - they taste the wine and identify the vintage and vineyard. Finu did very well, but then there were some wines that included alchemical processes he'd never heard of and they not only weren't things he could identify but they obliterated his palate for a few days. 

It's a fun movie, check it out

Right, now we choose a prime humour. Finu is probably sanguine or choleric by nature, but he's pretty melancholic right now. (This game actually has a pretty cool relationship mechanic where other PCs are listed under different humours and if multiple people get listed under one it can become your prime one, but that doesn't matter much for my purposes.)

And finally we're supposed to choose spagyric powers. Powers are divided up into three categories: Fog, Dust, and Glowing Embers Smoke, based on what kind of essence powers them. (Well, there's a fourth category, kinda, because there are a few powers that can be activated using any kind of essence, but they don't have a name.) The book says we start a mission with 4 essence, divided up as we see fit. So do we pick powers already activated, since metabolizing essence and powering down is a thing that happens? Do we just choose what kinds of essence we have? The example of play has a player talk about wanting to make a character with a bunch of sulphur powers, but like I said, they don't actually pick their powers so I don't know what the process actually is.

(Side note: One of the least realistic things about the example of play in this book is that the players have all clearly read the book. That never happens. If I can get any of my players to even crack a book, it's a rare treat. By contrast, I reread Fiasco yesterday, too, because we're playing that on Saturday, and the extremely thorough and well-written example of play in that book has players with all degrees of familiarity with the game, which is not only much more believable but more useful from a game-learning perspective. Anyway.)

You know, I'm just gonna specify my Essence and call it a day. Which powers would like Finu to be able to use? I think that he's not much of a combatant (although a lot of spagyric powers are offensive in nature). I'll put two into salt, one into alcohol, and one into sulphur. 

And that's about it, y'all. I picture Finu as in his late 30s, tall, straight, sphisticated, well-dressed, but with a permanently exasperated air about him. He really wishes he could get out from under, because he's basically a toy for someone who does not know what to do with him.