Character Creation: Vale of the Failed and the Fallen

I didn't know I needed this game until it came up on Kickstarter some time ago, but I'm really keen to try it.

The Game: Vale of the Failed and the Fallen
The Publisher: Wicked Clever
Degree of Familiarity: None, other than the fact that it's PbtA
Books Required: Just the one

Beautifully simple and yet kind of niche concept, this. You're playing the grown-up versions of a group of kids who were transported to the magical land of Eidylorn in order to save it from the Vassal of Darkness...but failed. One of the kids died in the process, and now, twenty years later, the survivors have been transported back in order to redeem themselves and finish the quest. I haven't seen an expression of this idea before. When The Dark is Gone has some similar elements, but doesn't involve going back to the magical realm and is much less structured in general. 

Anyway, it's late to make a character, but if I do this one today I'm at 30 for the year so I'm caught up, and that's apparently worth being at my computer a little more. So here we go!

So, if we were actually playing this game, the first thing we'd do is define Eidylorn a bit more, including which of the peoples who live there are going to figure into our story. Since it's just me, though, I can just skip right to the Childhood Heroes bit. 

Seems like playbook should really be first, but sure, why not. Let's name my hero Jesse Daniel (he/him). And now I must choose a playbook. Hmm. I think I'll lean into the darkness today and be the Shadow.

So that means I get the Cloak of Shadows (all the playbooks get a gift when they arrive in Eidylorn). I can step into the Shadowlands and be invisible and incorporeal to others, and then I get one more ability to go with that. Let's see...I'll take Ebon Messenger, that lets me summon little shadow critters to act as messengers.  

My Inner Child is an aptitude that I was interested in or good at as a child (but recall that these characters are adults now). I have kind of an idea on where to go with this character, so I'm gonna pick Animal Lover. Jesse was super into animals as a kid - mostly he loved big cats, but really he found all animals fascinating. He dreamed of being a big animal vet when he grew up. So that makes my aptitude Empathetic, and gives me a tether and a bane (which are basically things I can use to boost rolls or the GM could use to screw with me, respectively). My tether is when you train or befriend a magical creature from the realm..., and my bane is when you must hurt an animal...

Companion bonds would require more players, so I'll skip that. Likewise, we'd all decide on the Fallen Companion together. The trick here is that the Companion Bonds and the Fallen Companion would give me two more tethers, and then I would pick a tether to be burned to start with (burned tethers act like banes, but you can recover them). But lo! I must now be an adult!

First, I choose my adult vocation. In Jesse's case, the trip into Eidylorn and the loss of his friends kind of soured him on animals (so I'll take that as my burned tether, I guess). He'd seen dragons and pegasi and whatever else, going back to the world of cats and dogs and snakes just didn't seem as interesting. Plus, like, he'd seen a friend die. Jesse never really recaptured that kind of passion, and he kind of fell in with a bad crowd. His Adult Vocation is Petty Criminal.

And that leads us directly into Emotional Baggage. Basically my experiences in Eidylorn give me another bane. I think Shady makes the most sense (when people need to trust you...).  

And that's basically it, because the rest of it would require a group! Jesse is in his 20s now. He's got red-blonde hair that he keeps buzzed, his skin has gotten worse over time (thank some drug use for that), and he's got prison tats on his arms and hands. I think in play Jesse would be the guy who you might think would betray everyone, but then comes through for them with a line like "snitches get stitches" or something. 

D&D: Belle is Laid to Rest

Tragedy last night in the land of Abhaile. Here's last time.

Our heroes have won their battle against the demon-horses. The villagers start to emerge, beginning with a strongly-built older gent, clearly a village leader of some kind. He approaches the characters and introduces himself as Uilliam, and thanks them for their assistance. A moment later, a young teen boy arrives with a basket of fruits and nuts harvested from the are. The adventurers thank them and start to shake off the aches and wounds from battle. 

Uilliam tells them that yesterday, a man in robes rode into this village, called Rí Na Bláthanna. They thought he was an adventurer at first, but then realized he was covered in blood. When they approached, he cast some kind of spell and blew them all backwards with a thundering crack, and then raised up a stone tablet and said something that they couldn't hear. His horse became that obscene creature with the saddle half-merged in its flesh, and it galloped around and infected all the other horses in the village. The villagers had been holed up in the lodge since, keeping the monsters back but trapped. The man ran off to the north, up into the hills. 

The heroes go and round up their own horses, and then stay the night, and Uilliam arranges for some hot water to wash off the horse goop. They learn that the village grows flowers on the hills, as well as fruits and nuts, and herds sheep. In the morning the villagers provide breakfast and the heroes mount up - Uilliam's grandson has brushed and tacked their horses. Zook and Aisling have a quick conversation, and then Aisling gives the boy a small bag of gold so that they can start to replace their horses. The boy, overwhelmed, hugs her and thanks her tearfully. He tells them that the village grows flowers and brings them to Cian, and the hills around the village looked really beautiful, "before the otherness came." Dara casts a spell to repair the damage the demon horses did to the flowers, and the heroes set out.

The terrain gets rocky and difficult pretty quickly, so Dara turns into a goat to scout ahead, figuring that even if the wizard sees her, he's unlikely to suspect a goat. She spots him sitting on a flat plateau with a big, rocky outcropping above it, just staring out over the valleys. But as she watches, a huge insect-like creature with a long, sharp proboscis crawls out of a hole in the rock. 

This, but bigger than a person

Dara knows that the others are riding up, and figures it's better to get a shot in quickly. As soon as the others are in sight, she changes back to elf form and calls down lightning on the bug! 

Lightning crackles down and strikes it. It buzzes its wings angrily, and to Dara's horror, two more of them crawl out of the rock. The battle is joined, but right away the heroes realize that they are in danger. The first bug swoops down and skewers Dara with its proboscis, draining the life from her. She remains conscious, but acutely aware of how close to death she suddenly is. 

The others ride into the area. Zook, riding up, hurls a fireball at the area where the wizard was standing and catches him and two of the bugs. He hears a yelp of pain and the wizard runs back into the cave. Zook also notes that while the fire does burn the bugs, it kind of sluices off their chitin a little more readily than it should - definitely creatures of demonic origin. Dara, realizing that the others are going to take a bit to get here, turns into a panther and bites at the bug attacking her.

Clara leaps from her horse and runs for the rock face, thinking she'll climb up and get to the wizard before he sees her. Zook, noting her intent, casts haste to speed her up. Fearg rides up the hill, and then jumps off and rages, charging up to the creature trying to eat Dara and whacking it with Shol, his magic ax. 

The other two zoom down towards the other group. Belle hits one with an arrow, but it lands on her horse in front of her and stabs her, drinking her blood. The third one attacks Keenan, and Zook watches in horror as Keenan's skin becomes taught. Keenan panics a bit ("TOO BIG BUGS") and hurls a spell at one of them, shrinking it to about the size of a person, which is still far too big, but better.

Aisling throws some healing at Keenan, and beats on her drum to inspire the others. Clara scampers up the rock and sees the wizard at the back of the cave, nowhere to go. She runs up to him and pummels him into unconsciousness, and quickly ties him up, figuring they'll want to interrogate him later. She turns and runs out of the cave, but things aren't going well.

These bugs can take a frightening amount of punishment - Fearg strikes with his ax, Dara sinks panther-fangs, Aisling fires crossbow bolts and Zook throws magic missiles around. But they aren't able to get the one on Belle's horse away, and it stabs her through the chest. She collapses off her horse and falls to the ground, unmoving. Aisling leaps off her horse and tries to heal her, but her skin remains pale and bluish. She is gone.

Another of the bugs stabs Fearg, and he falls and slides down the hill. The third buzzes its wings, and Zook falls unconscious from the noise. But Clara leaps off the rock and pummels one of them, and Aisling throws a healing word at Fearg and he awakens. He charges up the hill and rages again, cutting one of the bugs in half!

The fight suddenly seems winnable! Dara calls down a moonbeam onto a bug, while Keenan smacks the other and shocks it. It tries to stab Zook, but his lingering shield spell protects him, and the others weaken it until Fearg gets down the hill. He strikes with Shol, and cleaves it in two. Meanwhile, Clara punches the last one, burning her hand on Dara's moonbeam but crushing its head. The fight is over...

...but Belle is beyond help. Clara tells them that Pól is up on the plateau, and Fearg wipes the goo from his ax. Aisling says that they need to question him, but Fearg makes it clear that he's not walking away from this. 

Dara, Clara, and Aisling climb up the hill (Dara quaffs a potion of mind reading she'll been saving). They find Pól trying to get free, but they put a stop to that - Dara calls up a shillelagh and he calms. They ask him about the tablet and why he did all this. He says that the tablet showed him horrible and beautiful things, and let him call on blessings he never imagined. Dara peers into his head and sees an undercurrent of black murder, but no possession, no magical influence. Clara asks when this all happened, and he claims that these demonic entities have been here in Abhaile forever. "Why should we deny the truth?" he asks, and the murder in his brain grows engorged. 

Dara looks closer, and she realizes something truly disquieting. Something made him like this, but not magically. If Pól were a stream in the forest, something didn't alter the content of the water, it changed the course of the stream, which is just as weird as it sounds. The three of them press him a little more about his motives, what he was hoping to accomplish, here, what truths he learned from the tablet. He claims he used it to make contact with entities from the Nine Hells, and seems unafraid and unconcerned. "It's worth it," he says. "It's divine."

At this point Fearg climbs into the cave. He walks to Aisling and cups her cheek with his hand. "I love you," he says, "but I need you to leave the cave and go back down the hill." Aisling nods, and she, Dara, and Clara leave. They tell each other that there's no point in letting him live, even if Fearg could be convinced.

They hear Fearg's cry of rage behind them, and then a series of blows, starting with the ax hitting flesh and eventually changing to the ax hitting rock. Fearg emerged, covered in blood, but the ax oddly clean. 

Keenan, meanwhile, tells the others that he and Fearg need to go to Belle's home village of Osclaimid. He says that he can't ask them to go along, but Zook says that as far as he's concerned, they're all the same party at this point. Aisling asks if they're taking Belle back there, but Keenan laughs and says she hated her home village. Dara suggests laying her to rest in Rí na Bláthanna, and Keenan says she'd like that - on a hill, able to see for miles, is where she'd want to stay.

The heroes retrieve their horses and ride in silence back to the village. Uilliam comes out to meet them again, but his face falls when he sees the empty horse and Fearg carrying a body. He is, of course, quite willing to let them bury her on the nearby burial hill, and at sunrise the next day, the six of them gather around her fresh grave.

Keenan starts, and explains that his mother was a witch, and his village decided she was evil and drove the two of them away. They traveled east and met up with Belle, and found a nice little town for his mom to live in. But then he and Belle met Losh, the bard, and the three of them traveled north but met Fearg coming out of the north. They didn't want to go further north since Fearg had just come from there, Belle was from the east, Keenan from the west, so they headed into central Abhaile until they met a group of adventures losing a fight to an ogre. Keenan says that Belle was quiet, but competent. He says that she's the one who was likely to know things that were helpful, whereas he tends to know things that aren't helpful.  

Zook agrees - with Belle being competent, anyway. She was stoic, but a skilled ranger and clearly had the same regard for others and desire to do right that brings any adventurer into this. Dara notes that as an outdoorsy sort of person who generally keeps things inside, she felt some kinship with Belle.

Aisling does not offer a eulogy, but instead sings a funeral song common to her region. The heroes stand around the grave for a moment, listening to her song, and then quietly walk back down the hill. Keenan carries Belle's bow and boots to return to her family in Osclaimid. 

Movie #921: The Bone Collector

The Bone Collector is a crime thriller starring Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Ed O'Neill, Michael Rooker, Leland Orser, Queen Latifah, and Luis Guzman. It's based on a novel by Jeffery Deaver that I actually read! 

Lincoln Rhyme (Washington) is a forensics expert in New York who has an unfortunate accident and winds up quadriplegic; only his head and one finger work anymore. He gets round-the-clock care courtesy of the NYPD because he was injured on the job (I rather suspect that's an overly generous depiction, but who knows) and has a live-in carer, Thelma (Queen Latifah). And then one day an Important Rich Guy (Gary Swanson) turns up dead, his wife (Olivia Birkelund) is kidnapped, and Rhyme recruits a singularly un-ambitious beat cop named Amelia (Jolie) to be his eyes and legs out in the word (she has an instinct for collecting evidence).

The killer escalates, kidnapping and killing several other people while Amelia and Lincoln try, largely unsuccessfully, to keep up (seriously, their track record in this movie is not great, which I guess is the danger of having your heroes be forensic investigators - if they're involved then there probably isn't a chance of saving someone), until it's revealed that the killer is really...Richard (Orser), the guy that calibrates Lincoln's machines! He has his reasons, but they get pretty glossed over. He's got a pretty good kill count by the end, though - four victims in the movie, five or so that happened before the events of the movie that the cops didn't forensics hard enough, Thelma, and the dumb police captain (Rooker) who's just there as a stumbling block.

As is common of adaptations, there's a lot missing from the book and some of it was probably better included. Lincoln is (very reasonably, in my opinion) making preparations to die rather than risking his increasingly severe seizures putting him into a vegetative state, and in the movie Amelia just kind of says "yeah, that's your choice." In the book, she takes it as a big moral affront (I think there's some Catholic BS involved, but it's been a long time since I read it) and she actually arrests the doctor who's helping Lincoln, and then winds up buried alive by the killer and comes to understand wanting to die quickly rather than slowly and helplessly. And I could swear the scene where she arrests him was in the movie, but it's not. Likewise, she gets a lot more character development and we learn more about why she's closed off from others.

This movie was one of many Silence of the Lambs copycats involving a female agent working with a brilliant partner who can't do their own legwork for whatever reason (see also: Copycat). It's not bad, but the strength of the movie is the performances - Washington and Jolie for sure, but also Luis Guzman as Lincoln's computer genius, Queen Latifah, and even Leland Orser for the brief period he gets to be crazy and desperate. The pacing is weird and frankly the whole movie feels rushed, and I think we could have done with a little more room to breathe on why the killer cares so much. I definitely think the subplot with Lincoln's suicidal ideation and his eventual decision not to die (which, in the book, is because he's interested in his work again and wants to keep working with Amelia, while here it's a more general zest for life) should have been included, because it gives both Lincoln and Amelia an arc. 

All in all, though, it's an enjoyable enough thriller if you liked CSI or Criminal Minds, which I did.

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Cape Fear

Character Creation: Tomorrow City

There's a Nields song called "Tomorrowland," but that's not the same thing. 

The Game: Tomorrow City
The Publisher: Osprey Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Don't seem to have a PDF of this, that's annoying. I think I got it as a gift, actually. 

Anyway, Tomorrow City is a dieselpunk RPG taking place in an alternate 1984 in which the Great War just recently ended (meaning that the Second World War didn't really happen as such). The USA has fragmented and the game is taking place in the titular city, built way above the ground in California (but not floating above the ground - I know a game setting about a steampunk city in the sky, but you can't really find it for sale anymore for some weird reason). 

This game looks pretty cool, actually. The type is a little smaller than I'd like, but that's been my only real complaint so far. The system involves rolling a bunch of d6s, some Action Dice and some Danger Dice. Danger cancels Action of the same value, and then your highest-remaining Action die is your result (there are some supplemental mechanics; 6s left over on Danger Dice build Pressure, when Pressure hits 6 bad things happen, and so on). It reminds me a little of Wildsea but the narrative load doesn't seem to be as weirdly distributed. 

So let's make a Rev! A rev is a "dangerous, passionate, skilled mercenary", according to the chargen section, so that's an easy enough hook to get my brain around. I'd screenshot the character steps, but I don't have a damn PDF, so I guess we're freehanding it.

Step One: Visualize your character. Basic concepty kind of stuff. This would also normally include the group's reason for rev-ing, but it's just me. I don't have a much of a concept, though, so I think I'll randomize myself a theme song. AWAKEN, iTUNES!

Ah, Michael Bublé's cover of "Save the Last Dance for Me." That actually works pretty well, vibe-wise, for this game (the aesthetic is supposed to be kind of inter-war America, Big Band, that sort of thing). How does it inform a character? I think it'd be fun if our revs were spies, thieves, and my character and another PC were married. Kind of a True Lies/Mr. & Mrs. Smith/Black Bag kind of vibe (except not as Cameron as True Lies, not as boring as Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and more fun than Black Bag). 

So let's name my character Sylvain Lois. I want him to be smooth and debonair, but for his wife to be the action-oriented one. Basically she'd be the one out there dancing, kicking ass, while he's more the one bypassing computer systems (which may not exist in this setting, but you see what I mean). That's not a bad start.

Step Two: Choose or create three Trademarks. Everything in this game has Tags, Trademarks are just a type of that. They relate to background, occupation, and description, and I can mix n' match as necessary. I can make up my own if I need to, but let's see what's in the book.

Oh, the agony of choice! There's a bunch I'd like. I think I have to take Charming, because I think this guy is at least in part a face. I'd really like to take a Background, just to have some idea where this guy came from, but do I wish to take, say, Gadgeteer as an Occupation? Or get into some of the quasi-magic stuff with Pattern Weaver? Ooh, I think maybe I do. Symbolist is just too damn cool (Metaphysical Geometrist is more what I'd normally do, but I think Symbolist is better for this concept). And then I think I'll take Skyriser as a Background; my guy is from money (I think I'd encourage my hypothetical wife's hypothetical player to be Riffraff or something, but we're just spitballing here).  

OK, now what? Step Three is Choose three Edges. Edges are basically specializations within Trademarks; any Skyriser is probably good at dealing with high society, but I might be knowledgeable at Family Gossip particularly or something. I get three of these, and I can put them under whatever Trademarks I wish. I do have to make them up, though.

Well, I see Sylvain as being the life of the party. Actually that's a good Edge to put under Skyriser (if it were under Charming, it'd be more broadly applicable, but I see Sylvain as being really out of place amongst working class folks). 

One of the suggested Traits (which are meant to be used as inspiration for Edges) listed under Symbolist is "Lock & Unlock Things", and I think that's pretty appropriate for Sylvain. He's good at putting a rune on something and opening (or sealing) it up.

Finally, I want one under Charming. Let's make Sylvain Seductive. Yes, his wife is out there dancing, but he's perfectly capable of luring a lonely wife (or husband) into a corner for a quick heart-to-heart.

Step Four: Choose three Advantages. These are little stunt-like things that come under the Trademarks, and here I do have to choose one of each. So from Skyriser, I'll pick High Society (I can automatically identify the person with the highest social status and get an extra Action Die for my first interaction with them). From Charming, I'll take Winning Smile (I roll with Mastery when I persuade with charm and magnetism). And then for Symbolist, I gotta take Glyph (I can put a glyph on something and give it a Tag, like, say, "Unlocked"). 

Step Five: Flaws. I get two. Problems, passions, or things I gotta deal with. I definitely want one to indicate Sylvain's love and devotion to his wife (not that it's a flaw, of course, but it's something that could cause complications in play), so I'll call that "Don't Forget Who's Taking You Home." (You know, as written that implies a certain amount of possessiveness on his part, which isn't really what I was going for, but I'm gonna leave it because I already wrote it on my sheet.) For my second Flaw, I like "Soft-Looking" from the Skyriser Trademark. Sylvain isn't weak or incapable, but he looks like a toff. 

Step Six: Write one Drive. What is it that's pushing Sylvain? Not to go back to this well too much, but I think "Me and my wife against the world" is pretty good. That's a little non-specific as far as Drives go; a lot of the examples are framed as "I will [whatever]," but I like that Sylvain and his missus aren't necessarily trying to get rich and retire or get revenge or whatever - they want to live on their own terms, together. (At least that's what Sylvain thinks.)

Step Seven: Describe two Ties. These are relationships between PCs, so I'm going to skip it, but obviously if I were playing this the way I'm envisioning it, one of them would be to my wife.

Step Eight: Set Moxie, Cred, and Grit to 3. Um, OK, done.

Step Nine: Gear up. Nah. I mean, Sylvain probably has some kind of chalk or grease pencil to draw glyphs, some well-made but functional clothes, probably a weapon of some kind.

Step Ten: Round Out the Character. Here's where I'd do a name, but I did that. Sylvain is in his 30s, very handsome, black hair, brown eyes, flashy smile, and manages to look hot but harmless, which is hard to pull off. His speech patterns betray his upbringing as a Skyriser. I picture him played by a young Josh Hartnett, maybe (with darker hair). 

Pugmire: Guards, Guards, Guards, and Worms

Once again, we return to the abandoned, though by no means empty, Castle Transylvanian-Hound. 

Our noble Pioneers have awakened in their Private Kennel, courtesy of Petunia Pibble, to discover that their compatriot Boomer Pitbull has somehow been transplanted into the body of his...unspecified relative, Max Pitbull. Boomer is achey and uncomfortable; Peppa Papillon recommends rolling in the mud a bit to ease the joints. 

Petunia wonders if she can dispel this magic, but isn't sure what it would do - if Boomer gets ejected from this body, where does he go? Boomer says he's game to try it, and Petunia casts the spell. Boomer immediately feels like something is being slowly and painfully ripped from his body. Petunia continues the magic and Boomer grits his teeth, but then his snoot starts bleeding and Petunia stops. 

What could do this? Petunia knows of no spell common to Artisan or Shepherd that could, but has heard this kind of thing is more the purview of the rodent Cult of Labo Tor. But then Gelert Sausagedog recalls reading stories from the War of Cats and Dogs of a device called the "Inversion Wheel." Strap people in, spin the wheel, and they randomly redistribute minds and souls. So if you strapped just two people in, they'd switch. And Max Pitbull is a veteran of said war...

The dogs consider their next move. Maybe better to head back to Houndton and get help, try and figure out what happened? But Dire Newfoundland points out that if they do that, they've lost a lot of time and they aren't sure that Max isn't here already. Better to press on and clear the castle. And with that, they continue to the next room.

The next room is a huge main hall, almost entirely empty. A few wall sconces, an iron chandelier, and a big wooden door at the far end carved with the symbol of House Transylvanian-Hound. But as the Pioneers enter, they hear a bell sound, and someone yells "Guards! Guards!"

And either spectral dogs, each wielding halberds, appear, and charge, ready to defend their home. 

The battle is joined! Dire runs out in the fray, swinging his hammer, and is immediately surrounded by the guard-dogs. But while Dire might not be able to lay waste to his enemies the way Boomer can, what he is good at is avoiding blows. He parries with shield and hammer, and his mighty floofs absorb the rest of the hits. Sausagedog capers after him, strikes one of the guards, and the vanishes into the shadows. 

Boomer reaches down into the depths of his soul to find his rage...and he manages. He draws the longsword from his erstwhile body's belt and slashes about, felling two of the guards immediately! But the Pioneers watch in horror as two more appear at the other end of the room.

Peppa summons up her Magic Stick, and Petunia lets loose a Sonic Boom to knock these dogs back. The battle continues, but every time one of the guards is destroyed, a new one appears. The battle shifts to the far end of the room (leaving Boomer to run, wheezing, trying to catch up), and Petunia yells to get through the door. One of the guards responds "they're trying to get to the door! Block it! Defend the Lord-Mayor!"

Peppa calls up her Ghost Yorkies, and standing near the door means that the guards are immediately chewed and weakened, meaning a quick slash from Sausagedog or a bonk from Dire will drop them...but they reappear almost immediately. Sausagedog uses his dust of disappearance and slips past them, into the next room, and immediately wishes he hadn't. The room is ankle deep in some kind of brown swill that smells completely foul, and something moves within in. He falls back - this battle needs to be won first.

Finally Petunia realizes that these dogs will never stop as long as they're defending their home. She tells the others they need to be ordered to stand down, and Sausagedog tries ("I am a visiting noble from House Daschund!") but they don't buy it. But then Dire draws himself up to his full height, raises his shield, and limmed by his Shield of Man's Faith, bellows, "IN THE NAME OF THE CHURCH OF MAN, STAND DOWN!"

The guards, cowed by the presence of the paladin before them, step back. "Why are you here?" one asks.

"WE ARE HERE TO SEE..." Dire searches his memory for a name and comes up blank. "THE LORD-MAYOR!" That apparently works. The guards fade away, and the Pioneers take a breath. 

Sausagedog relates what's in the next room, and they open the doors to have a look. Peppa and Dire are horrified to realize that this room is in fact a chapel to Man, obviously defiled now. Dire suggests that they just burn the goop, or at least try - if it's flammable, great, if not, they haven't lost anything. Petunia considers and decides that's actually pretty sound logic, and hurls a bit of fire at it.

An explosion blows them back, deafening Boomer and Peppa, who were kind of in the path of it. When the foul-smelling smoke clears, the goop has been burned off, but a figure rises up in the middle of the room. It's taller even than Dire, but seems to be composed entirely of huge, slithering worms! The worm-monster advances, and Dire casts Sacred Flame at it. Several worms fall off, burning with white fire. Definitely a demon, then.

Boomer tries to find his rage again...and cannot. His body is tired and spent. Sausagedog vanishes into the shadows and hurls a rock at the monster, knocking a few more worms off, and Petunia hits it with a corrosive arrow! The demon lunges at Dire, opening its mouth and forming teeth from wriggling worms! It "bites", but the worms just get lost in Dire's floof ("I'm gonna have to brush so long tonight"). Peppa conjures up her Magic Stick and bonks it, and the stick goes right through it, all the way to the floor, destroying the creature.

The Pioneers pick their way through the poop and dead worms ("that was easier than I thought it was going to be," muses Sausagedog, unwisely tempting fate). They find themselves next in what was once barracks. Decaying piles of wood that were probably once bunks adorn the corners. They consider sleeping for the night, but then realize that if they give Max that much time, who knows what he'll do? If there's a back way out, he might escape. Better to take a quick rest and press on. 

Peppa casts a Prayer of Healing, and Petunia searches the room. Under a loose stone, she finds an crumbled, decaying note wrapped around a ring and tied up with string: 

Sausagedog listens and finds himself a little teary, but blames it on the dust. Petunia finds the ring within and identifies it as a Ring of Protection, and gives it to Peppa to hold onto. After they all finish their rest, they move on.

The next room was once residential apartments, they think, but there's nothing left here except a couple thousand of those red-winged moths. They warily avoid them, and find a door at the far end of the room that leads out to another courtyard! 

Nothing here but high grass, it seems, and a staircase that leads up to the door to the main tower. But in the grass, they find exsanguinated corpses of birds and rats and other fauna. Sausagedog remembers stories of an Unseen creature called the Blood Drinker, that hunts by night and, well, drinks blood. There's about an hour before sunset...better to check the next door.

As they approach, Dire hears voices and shushes the others. Listening closely, he hears a female voice that sounds familiar to him:

"I don't care. I want Boomer dead. I agreed to help to have my revenge on that-"

And then another voice Dire knows, that of Boomer himself, but with the cadence and inflection of Max Pitbull. 

"You'll not be harming my body! It's old, but it is a national treasure of Pugmire!" 

The argument continues, but then a third voice interjects, and this one chills Dire to his core. It is the voice of nightmares, the voice of the shadow that frightens pups. "You'll not fight amongst yourselves until they are dead. Whatever force prevents them from leaving also restricts us. They come soon. The Pioneers must die."

Dire relays this to the others quietly, and Peppa casts a Protection from Evil spell on them. Dire hears the third voice again: "Hark. They are here. Be ready."

"Welp," says Dire, and kicks in the door. Before them, a huge circular room, and in the middle, a gigantic wooden wheel with multiple leather restraints - the Wheel of Inversion! Three beings stand in front of it. 

One is Amelia Fold, the feline criminal who sworn vengeance against Boomer when he killed Luigi Husky. She snarls and spits, and then vanishes into the shadows. 

The second is Max Pitbull, wearing the body of Boomer. He pulls Boomer's maul from his back and his eyes take on the same fiery brightness as they always do before he rages.

The third is a huge creature that seems to be cat from the waist up, but the rest of its body is an immense serpent. It coils up in front of the Wheel to watch the battle. 

The Pioneers brace themselves for what might well be the worst fight they've ever experienced. 

Character Creation: Wyrd is Bond

Bring da motherfuckin ruckus.

The Game: Wyrd is Bond
The Publisher: Key 20 Publishing (now defunct; you can get this game used but it's pricey, or you can just download the PDF from Scribd or something)
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

So, the basic idea here is that magic ("slinging") has always been the province of the underclass, and in the modern day (this game came out in 2003, but the vibe is pretty 90s) its been largely adopted by hip-hop culture and gang culture and then brought into mainstream visibility. Like, there are several different slinger gangs with various goals, some of them have record labels, some of the important people do very visible things like starring in Spike Lee joints. There's a good dose of magical realism in here, but the game is squarely urban fantasy. 

The premise is mostly solid; I have some niggles with the idea of magic being fundamentally a poor man's practice, but by far the biggest issue with this game is that it's a game about gang culture and rap written by a bunch of white people. There are snippets of lyrics from the various NPCs in the game (folks like "Wee-Lo Fortune" and "Summonin Syrkle"), and let's just say it sounds like a white game designer trying to write rap. What kept coming to mind when I was reading this was a lyric from, perhaps ironically, Mackelmore (who is very much a white dude writing rap but at least he owns it): "it's rooted in authenticity/something you literally can't learn."

There's the obvious stuff like the sidebar about the n-word that advises that you can use it at your table or not, depending on whether it makes people uncomfortable, and the fact that a lot of the "magic" that these folks use is rooted in European traditions (Hermes Trismegistus and so on). I suspect that in today's parlance, much of this game would be considered "problematic." 

But with that said, I think it's got some interesting ideas. It definitely would have benefited from some more diverse eyes and perhaps some rhymes that don't just follow ABAB patterns, but the game system (rolling 3d6 and assigning them to how powerful your spell is, how fast it is, and what the Wyrd gives you as a bonus) is pretty cool. I don't think I'd run this game because there are few things more cringey than a group of old white people pretending to be young urban Black youths, but I appreciate it for what it is.

So let's make a character! I kinda have a concept in mind already. 

This game relies heavily on splats ("gangs"); they inform your magical style, goals, the "aspect" of your slinging, and so forth. One of the gangs (the "D-Men") are literally demons in human form trying to destabilize humanity. I don't want to make one of them, but I do appreciate swinging for the fences like that. Anyway, one of the gangs, the Crows, are materialists, sensualists, focused on the here and now and what they can get. (They take their cues from "The Alley Star" - yeah, Aleister Crowley.) But what kind of got me inspired was that their write-up mentions that they've started moving away from the obviously devilish/demonic imagery because the D-Men kinda have that locked up, and they've started adopted more Chinese and otherwise Asian imagery. It got me thinking about a bit in Ronny Chieng's standup special in which he talks about how Chinese people love money (here's part of it), and how that attitude might fit in with the Crows. 

So: My character is gonna be half Black, half Chinese. His mother was a Chinese woman, his dad's a Black man (they were never married or really even together; he wound up living with his dad after about age 10 when his mother was deported, just to keep things kinda topical). His name (officially) is Zavius Johnson, his mother called him Zhang Yong. As a slinger, he goes by ABC. 

OK, so ABC's gang is the Crows, obviously. Now we pick two positive Traits and two negative Traits; these are just adjectives or descriptors that help define the character. I want ABC's mixed heritage as a negative Trait (not because it's "bad," obviously, but just because I think it'd cause problems for him). Not sure about his other one. 

For positive Traits, I think ABC is quick and a smooth talker. For his other negative trait, I think he's small (kind of short, pretty skinny). 

Man, the layout of this sheet is garbage. Lots of wasted space. Anyway, moving on. Relationships! I get Allies, Enemies, Lover, and Rival (as many as I want under the first two, but only one each for the last two). Probably just do one of each, though. For Allies, I think Luke J, a fellow Crow, kinda took a shine to ABC and has helped him navigate and stuck up for him. For Enemies, there's a guy in Chinatown named Din who dimed out ABC's mom to INS, and he's not sure why, but he's damn sure gonna make Din answer for that some day.

For Rival, there's a Hungry Ghost (another gang) named Xia that has battled ABC before, and while they respect each other's flow, sometimes Xia makes a little too much of ABC's parentage (as written in the book, "Rival" is meant to be someone you'd kill without thinking...but like, that's not what "Rival" means. That's what "enemy" means. Words have meanings, guys). And for Lover, ABC has a girlfriend named Tania. Tania is kind of gang-adjacent, and I think to ABC she might represent "normal", which means the GM should absolutely turn her into a Blood Queen or something.

Moving on: Skillz (no, really). I only get one, despite the pluralization, and it's meant to be specific and something ABC is legit good at. I don't want to make this about him being part Chinese, I don't think, so what else might be good here? I'm gonna ABC knows the underground party scene - Crows generally are very into sex, drugs, and...well, maybe not rock-n-roll generally. So ABC knows where the party's at on any given night.

I get a d6 in Juice to start with, I start with 10 Beats, Wyrd 1, and that's it, folks. I picture ABC as, like I said, short, light-skinned, keeps his head buzzed (not shaved), favors very large black trousers and shirts with silver embroidery. He's got a bunch of gold and diamond rings he wears with Chinese characters and English letters, and there's always some meaning to the combination, which he might or might not explain. 

That'll do it!

Character Creation: Greenhorns

You might think this is a Wild West style game, and I might have preferred that.

The Game: Greenhorns
The Publisher: Spicy Tuna
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

As might be evident from the cover, this game kinda falls into the same bucket as Troika! or similar art-book style games. The interior is all white text on blue, and it's hard to read. The concept of the game seems pretty cool, if weird: There's a sentient machine being called the Creatora Machinika, it's creating planets in order to fill up the void of space, it's kind of merge with Kruxor, you play Kruxorians helping its mission. There's more to it than that; this is unfortunately one of those games that doesn't quite make clear what we're going for here, but what the heck, let's give it a shot.

OK, I'm a little annoyed with this game. Here's step one of chargen:

Baed on that, how many Skill Slots do you think you get? "Class" is singular in the first paragraph, and in the second it says "fill one Skill Slot". The rest of that sentence kinda seems to imply more than one, but it's never stated.  

Now, look at this from the character sheet:

 

I blew that up pretty big. It's very small on the sheet, and it's not in the text of the book. And there's no example of chargen. Oh, also, there are four classes, except there are really eight, but only four for chargen, but maybe eight? What's the difference? I don't know. There's a blurb (a splat page, if you will) for each class, but no handshake text that tells us what "class" means in this context. 

Anyway. So I've got four Class choices: Blast Master, Potion Doser, Conjure Mage, and Light Witch. These names tell me almost nothing. Let's have a look at the write-ups. Those don't help. Oh, wait, here we go:

OK, so I can take 3 levels ("LVL") in one or two in one and one in one more. I'm kinda feeling Potion Doser, I like the idea of being a stimpak mixologist. Let's take two LVL there and one in Conjure Mage.

So I'll take a point in Plasma Extremities and a point in Group Treatment in Potion Doser, and one in Powered Exoskeleton in Conjure Mage. 

Moving on to Step Two. We mark starting Hits...um. Oh, I start with 4 because that's the rating for Potion Doser and that's my highest Class. I start with 1 Honor. I'm suppose to pick a name, here, too, but I'll do that last.

Step Three: I get Cloak Armor, which is never defined in the book. I get two pieces of starting gear; I'll take...oh, hey, I can roll for that. Neat. I get a tethered suction-cup launcher and an inflate-o-raft. What is this, Toon?

Yeah, it does seem to be. Lookit this.

Those are "LT" weapons. I get one of those. They all cost the same and do the same damage. They are never defined or described, so this table is just a list of funny words. 

OK, I think I'm good. I literally have no idea how I'm meant to go about defining a character or making him different from any other Potion Doser. Gonna name my guy Scruuks. Just kind of wants to keep everyone health and all their goop contained. Nothing worse than uncontained goop. Just sticky. 

Character Creation: Prowlers & Paragons Ultimate Edition

Look! Up in the...waitasec. 

The Game: Prowlers & Paragons Ultimate Edition
The Publisher: Evil Beagle Games? Lakeside Games? Who even knows anymore. Here's a link. 
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

It's a supers game, y'know. It's actually a new edition of an older game (I made a character for the previous edition a while back, and then got this edition in some bundle or other). This system looks pretty similar, what with the dice allocation as point-buy. I will say, though, that the writing is clean and pretty easy to follow and the artwork is dope. There are a couple of NPCs that share names with comic characters (I bet someone thought they were clever calling a Gorilla Grodd type character "Ape-X", but it was done in Squadron Supreme), but that's really hard to avoid. 

Anyway, I started keeping a list of all the supers characters I'd made so I could avoid doubling up on concepts as much as possible, and this'll be my 60th! What ground have I not tread in this genre? I've made a stretchy hero, more than a few jumpy-flippy heroes, cosmic heroes, elemental controllers, powerhouses...have I ever made a Green Arrow style character, someone with gadgets themed around gimmicks? I've a couple of tech-based heroes, I know that.

Actually, hell, let's crack open The Weird, since there's a table of Weird Themes, Schticks, or Gimmicks for superhero characters. A roll of 08 gives me...oh, I couple of intriguing possibilities. The first one is "shows up as if they had been present all along, just not noticed by others." I like that, though I don't think I want to go dark and spooky with it (I have definitely made characters like that).

Hmm. You know, I don't think I've ever done the Thor/Hercules thing of making a mythological character as a superhero. I've gotten kinda close to it by having characters empowered by divine beings (like Aquamarine) and I've done similar things in other genres (like supernatural romance). So what if my character is a cat-god? 

Interestingly, cat goddesses are much more common (guess that doesn't surprise). When it comes to gods it's pretty much either Kek or Nefertem, and Kek's connection to cats is pretty tenuous. Nefertem is often depicted as the son of Bastet, so sure, let's make the "Water-Lily of the Sun" as a superhero. I like the idea of playing up his cat connection, which leads to his power of just kinda being there, even if you didn't notice him. 

Pretty much got Step One done. My character's super-name is Nefertem. I think he probably does have an alias in the same way that Thor used to masquerade as Don Blake; when he first came to Earth he got involved with some younger superheroes (there is no way this guy isn't a teen hero) and they did the sitcom thing where they covered for him, but kind of badly, so his "civilian" name is Jeremy Gato. 

Step Two just jumps right into the numbers. I need to figure how many points I have to throw around. I feel like Nefertem could be just coming into his godlike power, so let's make him Low-Level. That gives me 100 Hero Points, and caps my Traits at 10d. 

Starting with Abilities: Agility, Intellect, Might, Perception, Toughness, Willpower. I feel like Nefertem needs Agility and Perception above all else. These cost 1-for-1, normal people have 2d in these Abilities. Let's put 6d each into Agility and Perception. Toughness doesn't have be huge but it shouldn't be nothing (he's a demigod, after all), so let's go 4d. Intellect and Might can be lower (3d), and Willpower can higher at 5d. That's 27 points spent.

Talents are skills-ish sorts of things, but they're intentionally very broad. Once again 1-for-1, and most people have 2d across the board. There are 12 of them, so I'd need 24 points to be average, so let's start there. 

I think Charm, Covert, and maybe Investigation should be higher. I also like the idea of Academics being really high - Nefertem is also usually depicted as the son of Ptah, the creator god, so it'd make sense if he kinda knows everything. Let's bump all three of those to 6d, which costs me 12 more points, for 36 on Talents, and 63 total. Only 37 left. 

But fortunately, next we have Powers! What do I envision Nefertem as being able to do? I want him to have a kind of cat-like teleport; like, he can't do Nightcrawler-like shit, but sometimes he's just there. Is that worthy of a Power? Maybe it's just a quirk, since it's probably more flavor than anything? 

No, I think I can make it work as a Power. Teleportation costs 1 point per rank, and rank determines my maximum distance. I don't see Nefertem as having a particularly long-range teleport, and it basically only works around people who know him (that is, if a friend of his has been captured by goons, he can teleport into the room, but if it's just the goons, he can't). A rank of 6d gives me a range of a mile, which I think is probably plenty and costs me six points. However, I want some extras here.

Let's say that "people I know" counts as a Medium, which knocks two points off the cost. I want Subtle as a 2-point Pro, so my teleport just kind of happens without any fanfare. And I'll take Uncontrollable - if people within the radius (1 mile) start talking about me, I'll teleport to them. That's 6 + 2 - 4, or 4 Hero Points. Neat!

What else do I want? I feel like I should have some super senses. I want:

Acute Sight
Acute Hearing
Acute Touch
Astral Sight
Enhanced Hearing
Lie Detection
Night Vision
Thermal Vision
Tracking Scent
True Sight 

Can I afford all that? Super Senses, no matter how many you have, acts like one power, but they're all purchased separately and they have different costs. So: Acute Whatever is 1 point per 2 ranks, and adds direction to my Perception. If I want to boost these to, say, 8d, I'd need to spend 1 Hero Point per sense (1 point buys 2d which adds to my Perception of 6d), so that's just 3 right there.

The rest of the powers don't have ranks that I need to buy, they just have a flat cost. Astral Sight is 1, Enhanced Hearing is 1, Lie Detection is 3, Night Vision is 3, Thermal Vision is 2, Tracking Scent is 1, and True Sight is 6 (that's a pretty powerful one). If I want all that plus the Acute X, it's 20 points, but nothing gets by me. I think I'm good with that. And I still have 13 points, so I'm doing fine. What else do I want Nefertem to be able to do?

Lightning Reflexes makes sense, that's a flat 3 points? Doesn't have much bang for the buck, though. Luck is a versatile way to represent divine favor, though at 2 points per rank it's kind of expensive. I could spend the rest of my points and take it at 5d. I dunno, I think I'll keep looking.

Oh, well, shit, Languages, if I take the Hyper-Translator pro, makes me immediately fluent in any language I encounter, and going along with the "knows everything" theme, I think that makes sense. Evasion adds to my Agility for purposes of active defense, and that's in-theme (plus it's cheap), so I'll put 2 there for 4d. That's 5 spent, 8 more. 

Hrm. I feel like I probably ought to have some kind of offensive capability. Nefertem is usually depicted as having a water lily growing out of his head, maybe something plant-themed? Ooh, no, Preparation. Preparation is pretty clearly meant to emulate Batman-like characters who do their homework, but it works for Nefertem for different reasons. It is, however, expensive (6 points). Any Cons I might take to lower it? Nah, not really. Fine, 2 points left. Ooh, I'd like the Patron Perk, but that costs 3. Hmm. I'll lower my Technology Talent to 1d, that'll work. 

Flaws, too! Flaws don't give me Hero Points, sadly, they'd give me Resolve in play. But since Preparation costs Resolve, I need 'em. I'll take Absent-Minded, Broke ("I know the locations of all of the treasures of Egypt, though!" "Yeah, Nef, but you still can't kick in for pizza."), and Outsider, obviously. 

Step Three is Gear, which I am going to skip, because a) Nef is broke and b) I hate this step. 

Step Four: Derived Traits. Edge is Perception + Agility (in my case), or 12. Health is either the average of Toughness and Might or Toughness and Willpower, whichever is better; the latter, in my case, being 5 (we round up). 

Resolve...is a thing I have to figure out. Oh, it's not hard. The highest Trait compared to the Trait Cap (10d, in my case), only I don't think any of my powers count because it only counts powers that affect others. Oh, cool, so it's just based on my Agility, which is 4 below the Trait Cap. That gives me 8 Resolve! Nice!

Steps Five and Six are just wrap-up stuff. So: Nefertem is a young teen, maybe about 15. He's slim, dark skin, dark eyes, but his hair, while black, has this weird blue sheen around the edges, like highlights but in this odd flower pattern? He moves gracefully and fluidly, and while he knows almost everything as far as fact and history, he's pretty clueless about how society works now. 

Why's he doing hero stuff? I really think he kind of appeared from wherever (when asked, he says he's been here the whole thing) and fell in with a group of teen heroes. He claims his mom watches out for him, and he talks to every cat he sees. He's not the most offensively powered super in the world, but when it comes to knowledge, detection, and communication, there's no one better. MAO. 

Movie #920: Black Bag

Black Bag is a spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Tom Burke, Regé-Jean Page, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, and Pierce Brosnan. It's also directed by Stephen Soderbergh, in case you wondered whether he meant it when he retired.

George (Fassbender) is a counterintelligence officer for the National Cyber Security Centre, married to Kathryn (Blanchett), also a spy. He's told about secret MacGuffin program called "Severus" that has been stolen, and told to figure it out. Based on who had access to the program, he has a little dinner party for four of his colleagues: staff shrink Zoe (Harris), old schlubby agent Freddie (Burke), young hot agent James (Page), and satellite imager Clarissa (Abela). Said dinner reveals that everyone in this agency is fucking everyone else, but doesn't tell George who the leak is. He does, however, find a movie stub in the trash that seems to indicate his wife may be keeping secrets!

The rest of the movie is a lot of cat-and-mouse between George and basically everyone else, and it ends up with another dinner party (this time with no dinner) during which all is revealed and the real villain is shot. But as with a lot of Soderbergh movies, Black Bag lives and dies on the chemistry in the cast, the dialog and delivery, and the build-up to a reveal in which the process is just as satisfying as any twist. 

We're used to "spy thrillers" being at least partly action flicks, and this one really isn't; it's more in the vein of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Bridge of Spies. But in addition to that, it's fun to watch George go out of his way to make sure he doesn't have to second-guess Kathryn's motives or her love for him. I also really appreciate that they compare notes at the beginning of the third act, revealing to the audience that they're on the same page and they're still working together, because it frankly would have been a little tedious to play up the kind of Mr. & Mrs. Smith thing during the last bit of the movie. 

Props too for casting Pierce Brosnan as the head of the agency, the spy who has been in this business far too long and is willing to cut too many corners to get ahead. Honestly you can kind of see James Bond becoming his character if he lived long enough.

My Grade: A- 
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: The Bone Collector 

Character Creation: Be Like a Crow

CAW.

The Game: Be Like a Crow
The Publisher: Critical Kit Ltd
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

I got this game and its...sister game? I guess? in a bundle last year. Much like Be Like a Cat, this is a solo game and therefore it's not real likely that I'll ever play it, but what the heck, I do like crows. In this game - brace yourself - you play a crow. The particulars can vary; you could be a Cyber-Crow or a Gothic Crow or (presumably) Cameron Crow(e). The game play itself involves drawing cards from a deck and using them to prompt what happens, but again, that's further than I'm gonna go, I'm just here to hatch an egg, as it were.

So first we pick what kind of corvid we are. There are five types and I don't have an immediate preference, so how about we just roll a d5? A 4 gives me Raven. Sounds good. I get to ruffle my feathers at the start of combat and make a scare check, and if I succeed I can make every check in that combat "with authority." That just means I'd draw two cards and take the highest. I get to add two ticks (ew) to any one Skills, I can add one tick to a skill from each of my "main categories", which I guess just means, um, the categories? "Main" implies there are secondary ones. Anyway, I also get to tick peck, fly, befriend, and scare. (I would get to a lot of this when I advance a lifecycle stage, but I'm assuming I just start at Fledgling. This would be a lot easier if the fucking PDF was bookmarked.)

Before I go picking other Skills, I think I'd better pick a setting. Gothic Crow actually sounds awesome:

 

As a Fledgling in this setting, I add one tick to scare. I'm a scaaaarrry crow. Now that I know my setting, I can add my other Skills. I'll add two ticks to signal; I can be kind of like Poe's raven, except slightly more useful. I'll add a tick to navigate (this setting is actually hard to navigate, so I want a tick there), evade, befriend, and sing. 

And that's basically it, other than a name. I'll call my bird "Amsel." Amsel is, well, a raven, black of feather, but with a distinctive white patch on his left foot. CAW.
 

Marvel: Grab Your Umbrella When Chaos Reigns

It's a pun, you dumb gopher. 

Anyway, our heroes have been mind-controlled and captured by the Power Broker, who is apparently a woman called Melina, not, as was previously believed, Aldrich Killian. They each come to in various stages of "capture."

Magnus has been stripped to his boxers and is strapped to an upright table. No one else is in the room, but he's clearly being observed because he can't teleport. Maria is strapped into a chair being prepared for interrogation by three Widows. Spider-Man is strapped down on a surgical table, a team of doctors about to start harvesting tissue. Killian is in the room, generally backseat doctoring, while Melina is nearby messing with a tablet. 

Bucky is in a room, on a bench, staring at a wall. No one has told him to do anything different.

Maria, recall, had managed to crack her Chemical Behavioral Modification with Magnus' help, and wriggles her bonds loose. One of the Widows gives her an order to stay still and leans in to re-secure her, but she resists the order, head-butts the Widow, and kicks her legs out from under her. The other two Widows attack - one swoops in with a taser, but Maria disarms her and zaps her, and then as the last one goes for the alarm, kicks her off-balance and takes her out. 

Maria re-arms herself and gets the door open, slipping out into the shadowy hallways...

Meanwhile, Spidey starts to panic. They're arguing whether to start with lymph or blood (Killian is disappointed to realize that his web-shooters are mechanical, not organic), but Spidey manages to channel that fear into strength and snaps his bonds. He leaps to the ceiling and Melina hits a button her tablet, and Spidey feels his muscles start to lock up - but then he fights through it!

Melina backs out of the room and tells Killian to find her when this punk is unconscious or dead, and Killian throws punches and then fire. Spidey, however, is way too quick, dodges every shot, kicks Killian into the floor (which causes enough damage to the room that a bin pops open and reveals his web-shooters!). Spidey webs Killian to the wall and hot-wires the door open as he starts to burn through it.

Magnus is annoyed. The power of the multiverse at his fingertips, but these people manage to capture him? He focuses and calls on a pact with an extradimensional being he made a long time ago, whispering one request to fulfill their bargain: chaos.

At first, nothing. And then from somewhere in the facility, Magnus hears a scream, and suddenly he's unobserved again. He teleports out of the restraints and out into the hall. Something's going wrong - the lights are flickering and he can hear people running around in a panic. A guy in surgical scrubs runs around the corner and Magnus grabs him by the neck. "Where's my stuff?" he growls, being as intimidating as a guy in his boxers can be. The guy sputters a little and Magus threatens him with being folded into the fourth dimension, and the guy breaks and points Magnus toward the lab down the hall.

Magnus runs toward the lab, but spots someone hiding in the shadows. Fortunately, Maria figures out who he is (pretty easy, given his garb) before tasing him. They talk briefly and then hear Spidey calling for them. They split up - Magnus goes to get his stuff and Maria goes to find Spidey.

Maria finds Spidey coming out of the door. She shuts it and fries the controls with her taser, and a moment later the door starts to heat up - Killian. They get the hell out of there; neither wants to fight Killian. Then they'd have to listen to him.

Spidey and Maria find a control room, figuring they can orient themselves and find Bucky. But the room is darkened, the lights are flickering, and there's some kind of black ichor all over the walls...covering the bodies of the two techs who were monitoring the camera feeds. They enter the room, cautiously, but the ooze slides off the walls and lunges at Maria!

She dodges and zaps it with her taser, and Spider-Man flips over it, lands on the console, and starts calling up schematics. Maria dodges out of the way of the stuff, and yells "turn on the sprinklers!" Spidey does, water cascades down, and Maria shocks the stuff again, dissipating it. Maria finds a map of the facility and realizes that Bucky is in a cell on the next floor down. She opens the doors, and she and Spidey run off to find the others.

Bucky, for his part, notes the open door, but does nothing. 

Magnus, now wet and glistening (we decided that since Stephen Amell plays Magnus this is pure fan service) finds the lab - door's open, and the sprinklers aren't on in here. There are multiple tables with all kinds of machinery and gear laid out, some of which doesn't look consistent with the tech on this world. Magnus notes that, but he's really more interested in the guy on the other side of the room.

In front of the guy is Magnus' runed suit, and the guy is poking at it with various tools, probably trying to figure out how to activate it. Magnus strides across the room and the guy looks up, curiously. "You've got one chance to live," Magnus says. "Give me my suit and the rest of my stuff, and get out of here, or I kill you in ways that don't even exist yet."

"Um." The guy gives him a once-over. "But you're just..." he gestures to Magnus' apparent lack of anything threatening. 

"OK, then." Magnus moves, and the guy slides his hands into some mechanical controls on his table. Two apparent piles of junk rise up into robotic turrets, and Magnus finds himself under automatic rifle fire!

Magnus dives towards the guy, under the line of fire, and finds his hat on a shelf under his table. "Oh, now you're screwed." He reaches into his hat to pull out a comically large mallet...but can't. Something is still watching. Maybe the cosmic being he called on earlier? Whatever it is, it's interfering with his powers.

The tinkerer (hey, that's catchy) realigns the guns, and Magnus decides that this isn't worth his while. He backflips out of the room, taking a few scratches and nicks on the way, and plops the hat on his head. 

He runs down the hall and meets up with Maria and Spidey, and the three of them find a stairway to Bucky's room. They try to get him to move ("ready to comply"), but figure they'd better crack the conditioning first. Maria has Spidey web him up and then shocks him with her taser, and somewhere in Bucky's head the thought occurs that they normally give him a bite-guard for this...and then he comes to. 

"Sorry," says Maria. "Had to snap you out of it."

"My head feels...full," mutters Bucky. Clearly he's still not entirely out of it. Meanwhile, Magnus pulls his suit out of his hat and puts it on; the Tinkerer looks away for a moment and looks back to an empty table. He shrugs; he wasn't really getting anywhere anyway.

The facility is still going haywire, and Maria notes that this kind of chaos probably got Wanda's attention - meaning she's probably on the way. They could confront her here? Bucky votes for leaving. They have a safehouse to fall back to, and he's not feeling 100% anyway. 

They find an elevator shaft and pull it open. Bucky slides down using his arm as a brace, Spidey just crawls with Maria on his back, and Magnus pulls a feather out of his hat and drops. (Bucky watches: "Is he..." Maria: "I'm sure he knows what he's doing.") 

The four of them land on the elevator, Bucky punches through it, and they drop into the cab and then out into the lobby. As they're leaving, a TV monitor kicks on and Killian's smug-ass face greets them. "OK, well, thanks for dropping by..."

Magnus considers whether his request for chaos is going to result in something eating the building. He hopes so.

"I'd say you've got about half an hour before some old friends drop in," says Killian, and the TV kicks off.

The heroes get out onto the street, and start heading back to base. They aren't entirely sure what's happening next, but out here they're a little exposed. 

Character Creation: Dead Air: Seasons

Pure coincidence that I picked this book up after our Misspent Youth game involves some of the same imagery.

The Game: Dead Air: Seasons
The Publisher: The World Anvil
Degree of Familiarity: None with the game system, but I've played The Last of Us
Books Required: Just the one 

 

So here we have a post-apocalypse game where the apocalypse in question involves mushroom zombies. Dead Air: Seasons apparently is part of a series of games set in this universe, but this is the only one I own, and I think it's likely to remain so. Reading the book, I found it kind of hard to follow, and I'm not sure why - it's not badly written or anything, but it wasn't holding my interest. Might just because I've seen all this before; I've read All Flesh Must Be Eaten, I've read The Girl With All the Gifts, and like I said, I've played The Last of Us. 

I have niggles about the system, too (though, once again, I'd need to play it to really know). For one thing, character (and Community) creation involve a lot of prose. You're meant to write out your concept in sentences, and I can say from experience that not every player thinks like that and it'd be pulling teeth for some folks. But also, you're rolling d6s and shooting for high numbers, OK sure, but if you roll any 1st, the action fails? That seems really harsh to me. Again, though, I admit that game wasn't keeping me hooked, so maybe it works better in play.

The production values are fantastic, though, I'll give it that. Let's make a character!

Normally we (the hypothetical group) would make a Community first, but since it's just me I'll use the Community example helpfully provided. That's a missile silo built into the side of a mountain in the Bavarian Alps, and the area's been christened Bannwald ("forbidden forest"). 

We start off with a concept. Let's see here. It's 10 years since the apocalypse, meaning if my character is 50 he had a whole life in the old world. Is that something I want to do? Sure. The Community is in Germany, but I don't have to be German per se. Let's say that my character is actually Spanish, and was teaching in a boarding school when the apocalypse hit. I don't think the book tells us what time of year it was when things really went to shit, but let's assume it was during the spring when much of the school was on spring holiday (there's gotta be one, the Germans love to take vacations). Let's call him Emilio Vázquez Almeida. 

(I note with some amusement that this is both at least the second Spanish character I've made and the second character that was working as a teacher when the world ended.)

With that in mind, I'm meant to write a bit about Emilio, so:

Emilio was a teacher of Spanish and European history at [a boarding school in Germany; were I actually playing him I'd do a bit more digging]. He originally came to Germany following a girl, but they broke up and Emilio already had a job he enjoyed. Emilio is well-traveled and an experienced hiker. In addition to his classes, Emilio was a track and field coach. He was 42 when the apocalypse hit. He holed up in the school with the few students and staff that were left and they made it a self-sustaining Community for a few years, but then the Blight got in and everything kinda went to shit. Emilio struck off on his own and eventually arrived in Bannwald. 

OK, next, what's next? Descriptors! These are divided up into four Background Steps, namely Yesterday's World, Along the Way, Today's World, and Tomorrow's World. They're meant to be written in first person, and have both a benefit and a downside. 

Yesterday's World: Obviously Emilio is well-educated and well-traveled. He was a teacher, but it seems like that's not the most interesting or relevant thing about him? I think we'll say it like this: I am well-educated and well-traveled, and the world seems so much smaller now.

Along the Way: This one's pretty easy: I lived in a Community in the school where I worked, but it was all destroyed by the Blight. 

Today's World: This is kind of meant to center on his relationship to the Blight and his role in the Community. Emilio is of course multi-lingual and knowledgeable about history, but I figure nowadays that's less useful. So: I help others to stay in shape and be ready to run, and I might push them a little too hard sometimes.

Tomorrow's World: Hopes, dreams, what gives us the strength to carry on. I remember the world as it was and I know its history, so I need to survive to teach the next generation.

Next up, Archetypes! These don't have a lot of immediate mechanical effect, I don't think, other than helping to determine what Gifts I can take. I get two of them. Obviously Athlete needs to be one...hmm. Explorer or Savant? I think we'll go Savant, just because Emilio's been more sedentary the past few years (that is, hasn't been traveling). There's apparently a way to add a third Archetype in play, and I think if I were playing Emilio I'd work towards adding Explorer and frame it as him relearning some things he already knew.

Gifts! I get four, one for each of the Background Steps. Each of them grants some Soma; the more specific and niche the Gift, the higher the Soma, I think? I'm not 100% what Soma does in play, I'll look it up in a sec here. Anyway, there are Generic Gifts, Gifts from each Archetype, and Goal Gifts. I don't have to have one of each, but the game does recommend spreading out the type of Gift (some cost Soma in play, some don't, that kind of thing). 

OK, then. Starting with Yesterday's World, I think we want something reflecting Emilio's knowledge and travels. Probably a Savant Gift, then. Nope, those all suck. Ah, but the Generic Gift Curious makes sense, it's all about knowing various things about historical context or general information. That's Soma 3. 

For Along the Way, again there's nothing in Savant I want, but Generic saves me again with Hiker, which lets me navigate out in nature. Also Soma 3. 

Today's World! This should definitely be an Athlete Gift. Cross Country Runner, there it is. Soma 2.

And, finally, Tomorrow's World. OK, seriously, is there any Savant Gift that makes sense? Nope. The only one that's not hyper-specific is a perfect memory one, and that doesn't fit. But, there's a Goal Gift called Ambition, which fits just fine. Soma 3. 

Total Soma: 11. Not sure what that means in context. 

Well, anyway, Attributes! We've got five: Body, Reaction, Mind, Presence, and Determination. Why are they not in alphabetical order? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe in Italian they are (this game is originally written in Italian). I pick an array depending on how focused I wish to be. Actually, "Focused" is I think about Emilio's speed. That lets me put 4 in Body and Mind. I'll put his 3 into Determination, and that leaves Presence and Reaction at 2. 

Soma total is 11, PNR (the "Point of No Return," with regards to becoming a zombie) is 10. 

Equipment isn't buying shit with money or soup or whatever. I get one "Iconic Item" that Emilio always has on him. I think for Emilio it's his hiking boots. They cost him a lot of money, but he's maintained them over the years. 

Emilio is in his early 50s, dark skin, black hair that's now going grey. He is lean and keeps himself in shape, but he's slowly waking up to the fact that sooner or later, his body is going to give out.